WARC’s Future of Media 2026 Report opened with a sentence that should have stopped every South African marketer in their tracks: “The established model for media planning and buying is breaking apart, and nobody knows exactly what comes next.” Those are the words of Paul Stringer, Managing Editor at WARC, the global authority on marketing effectiveness.
MTN Group has announced the launch of MTN One TV, a video streaming service it says will expand access to digital entertainment to more people in Africa. The telecoms giant said the platform was designed to provide flexibility surrounding how customers watched content, with models that varied by market. The MTN One TV service includes free-to-view content, ad-supported streaming, pay-as-you-watch access, or subscriptions.
It’s disclosure day. And no, we’re not talking about the new Steven Spielberg movie out later this week. We’re talking about the new legislation in New York State, S.8420-A/A.8887-B, that went into effect Tuesday and requires advertisers to disclose the use of “synthetic performers,” aka performers viewers might think are real people, but are actually AI generated.
Every major holding company, every brand with a meaningful media budget, is increasing its streaming allocation. The money is flowing in the right direction. The user experience, on the other hand, is not keeping up. The frequency problem in CTV is neither new nor a secret. The core issue is structural. CTV does not have a universal creative ID standard for programmatically served ads.
The company announced on Wednesday that its internal systems will apply labels when it detects that “significant photorealistic AI” has been used. YouTube will also be making its AI labels more prominent, so they’re easier to spot across both long-form videos and YouTube Shorts.
Meta is expanding its 13+ content settings globally to all teen users as the company continues to add more options to help parents manage their kids’ experience in its apps. Ideally, this move will also help Meta avoid further restrictions regarding teen social media usage.
Out-of-home advertising has always held a unique position within media because it exists inside the environments where real behaviour happens. Yet despite that advantage, OOH planning has often relied on relatively fixed audience assumptions that only partially reflect how people move, decide, and respond in the real world. This is now changing quickly.
Commerce media promises clarity, accountability and measurable outcomes, but as the system scales, tensions emerge around truth, value and trust. Season 3 of All Media is Commerce Media explores what happens when the consequences start catching up with the industry.
As AI-generated answers are replacing traditional search, a significant shift is occurring and it’s one that many companies have yet to recognize fully. This is not a superficial change. It fundamentally alters how visibility is gained and lost, shifting perception from marketing-led to algorithmically assigned a reality that many organizations are not yet monitoring.
Social video is increasingly being treated less like a supplemental digital channel and more like a core TV buy. Marketers are continuing to redirect video ad dollars toward streaming and social platforms, with social video now emerging as the industry’s top ad-buying channel.