NMS Editorial Team

NMS Editorial Team

Pop art illustration: a Google Ads experiments dashboard with a control toggle flipped off and traffic arrows surging into a winning campaign while 95% floats above.

Google Ads Experiments Auto-Apply by Default Now. Here's the Setting to Flip

In 2026, Google Ads quietly made auto-apply the default behavior for experiments. A favorable result, judged on directional data and your two chosen metrics, can now shift full traffic from your control campaign to the experiment with no human approval. The confidence and guardrail controls exist, but only if you

Coors Light Skipped FIFA Sponsorship and Bought the Goal Call Instead

Coors Light launched "The Coooors Call" on April 29, 2026: a World Cup campaign that adds an extra O to the brand name every time someone scores, anchored by a hero spot starring Spanish-language sportscaster Andrés Cantor. Coors Light is not an official FIFA sponsor. Budweiser owns that

Pop art halftone diagram of Omnicom routing AI agents directly to SSP nodes with three DSP middleman boxes crossed out, money flowing past blocked ad tech vendors

Omnicom Picked the One Programmatic Protocol The Big Three DSPs Aren't In

Omnicom announced on its April 28, 2026 Q1 earnings call that it is wiring Acxiom data into its Omni operating platform and routing AI media-buying agents through the Ad Context Protocol, the new agentic-buying standard, in a bid to recover the 64% of programmatic spend the ANA found never reaches

Mastercard's Verifiable Intent Just Made Brand Signals a Cryptography Problem

Mastercard open-sourced its Verifiable Intent specification on March 5, 2026, co-developed with Google and aligned to Google's Agent Payments Protocol (AP2). The framework creates a tamper-resistant cryptographic record of what a cardholder authorized when an AI agent buys on their behalf, and it integrates directly into Mastercard Agent

Impact.com Just Absorbed Rakuten's Affiliate Stack Without Buying It

Rakuten and Impact.com announced a strategic alliance on April 28, 2026, naming Impact as the exclusive technology platform for Rakuten Advertising's affiliate network. Rakuten's merchants and publishers will migrate to Impact's platform over time, while Rakuten retains its Rewards cashback business and managed

Pop-art collage of an AI chat thread with sponsored product placements and a price tag flipping from $60 CPM to CPC, illustrating AdMarketplace's pricing pitch.

AdMarketplace Priced AI Chat Ads at CPC While ChatGPT Was Charging $60 CPMs

AdMarketplace, an independent search ad network founded in 2000, ran more than 2 million sponsored placements through roughly 700,000 AI chat queries during a six-month alpha and is now expanding the beta into Dupe and Sezzle alongside Opera's Aria assistant. Pricing is CPC only, no CPM minimums.