Digital Roundup

 DIGITAL ROUNDUP

January 2026

Welcome to this month’s edition of the roundup to some core updates in the digital advertising industry.

NB: the following represents my own opinion

Meta acquires Manus to accelerate its AI intentions

Meta ended the year with a somewhat unpredicted acquisition.

(https://www.facebook.com/business/news/manus-joins-meta-accelerating-ai-innovation-for-businesse)

DEEPDIVE

Meta announced its acquisition of Manus, a Singapore-based startup that specialises in "general purpose AI agents”. The deal closed at the end of December and is rumoured to being in the multi billion figures.

This is quite the big move from a company that already boasts several AI paths, including their own conversational based AI solution (Meta AI) & Llama as a LLM based approach. The move towards Manus signals a move towards execution of agentic outcomes vs just displaying an output, such as text or images.

In the ads space, Meta has been moving towards an agentic future already. There already exists more chatbot form Business AI, aimed at smaller advertisers to onboard onto ads with some form of support where required. Generative AI has been a key component of new dynamic ad options encompassed around Advantage+. And the base algorithm itself has been powered by the likes of Lattice, GEM & Andromeda machine learning models, evolving over time.

Whilst Manus will likely play a bigger role in opening up executional agentic workflows for regular users of Meta’s universe of apps, there is an ads implication that follows the vision of Zuck’s ambition to make the ads experience 100% agentic. How quickly this will happen will remain to be seen, but the likelihood of prompting ad build / optimisation from a brief to execution through a Manus like approach is no doubt one of the biggest use cases.

The Agentic Lowdown 🤖

DEEPDIVE

This new deepdive will focus on how agentic AI is starting to disrupt how digital marketing operates.

🤖Google are already under the microscope of the EU Commission over how it has used publisher online content for training their own AI models.

🤖Shopify have released their Agentic Storefronts feature to allow the ability to convert direct from AI Chat on Shopify properties.

🤖Pubmatic and Butler/Till are showcasing a first of its kind agentic campaign on CTV, planned & built via AdCP.

🤖IAS have gone to market with an AI agent to support in the ad verification space.

🤖Infillion have released their own Ads Agent to support with use of their DSP.

🤖Impact have partnered with Evertune to bring in AI Search analytics into the affiliates world.

🤖The Information reports on the back & forth around Open AI’s advertising ambitions, which remains not a priority for now.

Your monthly review of all things Agentic AI and its impact on AdTech / MarTech

MARTECH UPDATES

SOCIAL / SEARCH HIGHLIGHTS 📱

  • Google have adopted AI Mode functionality direct from search results pages on Mobile globally (X)

  • Meta have rolled out some new best practices on Reels (Meta)

  • Google have released new guidance on analysing data in Search Console (Google)

  • LinkedIn have released some new ad capabilities around creative (LinkedIn)

  • Google have rolled out social channel reporting in Search Console (Google)

  • Google have rolled out new updates for YT Shorts (Google)

  • Snapchat have put together a review of 2025 & AI ads updates (Snapchat)

  • Meta have released new tweaks to how to search for content on Facebook (Meta)

  • Google have announced more Demand Gen updates (Google)

  • LinkedIn have rolled out their reserved top feed ads solution to more partners (LinkedIn)

  • Apple have announced plans to expand their ads placements in 2026 (Apple)

  • Innovid have rolled out their latest social feature called Beat, including Reddit integration & CM360 trafficking (Innvoid)

PROGRAMMATIC HIGHLIGHTS 🌐

  • Google have made YouTube Programmatic Non-Guaranteed instant deals available via DV360 (Google)

  • Amazon have rolled out Live Events Optimisation on DSP (Amazon)

  • Taboola have teamed up with LG to bring CTV to its ads platform (Taboola)

  • IAB Tech Lab have launched their new Deals API to standardise PMPs across supply / publishers (Videoweek)

  • Uber seeks to use trip data in its ad products (Businessinsider)

  • Equativ have partnered with Deutsche Telekom / Magneta to power CTV ad offerings in EU (Equativ)

  • Perion have announced a new integration with Amazon DSP, primarily around high impact creative (Perion)

  • Pinterest have acquired performance CTV vendor tvScientific to expand into CTV (Pinterest)

  • Adform have partnered with RTL for a deep inventory integration in EU (AdvancedTV)

  • Samsung have teamed up with Amazon Publisher Cloud to use their data on Samsung Ads (Samsung)

  • Daily Mail / Dazn have joined LiveRamp’s data collaboration network for data sharing (AdvancedTV)

  • Amazon have rolled out their brand suitability controls for Twitch / 3rd Party Exchanges on DSP (Amazon)

  • Place Exchange have integrated PG DOOH with DV360 (Place)

  • Adform have acquired Splicky as a DACH OOH publisher house (Adform)

  • IAS have announced their completion of acquisition via Novacap, with AI future in mind (IAS)

IDENTITY HIGHLIGHTS 🆔

  • Amazon & Google have teamed up to collaborate on multicloud networking on AWS / GCP (Google)

  • X have been fined by the EU Commission based on the Digital Services Act, involving elements of their ads solutions (Europa)

  • IAB Europe have released DSA Transparency guidelines for compliance in the EU (IAB Europe)

  • California regulators have introduced a new platform called DROP to handle delete / opt out requests (California Gov)

  • Meta will offer personalised ads options to EU consumers as part of continual alignment with regulators (Reuters)

  • Google have formally released the Data Manager API to unify 1st party data into its ad platforms (Google)

  • Google have added the ability to define preferred sources on their search engine (Google)

  • Google have pushed out a Ads Developer Assistant via API (Google)

  • Google have made GA variables for client ID / session now a standard via GTM (Google)

  • Comscore have expanded their cross-platform solution into audio / social (Comscore)

  • Google have made updates to comply with Japan’s Mobile Software Competition Act (Google)

  • Nielsen and Roku partner up for CTV measurement (AdExchanger)

  • Italian Regulators have fined Apple for app store / ATT dominance (Reuters)

  • Anonym have partnered up with Pinterest for Mozilla privacy centric data (Anonym)

For any additional questions or comments, feel free to contact on the form below!