Media Buying on Cowlpane

‘There’s a big shift’: Amazon is turning the upfront into a pitch for its ad tech, not just primetime

Fri, 08 May 2026 13:01:00 +0000

Originally published by Digiday

The upfront is no longer just a shop window for content Amazon owns, it’s now one for its ad tech too.

That’s a shift from how this period usually works. The tech pitch used to come after the content deal was done — a separate conversation, often with different people. Not anymore.

“There’s this big shift from these content-first decisions into more of this integrated approach, where you have premium content, deterministic signals and AI-driven technology all activating together,” said Kelly Maclean, vp of Amazon Ads.

WTF is a unified ad platform?

Fri, 08 May 2026 04:01:00 +0000

Originally published by Digiday

This article is a WTF explainer, in which we break down media and marketing’s most confusing terms.More from the series →

Ad tech’s shift from an industry littered with point solutions to one built around integrated stacks has been underway for a while. It was only a matter of time before the acronyms followed.

Unified advertising platforms (UAP) is one such term. It hasn’t fully landed in the industry’s vocabulary yet, but give it time. It may be the clearest indication yet of where ad tech is headed: fewer players, more consolidation and a structural power shift that makes the current debate over supply chain transparency look like a warm up act.

The Trade Desk’s $689M revenue beat is blunted by the departure of CSO Jacobson to OpenAI

Thu, 07 May 2026 22:50:00 +0000

Originally published by Digiday

The Trade Desk’s Q1 revenues of $689 million may suggest holding-company spats are a mere bump in the road, but confirming the exit of CSO Samantha Jacobson hours before its market disclosure shows complications can come from all directions.

The demand-side platform’s earnings release came as supply-side platform PubMatic reported revenue of $62.6 million for the period, while The Trade Desk also forecast Q2 revenue of “at least $750 million.” This capped off a seven-day window when most of the leading publicly traded entities in the space likewise issued their Q1 results (see table below).