October 8, 2026  |  SIGN UP

PRESENTED BY

Jim Cooper
DIGIDAY, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Intent is evolving past identity to become the future of advertising. That, as we report this morning, seems to have been the core message from Samantha Jacobson, OpenAI’s vice president of monetization partnerships, during an Advertising Week New York panel yesterday.

She framed it for marketers in lofty terms – “so that all of humanity could benefit from artificial general intelligence.” So, the practice of surveillance-based identity marketing is the neandertal, delivering knuckle dragging, often clumsy – sometimes creepy– results? And that tracking based on directly answering consumers’ questions about what they’re likely intending to do makes marketing stand more erect (think the famous March of Progress diagram)?

This AI-based evolution – leveling up – of marketing is an interesting concept to float during ADWNY during which the uncertainty that AI will ultimately be a good thing for humans was palpable and overheard. As was the question of what and whom to trust in all of this.

Will it be identity or intent?

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DIGIDAY @ ADVERTISING WEEK

OpenAI would like to remind marketers that its ads are for the good of humanity 

Samantha Jacobson, OpenAI’s vp of monetization partnerships, made the claim during a panel question about privacy and consumer trust, and her version of the ad-funded bargain sounds a lot like the ones that came before it.

DIGIDAY @ ADVERTISING WEEK

Heineken serves up outcomes with mixed attention and brand awareness approach

The brewer is working with GumGum to track how display assets are performing in market using “Attentive Lift”, a method of overlaying brand lift study results with attention metrics.

PARTNER INSIGHTS FROM DXC TECHNOLOGY

Habitual innovation drives AI success

The organizations most likely to succeed with AI won’t necessarily have the biggest technology budgets or boldest announcements.

DIGIDAY @ ADVERTISING WEEK

‘There’s nothing wrong with being a heritage brand’: How Revlon is updating its image by looking to the past

To do so, Revlon looked to fresh talent. In April, Revlon named musician and actress Teyana Taylor and country music star Megan Moroney as the faces of its “Revlon Be Unforgettable” campaign.

A MESSAGE FROM YIELDMO

Media buyers say they can’t see their own performance signals

A new Forrester Consulting Opportunity Snapshot, commissioned by Yieldmo, uncovers a growing disconnect: the tools marketers rely on don’t show what they need to compete. Buyers point to gaps in real-time insight and fragmented tech stacks as the source.

Learn why

BRANDS IN CULTURE

From influencers to AI, here’s what Gen Alpha thinks about your brand

Last week, at Shoptalk Fall, a panel of five Gen Alpha shoppers, ranging from middle schoolers to high schoolers, took the stage to talk candidly about what they want and don’t want from the brands competing for their time, dollars and clicks.

DIGIDAY @ ADVERTISING WEEK

Dhar Mann’s $100M AWNY deal target for creators is already pledged (so he says)

The mega creator is the ad conference’s first chief creator officer, and his job this week is to broker deals between creators and brands. He and the event’s organizers want those introductions to produce $100 million in creator-brand business within 12 months.

PARTNER INSIGHTS FROM TIKTOK

How TikTok is helping app advertisers rethink attribution

As automated systems make more optimization decisions, advertisers need confidence that those systems learn from the same conversion signals they use for performance. The challenge is aligning measurement and optimization around a source of truth.