April 3, 2026  |  SIGN UP

Jim Cooper
DIGIDAY, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

The pool of creators has become so vast and varied that it’s beyond the reach of humans working at agencies to tap with the precision, speed and repeatability demanded by their brand clients.

As we reported this week, AI is has begun to shoulder that selection capability for agencies. Dentsu, for one, has rolled out an AI agent system called “Creator & Trends Studio” (CATS), which helps with influencer selection. CATS, in place since January, clicks into an API partnership with Meta, and makes recs on creators via filters such as subject matter, profile, and if they are part of a current social media trend.

It’s a response to the reality that brands now work with so many creators – Walmart works with hundreds of thousands at this point – that manual creator campaign organization is nearly impossible.

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THE CREATOR ECONOMY

AI influencer discovery tools are changing how agencies cast creators

Skincare brands Galderma and Elizabeth Arden are among the clients currently using the approach; in the case of the latter, the agency observed a 14.3% increase in unaided ad recall among customers and a 41% rise in sales conversions from partnership ads.

DIGIDAY PUBLISHING SUMMIT

Time pitches GEO insights into a new brand offering

Time is analyzing how AI search engines talk about a brand, pinpointing the potential mismatch between what a brand wants those AI summaries to say about it, and then selling Time-branded content to those brands to improve their messaging.

PARTNER INSIGHTS FROM HELIUM 10 

Expanding on Amazon and Walmart without breaking operations — a virtual event

Multichannel expansion isn’t optional; it’s a margin and risk management strategy in an environment of rising acquisition costs and platform volatility. This live virtual session on April 14 breaks down the practical roadmap brands are using to expand across platforms like Amazon and Walmart without operational chaos or margin erosion.

GENERATIVE AI

How E.l.f. Beauty is using AI to alleviate the workload of its workforce

E.l.f. Beauty’s guiding principle is simple, according to its chief digital officer, Ekta Chopra. People are its purpose and, therefore, even as it uses AI for more and more tasks, it will always keep humans in the loop. 

A MESSAGE FROM PATHLABS

While AI is table stakes, execution is the differentiator

Faster media, enabled by AI, exposes agencies’ execution gaps. When AI speed becomes the standard across agencies and brands, the bar keeps rising and the tools demand more human attention, not less. As a result, the best people spend more time coordinating than doing the work only humans can do.

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DIGIDAY PUBLISHING SUMMIT

Why The Guardian’s first reader-facing AI product isn’t a chatbot

The Guardian didn’t want to build an AI chatbot. Not a reader-facing one anyway. Not at the risk of that chatbot misrepresenting the news publisher’s journalism and undermining readers’ trust.

EXPERIMENTAL CHANNELS

What AI disruption means for experimental ad budgets

In some cases, that’s growing the budget. In others, it’s shifting existing dollars away from so-called guaranteed performance channels to experimental places like AI ads or retail media. 

PARTNER INSIGHTS FROM AMAZON ADS

The Model Context Protocol builds on APIs for stronger agentic AI applications

Without the proper foundation, agents can create friction rather than value. Agents need more than just API access; they need structured context, clear guardrails and actionable instructions. A new open standard is emerging to aid the connection of data and LLM tools: the Model Context Protocol.

PARTNER INSIGHTS FROM VIAFOURA