Scuderia Ferrari HP redesigned its mobile app to bring nearly 400 million global fans closer to its cars, drivers and races. The app was created with support from IBM watsonx, an AI and data platform.

“My challenge is to take advantage of all the data coming from the track, the car, the weather conditions, and then to create compelling stories for our fans,” said Stefano Pallard, head of fan development at Ferrari.

The app, which became available in English and Italian on Thursday, creates a digital destination for fans worldwide. It delivers an immersive experience through content and data. IBM used all aspects around a race to train the AI model including results, interviews and recaps, as well as data from the car.

The model collects 10 telemetry data points off the car every second, as well as performance and conditions around the race.

Watsonx also supports the governance within the app and generates a summary to ensure that the brand does not compromise the drivers or brand.

Most is telemetry data or Ferrari-owned data sent to the engineering team, but it is often combined with data from the FIA. Then it is trained on the “language” that Scuderia Ferrari uses to talk about Formula 1 races like complex terminology and slang.

The data also gives fans the ability to visualize data through charts and graphs.

Fans can interact with and see post-race driver and car data such as telemetry, weather, track conditions, session results, and car and tire strategies.

Sports analytics have become important to fans. Historical driver and team data enables fans to compare key 2025 race moments and milestones on cars, drivers, and track moments. There is a place in the app for fans to write to Ferrari and drivers to share their experiences.

Some of the long-term projects on the company’s roadmap include 3-D immersive experiences, and a conversational chatbot. A membership program before the next session also is in development.

We need to have a conversation about AI in media planning.  More specifically, what will agencies be forced to do in the age of agentic media?

AI Agents are everywhere now.  Just watching TV last night, I saw three different companies advertising about the agents they are creating, and the concept of agents is quickly overtaking the media planning world.  Agentic media planning is approaching quickly, with agents now able to intake queries and prompts for audiences, flight dates and other basic buying parameters and activate them in a trading desk seat just as easily as any media buyer. Even more interesting, agents can be set up to recommend and even implement optimization across demand-side platforms, so the question quickly arises: What role does the agency team play when agents can do much of the work?

This is the general question facing the use of AI in the workforce: the fear that our jobs will be replaced.  I have written about this often, and I don’t believe that it's as existential a threat as the media makes it out to be, simply because humans are adaptable and we created this technology, so we need to view it as a tool. 

More simply stated, yes, the role of a media buyer may not exist in a few years, but that role can be repurposed to some other set of responsibilities in the organization.

One of the common gripes against agencies is that they tend to pitch with the best people and once the account is won, they replace them with lower-level people to do the execution work.  This leads to a cycle of agency reviews every few years.

In this new future, the best teams will still be there for strategic planning and guidance, but they will instead use a team of agents for implementation. These tools are standard and the teams managing those tools will be standardized as well, so you won’t be relying on less-experienced teams. 

I see the agentic workflow as a way for agencies to use their best talent more efficiently and supplement with technology, which means more consistency and better margins over time because they will need fewer people to execute. 

So, what happens to those people who were being hired out of school for execution?  My guess is they shift to more experiential activations, which I predict will continue to increase in value over the coming years. 

You cannot evaluate AI in a silo.  AI creates efficiency in media planning and execution.  AI is also going to overhaul digital media. I’ve been writing  the last few weeks that I see a future that revolves around video, generative search, mobile, social, DOOH and experiential media, with a clear decrease in display and traditional search.  Those lower-level, or entry-level people, will shift to more experiential and event-based marketing activations.  Agencies can charge more for those, too.  As a result, agencies are going to shift from a purely digital go-to-market strategy and will start to embrace the balance of digital and IRL once again. 

Needless to say, there is a LOT of change impending in the ad agency landscape. 

Where do you think agency services are headed in the next few years?

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Annie Foster has joined IPG Health as group director, social media creative. Foster will partner with the agency's engagement team to use social media to enhance brand campaigns.

Previously, she worked with Meta on brands such as Bobbi Brown and Roman. Before that, she also held creative director roles in healthcare advertising. 

Foster is charged with expanding IPG Health’s Influencer ID offering, which combines healthcare expertise and customer engagement strategy. The offering provides a tailored HIPAA compliant end-to-end solution for healthcare brands.

“Annie has a distinct background. She has a strong health and pharma base — having grown up in the pharma agency world — and then expanded her horizons at Meta. She knows what great looks like in social/influencer marketing across verticals and across agencies, not just in pharma,” said Dana Maiman, IPG Health CEO.

“Social — and by extension mobile — is a distinct medium. Building social advertising creative requires a deep understanding of its language — both visual and verbal. It’s not just about getting the specs right, it’s about building campaigns that connect authentically because they are well-suited both to the audience and the medium. Creatives at IPG Health understand this,” added Foster.

Taboola has extended its partnership with Samsung in a multiyear agreement to bring its News technology to more mobile devices and news channels worldwide.

The agreement, which helps to drive traffic to publisher pages, comes to more marketers across Europe and India. It is an extension of a longstanding relationship with one of the world's largest smartphone manufacturers.

Adam Singolda, CEO at Taboola, believes the extended partnership will give more of Samsung’s customers greater access to relevant and engaging news.

Taboola has powered news recommendations on Samsung devices in Latin America and some APAC countries since 2019. This major expansion of that partnership covers Europe and India in its entirety, in an exclusive relationship that supports tens of millions of new devices.

Taboola’s business continues to grow. This extended announcement with Samsung follows several others that have seen Taboola partnership pool grow, supported by some of the biggest companies in the world. The goal is to bring news recommendations to mobile device users.

Some recent expansions include partnerships with Apple and Microsoft. Taboola in March signed an agreement with Microsoft to sell display ads for MSN.com, Microsoft Outlook, Games, and Microsoft's broader Office Suite.

The company also extended its Gannett partnership that began in 2013 to include display advertising on publisher’s digital platforms through its new AI-powered offering, Realize.

Taboola also works with LINE, a large messaging app, to provide news to consumers, as well as Xiaomi, a big consumer electronics brand, to provide news to consumers on their devices.

Meta Platforms on Tuesday introduced a stand-alone Meta AI app, positioning the company alongside Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, OpenAI ChatGPT, Anthropic Claude, X Grok, Anthropic, Perplexity, DeepSeek and believe it or not, many more. 

The AI search landscape continues to become more crowded. We should have known that if these tech companies built them, users would flock to the apps and platforms.

These companies have changed the future of search, commerce, and especially ad targeting. 

OpenAI, for example, confirmed Monday it has begun to roll out a better shopping experience, as well as make several improvements to ChatGPT search in an effort to compete more broadly.

Marketers once had to optimize traditional search. Now they must find ways to persuade AI to recommend specific content and products to users.

Joe Warnimont, senior analyst at HostingAdvice, explained the difference between traditional and AI search optimization in a post.

Traditional SEO focuses on density and placement of keywords, optimization of metadata and technical components, structure and length of content, and quantity of backlinks.

AI search focuses on strong content accuracy and in-depth coverage of topics, reputation and authority, verifiability and consistency, uniqueness and depth of content, quality and relevance.

Meta’s AI app includes a Discover feed, a place to share and explore how others use AI. It’s the companion app for Meta’s AI glasses and connected to meta.ai, so users can pick up where they left off from anywhere they go.

The Meta AI app, built with Llama 4, is a move toward more personalized AI interactions. The assistant will learn and remember a user’s preferences and content viewed. 

This reminds me of the beginning of ad tracking through networks from Google and Microsoft, when the companies asked users to sign in to their respective networks so the platforms could identify as users shifted from PCs to mobile devices.

People already use Meta AI on Facebook Instagram and WhatsApp. This release is the first version of a stand-alone app.

Using voice is not new, but the underlying model is because it incorporates Llama 4.

The app integrates with other Meta AI features like image generation and editing, which can now be done through a voice or text conversation with the AI assistant. 

The voice demo was built with full-duplex speech technology so users can toggle on and off to test. It has been trained on conversational dialogue, and likely Meta platforms user data.

Meta acknowledged last year that all text and photos adult on Facebook and Instagram publicly published since 2007 have been fed into its AI models. Then on April 14, the company said it would use interactions that users have with its AI, as well as public posts and comments shared by adults across its platforms, to train its AI models.

Meta’s AI app doesn’t have access yet to web or real-time information, but I believe users can expect that soon.

The app does provide users the ability to search across the web, and help with recommendations and exploring topics in depth.

The title for AT&T’s “The Walk” campaign has a double meaning.

It represents the walk Gia Duarte makes to her local AT&T Connected Learning Center (CLC)  in Los Angeles, as well as the symbolic act of walking onstage to collect a diploma during graduation ceremonies at the center.

Duarte was a student at the CLC, an outpost of the AT&T program that provides devices, training in digital literacy, and internet connections at 62 locations across 19 states. The CLC was part of the Salvadoran American Leadership and Education Fund, and she became an intern there.

“I had to do a lot of community work,” she told Marketing Daily. which included helping members of the local immigrant community with tasks like applying for citizenship, taking citizenship classes, or assisting community members in digital literacy, something Duarte said “provide experience on how to help people and be a leader.”

When it came time to think about college, “having access to both technology and mentorship made a real difference in making higher education feel possible. Having the connected learning lab was a very impactful resource in helping me and my community have opportunities…It felt like we were accomplishing something every time we arrived at the CLC,”  she said.

“The Walk” ends with Duarte receiving a graduation cap at the CLC, followed by the tagline “Connecting Changes Everything.” In reality, she experienced the benefits of her hard work at the center months ahead of graduation, when she was accepted for early admission to Berkeley.

“It's almost like these really prestigious schools feel out of reach because many of the kids that attend that school have so many resources,” Duarte said.  “The CLC gave me all of those resources to make me feel so supported that…it wasn't something that was out of reach.”

Duarte signed her college acceptance letter at the CLC, with AT&T CEO John Stankey present for the occasion -- a moment caught in an Instagram post last year. Now, getting ready to complete her first year at Berkeley, she said that viewing “The Walk” ad really resonated with her, as it reflected her everyday reality walking to the Connected Learning Center.

“Being in that environment surrounded by my classmates brought us closer not only to each other, but real educational opportunities,” she said. “These spaces don't just provide access to technology, but bridge the deeper educational gaps that exist in under-resourced communities.”

“Whether you’re a student researching and applying to college, an individual seeking career growth, or a family learning about mortgages, CLCs provide the resources to help you succeed in an increasingly digital world,” ,” AT&T Director of Corporate Responsibility Andrew Bailey said.

The company’s goal is to help 25 million people through such programs by 2030, with a focus on affordability, adoption, and access. To reach that milestone, it announced it a $5 billion investment for working with nonprofits across the country to open new CLCs.

Brands waste billions of dollars on assumptions to target campaigns. Most are based on correlation signals, but if someone misunderstands how one event can lead to another, the entire decision-making process becomes flawed.

Causal artificial intelligence (AI) is the next chapter in accountable and predictable ad targeting. It’s the way advertising should work, because it’s not about lumping consumers into audience segments and guessing an ad will trigger a conversion. It’s about knowing and understanding why the ad worked.

That reasoning became the backbone of Becausal, which launched Monday, rebranded from Scanbuy’s former data business. The company plans to set new standards for accountability and performance supported by AI. The technology aims to solve longstanding challenges of audience data transparency and integrity by optimizing campaigns for brands through two offerings: ExtendedAudiences and AuditableAI.

Avi Chai Outmezguine is CEO at Becausal -- formerly Scanbuy, which globally supported smart labels, QR codes and mobile engagement, working with PepsiCo and other major brands.

Outmezguine also cofounded Scanbuy. “We made a decision to sell that business,” he said, mainly because brands did not really trust the data.

Kezzler, a provider of traceability solutions and digital product experiences, acquired Scanbuy’s Smart Packaging and QR Code consumer engagement business, and Outmezguine created Becausal from the data company left behind.

“From there we went all in with causal intelligence,” Outmezguine said.

Becausal’s platforms are supported by causal AI, a subset of AI that focuses on understanding and modeling cause-and-effect relationships, moving beyond simply identifying patterns or correlations in data.

This uncovers what is behind consumer purchase behavior. Causal AI delivers the data through transparent verifiable insight, and also guarantees compliance and transparency.

The new name, Becausal, came from the idea that “every insight needs an explanation, no assumptions -- we must be able to explain why,” he said. “There must be a clear cause and effect, not assumptions or correlation. The name also means a call to action to be more accountable and transparent.”

He said the company can now tell brands what caused what -- and if the process did not occur as intended, how to fix it.

The company plans to expand AI capabilities, global expansion, and additional partnerships. Early supporters at launch include ad agency Havas as well as CPG company Kellanova, along with about 30 other companies, according to Chuck Ennis, chief commercial officer.

“We’re looking at millions of shopping baskets that have become part of the audiences we built, and patterns we built are rich in consumer behavior,” Ennis said.  

The company analyzes between 15 million and 16 million shopping baskets monthly across 12 million consumers in the aggregated panel from first- and second-party sources.

No browser cookies are used. This is the future of ad targeting.

In another example that Ennis provided, the AI finds patterns from store-purchased products on grocery receipts, loyalty cards and other inputs.

The logic is determined by a runtime audit, U.S. and European compliant, built through AI. The algorithm adjusts, repairs and rebuilds itself based on transparency.

“This is the next generation of identifiers,” Ennis said. “AI will create the persona of you.”

Earlier this month, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals threw out AT&T's $57 million fine for sharing customers' location data, ruling that Federal Communications Commission violated AT&T's constitutional right to a jury trial.

On Friday, the FCC urged appellate courts that are presiding over T-Mobile's and Verizon's challenges to similar privacy fines to reject the 5th Circuit's ruling.

“The Fifth Circuit concluded that the FCC’s enforcement proceeding ... violated AT&T’s Seventh Amendment rights. This Court shouldn’t follow that decision,” the agency wrote Friday in a filing with 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, which is presiding over Verizon's appeal.

The agency sent a similar letter to the D.C. Circuit, which is considering T-Mobile's challenge to the fine.

The FCC's new filings come in a fight that began during the first Trump administration, when the agency proposed fining AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile for allegedly violating privacy regulations by sharing customers' location data with third parties.

The agency specifically alleged that the carriers sold access to geolocation data to aggregators that resold the information to outside companies.

The FCC initially proposed the fines in 2020 -- around two years after it came to light that a Missouri sheriff used geolocation data provided by Securus Technology to track other law enforcement officers, without court orders. Securus obtained the location data from the phone carriers. Around one year later, Vice Media's Motherboard detailed how a journalist was able to pay a “bounty hunter” $300 to track a phone's location to a neighborhood in Queens.

The major U.S. carriers have said they no longer sell location data.

Last year, the FCC fined AT&T around $57 million, Verizon around $47 million, and T-Mobile $92 million (including $12 million for Sprint, which merged with T-Mobile in 2020).

The agency voted 3-2 to impose the fines, with Republican commissioners Brendan Carr and Nathan Simington dissenting.

All three wireless carriers paid the fines and then appealed. Among other arguments, they said the FCC imposed sanctions without proving the allegations to a jury.

The 5th Circuit agreed with AT&T and vacated the fine as unconstitutional.

The FCC argues in its new letters to the 2nd Circuit and D.C. Circuit that this decision was wrong because the telecoms could have sought a jury trial before paying the fines.

The D.C. Circuit heard arguments in T-Mobiles appeal last month, and the 2nd Circuit is expected to hear Verizon's appeal Tuesday morning in New York.