DMexco 2026: Brands Confront AI at Scale and a Bolder CMO Role
AI adoption and the future CMO role dominated DMexco 2026 in Cologne, where Meta, Gamma, Taxfix and IBM executives debated scaling AI with governance and human centricity.
Elena Vasquez
Senior reporter covering media and advertising at Marketing Herald.
50 articles
Articles by Elena Vasquez
Costco's Digital Sales Top $33 Billion, Up More Than 20%
Costco's digitally-enabled sales passed $33 billion in the fiscal year, up over 20%, as nationwide DoorDash and Uber Eats delivery deals expand the club's reach.
NBC's Today Ends GMA's 14-Year Reign as Top Morning Show
NBC's Today dethroned GMA after 14 years, averaging 2.948 million viewers, but slipped in the A25-54 demo while GMA grew on both measures and CBS Mornings fell.
Google's New R4T-Diffusion Model Cuts Query Fan-Out Latency by Up to 20x
Google's R4T-Diffusion model cuts query fan-out latency by 12 to 20x, delivering production-ready search at a fraction of the computational cost of autoregressive methods.
Macy's and Khan Academy Show What a Real Brand Partnership Looks Like
Ahead of the 100th Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, Macy's and Khan Academy turned giant balloons into a physics lesson — a case study in access over reach and credibility over nos…
OpenAI Will Retire Custom GPTs on Dec. 11, 2026
OpenAI retires custom GPTs on Dec. 11, 2026, affecting all ChatGPT plans. Marketers must migrate voice-calibrated tools to plugins or lose them.
Google Search Referrals to Publishers Fell 40% Year-Over-Year
Chartbeat's 2026 Publisher Playbook shows Google Search referrals down 40.2% year-over-year, Discover down 34.3%, and traffic shifting to channels publishers control more closely.
McDonald's Targets Billion-Dollar Media Network as It Rethinks Marketing
McDonald's is piloting a media network in 450 U.S. restaurants, targeting a billion-dollar business, while doubling down on fewer, bigger campaigns built on its own IP.
JD Sports doubles down on brand as sales slip 0.7%
JD Sports posted a 0.7% sales dip to £5.89bn but will keep investing in brand, loyalty and AI, with loyalty members passing 10 million globally.
Coca-Cola Bottlers VP Predicts Rise of 'AI Transformation Communicator'
Coca-Cola Bottlers' Tricia Taylor predicts a new role: the AI transformation communicator, sitting at the intersection of AI, HR and IT while keeping communication people-centric.
Publishers Grade Google Ad Tech Remedies: Progress, Not a Clean Win
Seven publisher and sell-side execs rate the DOJ's Google ad tech remedies from 1 to 10, finding measures like opening AdX promising on paper but doubtful in practice.
Mercedes-Benz USA Uses iSpot Data to Calibrate Holiday Cheer
Mercedes-Benz USA leans on iSpot Ace score data to decide how much holiday storytelling its campaigns can carry — and found January performed nearly as well as December.
