July 11, 2025  |  SIGN UP

Jim Cooper
DIGIDAY, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

It was a very consequential back half of the week with two major C-suite shakeups.

First Linda Yaccarino left her CEO post at X after a two-year rollercoaster ride thanks to her boss Elon Musk. Then, over at WPP, Microsoft exec Cindy Rose was tapped to succeed Mark Read as the CEO of the wobbling agency holding company.

Both developments spin off way more questions than answers. For X, who will deal with advertisers now? For WPP, can Rose steady the ship with her operational rigor and headset for AI?

Of course, there was other news to be across (a slower summer news cycle seems to be a thing of the past). We broke the news that Condé Nast and Hearst signed multi-year agreements with Amazon to license their content for AI shopping assistant Rufus. 

And just this morning we nailed the scoop that Slavi Samardzija is exiting his CEO role at Omnicom’s Media Group’s Annalect, certainly a sign of pending changes within the holding company’s technology and analytics division.

Read more below ICYMI – Happy Friday!

ADVERTISEMENT

GENERATIVE AI

Condé Nast and Hearst strike Amazon AI licensing deals for Rufus

A Hearst spokesperson confirmed that Amazon has an AI licensing deal for content to be used within Rufus, across its newspapers and magazines, which include Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan, Harper’s Bazaar. Condé Nast also confirmed the publisher has a licensing deal for Rufus.

EVOLVING AGENCIES

Omnicom confirms the pending exit of influential Annalect chief Slavi Samardzija

Separate sources familiar with the developments, all of whom requested anonymity to maintain their relationships with the holding company, told Digiday that news of Samardzija’s exit first surfaced during the opening week of July. He will be replaced by Adam Gitlin, who has served as Annalect president under Samadzija since 2016.

SPONSORED BY CELTRA

The hidden inefficiencies costing teams time, budget and brand impact

The challenges most marketing teams face might feel familiar, but what looks like a series of small obstacles is really a system-wide issue. The real challenge is the absence of a connected, end-to-end creative supply chain: a system that can support the speed, scale and complexity that modern marketing demands.

MARKETING ON PLARFORMS

‘Still not a top tier ad platform’: Advertisers on Linda Yaccarino’s departure as CEO of X

Since she arrived in the summer of 2023, her job has been less about leading a business than containing a crisis — serving as a kind of reputational buffer between Musk’s erratic behavior and the advertising community he’d all but alienated.

DIGIDAY AWARDS

Digiday Awards: Last chance to be considered

Submit your entries for the Digiday Awards by 11:59 p.m. PST tonight to showcase your achievements in categories such as Best Use of Emerging Tech, Best Partnership and more. Don't miss this opportunity to highlight your innovation in front of Digiday’s global audience of industry decision-makers. 

Enter now

EVOLVING AGENCIES

WPP has its next CEO – but what do clients make of the heir apparent?

WPP’s new CEO announcement sparked the usual frenzy – LinkedIn takes, analyst notes and a wave of industry speculation. Clients, meanwhile, are staying quiet. That’s not to say Cindy Rose’s move from Microsoft to Madison Avenue is being ignored – it’s just not driving urgency. 

GENERATIVE AI

B2B and DTC marketers find themselves on the zero-click search frontline

B2B advertisers and brands that use a direct to consumer (DTC) sales model — and which often rely on organic and paid search as a means of dragging customers to the digital till — are taking preventative action now, rather than waiting for ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google’s AI Overviews to put a dent in their marketing strategy.

SPONSORED BY SEEDTAG

Agentic AI helps neuro-contextual ad targeting reach new heights

Neuro-contextual ad targeting uses AI-backed technology to mirror human cognition, making marketers less reliant on traditional contextual tools like behavioral tracking and profiling. The neuro-contextual tech acts as the brain to understand audience signals, while an AI agent is the body that translates insights into action throughout a campaign’s lifecycle.