August 5, 2026  |  SIGN UP

Michael Bürgi
SENIOR EDITOR, MEDIA BUYING AND PLANNING

It wasn't long ago that the word "bot" meant something that cheats, fakes people out and steals virtually. Today, bots are everywhere, industrious agents working on behalf of busy consumers, bringing them the answers they've asked for.  

Still, the wolf is never far from the door. We have terms like 'stealth crawlers' – a bot that scrapes content from publisher sites without letting them know it's doing it – that sound straight out of a dark sci-fi film.

When it comes to most things AI, I remain a straggler, almost a Luddite, mainly because as much good as AI can and will do for us, in the wrong hands it can do as much harm. And as we've seen with all other digital-era innovations – the internet has 4chan (or 8chan, I guess) and programmatic has its fraud – nefarious players will always exist. Bots are just their latest tool. And here we are, back to bots. 

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THE BUSINESS OF AI

WTF is a stealth crawler?

These crawlers often ignore or circumvent robots.txt files (which websites use to communicate to crawlers what they can and cannot scrape) that prohibit scraping or scrape sites through third-party services.

MEMBER EXCLUSIVE

Media Buying Briefing: The latest lures holding companies are using to grow principal media

As holding companies rush to equip themselves with all manner of bristling AI tools and services, they still haven’t quite figured out how to sell them. And meantime, principal media has become a major source of profit margin. Problem, meet solution.

PARTNER INSIGHTS FROM CONTENTFUL

AI investments are shifting from generation to workflow automation and intelligence

According to a new survey from Contentful and Benchmarker, 70%–85% of companies plan to increase investment in AI, primarily in workflow automation and AI analytics.

EVOLVING AGENCIES

Inside the indie agencies founded by Omnicom and IPG’s former staffers

The professional diaspora of former Omnicom or IPG creatives and media practitioners has grown in the last year. While some landed at new adland berths, others founded their own agency businesses after the end of their holdco careers. 

A MESSAGE FROM OPTABLE

Step-by-step guide to assessing agentic readiness and adopting at scale

A buyer agent evaluating inventory is only as informed as the data a seller agent can surface. Becoming agent-ready now sets publishers up for a smooth transition into agentic buying and selling.

Download the guide

THE PROGRAMMATIC MARKETER 

Stagwell’s Curate launch puts agencies’ ad tech ambitions in focus

For years, DSPs and SSPs have been jockeying to control more of the digital ad supply chain. Now, agencies are increasingly throwing their hats in the ring to own more of that infrastructure themselves. Stagwell offers the latest example.

MEMBER EXCLUSIVE

Future of TV Briefing: Why Aéropostale is investing in creator-led episodic shows

This week’s Future of TV Briefing features a Q&A with Catalyst Brands evp and chief customer and marketing officer Marisa Thalberg about Aéropostale’s recent creator-led episodic series.

PARTNER INSIGHTS FROM TALON.ONE

How agentic AI is reshaping the consumer journey

AI agents are expected to soon handle the end-to-end shopping journey — a fundamental shift in how shoppers discover, evaluate and purchase products. For marketers, the key to winning in agentic commerce is becoming agent-ready now.

PARTNER INSIGHTS FROM PAYPAL ADS 

The leader of a friend group is the influencer who moves money

Social influencers change what people think. But another kind of influencer — the leader of the friend group — is visible only in payment data and changes what people spend. That’s the audience worth competing for.

A MESSAGE  FROM DIGIDAY AWARDS