Performance marketers once turned up their noses at creative, seeming to only care about audience targeting. But signal loss is putting creative back into the spotlight by highlighting how essential even the smallest of details can be, says VidMob CEO Alex Collmer. Also: Hot takes on generative AI art. (Spoiler: Humans aren’t obsolete – yet.)

Are retail media networks overhyped? “It’s a very fair question,” says Ali Miller, Instacart’s VP of product management for ads. The answer is yes and no. Yes, companies are jumping on the RMN bandwagon – but it’s not hype, as long as retail media can prove its value.

Roughly one-third of the US population has a direct connection to the military. And yet many brands “still struggle to authentically connect with this key demographic,” says Mark Harper, GM of military and defense at Recurrent Ventures.

With 100 million customers and a homegrown CDP, Intuit is a data-driven brand, says Intuit CMO Lara Balazs. But beyond conversions, the owner of TurboTax and Credit Karma closely tracks brand reputation as a measure of success.

The combination of attention across streaming and linear television is a massive, undermonetized opportunity, says Blockgraph CEO Jason Manningham. But if traditional TV players don’t get more creative with their data, they’ll lose out to the Big Tech platforms. It’s a familiar tale.