💡CES 2026: A Wave of New Ad Products and Partnerships | ⚡️Meta Drops $2B on Manus / Walmart Brings Ads to Sparky AI & Unleashes Marty AI

Summary: CES has become the de facto new year kickoff conference for the digital advertising industry. It’s where platforms and agencies show off their new wares, introduce marketing campaigns, and start conversations that will shape the year ahead. 

Of course none of it particularly “new”: AI agents, autonomous campaigns, and outcomes-based measurement are in the spotlight. 

There were SO MANY announcements and launches so we had to pick and choose what to include. Here’s are the highlights:

Reddit launched Max Campaigns,an AI-powered automation tool to handle targeting, bidding, and creative optimization. Unlike competitors (like Meta’s Advantage+, Google’s Performance Max, TikTok Smart+, Pinterest Performance+, Snap Smart Campaign, you get the point) Reddit claims it takes an « open box » approach that shows advertisers detailed insights about where and how their ads perform.

Viant introduced Outcomes, powered by Lattice Brain. Outcomes helps marketers run campaigns with minimal human involvement to hit specific business goals like cost per action and return on ad spend. It’s built on Viant’s new AI Lattice Brain decisioning architecture.

DoubleVerify and IMDb teamed up on DV Authentic Streaming TVto help advertisers place ads in high-quality, culturally relevant programming.

Roku became the first major streamer to adopt iSpot’s outcomes-based ad metric. The Outcomes at Scale metric lets advertisers track ROI and optimize campaigns based on actual business results rather than just impressions or reach.

Samsung Ads released Data+ with Snowflake, opening its audience, linear, and CTV campaign data to advertisers that work in Snowflake. Samsung is also integrating AI into all of its consumer products<!–>,including refrigerators and TVs. –>

PayPal Ads launched Transaction Graph Insights, offering visibility into cross-merchant shopping behavior. A new Measurement Partnership Program also includes 20+ third-party partners to verify campaign performance.

Roblox unveiled programmatic partnerships with Amazon DSP, Liftoff, Index Exchange, Magnite, and Pubmatic. Roblox also introduced a new « Homepage Feature » ad format that places video ads in immersive 3D viewing environments.

Omnicom used CES as its coming out party post IPG acquisition. It has partnered with Walmart Connect and Meta to drive influencer marketing and is working with Google on an AI agent to provide deeper insights into consumer intent<!–>.  Omnicom also brought its shopper marketing agency TPN under the Flywheel umbrella–>.

WPP showcased its new AI Agent Hub, a suite of « super agents » that can help brands with data insights and analytics. WPP Media, Butler/Till, MiQ, and others are also working with PubMatic on a new agentic operating system<!–> for autonomous advertising. Stagwell introduced its own agentic operating system called « The Machine–>. »

Opinion: When everyone launches the same AI capabilities simultaneously, nobody has an advantage. We’re watching platforms inadvertently prove that AI won’t be their moat.

If every platform has AI that can handle campaign planning, execution, optimization, and measurement, the idea of AI solving for operational efficiency becomes irrelevant. No one cares how easy your bidding interface is when nobody’s manually bidding anymore.

The real competitive moats are what they’ve always been, just amplified: inventory quality, audience scale, proprietary data, and most importantly, outcomes. These things matter because they address what AI can’t solve.

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Summary: At the very end of 2025, Meta acquired Manus, a startup that builds AI agents that can handle complex tasks like market research, coding, and data analysis without human intervention. Within eight months of launching, Manus reached $100M in annualized revenue (fastest company to $100M in ARR ever) and now serves millions of users globally. Meta will integrate Manus’s technology into its products, including the Meta AI assistant, and attempt to scale the service by cross selling it to its users and customers. However, because Manus was launched in China before relocating to Singapore, China is reviewing the deal to determine if Manus needed an export license under Chinese law for the move and sale.

Opinion: Manus is cool! But also, Meta’s AI strategy seems a bit all over the place. It’s building AI models Llama and Avocado in-house, investing $14B in Scale AI, acquiring wearables startup Limitless<!–>, and now dropping $2B on Manus. With investors getting nervous about how much Meta is spending on AI, at least Manus can contribute some revenue to the bottom line. Still, Meta’s moves give the impression that it is trying to hedge every bet simultaneously. While its big tech rivals, like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, have very focused AI strategies that are paying immediate dividends.–>

Summary: Walmart is testing ads within Sparky, its AI shopping assistant that lives in the Walmart mobile app. When shoppers ask Sparky for product recommendations, they may see sponsored prompts alongside organic results. Walmart says 81% of customers have used Sparky to check product availability and details before buying. The move puts Walmart in direct competition with Amazon’s Rufus, which started running ads in 2024. Walmart is also expanding Marty, its AI agent that helps advertisers manage campaigns. Marty will be available to all Walmart advertisers buying search ads in the first half of 2026 and will expand to other ad formats throughout the year.

Opinion: With retailers turning AI shopping assistants into ad platforms, they now have AI agents on both sides: Sparky decides which products to recommend to shoppers, while Marty decides how to optimize your ad campaigns. Inevitably, Sparky and Marty will talk to each other. They’ll be in cahoots with each other. This may give us a glimpse into the future: Retailer-controlled AI agents negotiate with each other over which products get surfaced, organically and in ads, which may give brands less control over how their products show up and which levers to pull in order to optimize.

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