Industry Trends Archives

LIFT IS NOW A PART OF MILE MARKER

Navigating the AI Wild West: Monica Shukla on ChatGPT’s $1B Ad Run Rate

Carmen Saffioti September 8, 2026 No Comments

With OpenAI’s ads business hitting a $1 billion projected yearly revenue run rate in its first six months, generative AI search is emerging as a pioneer for digital advertisers. However,…

AI Hasn’t Made Things Cheaper: Cutting People Is Not The Answer

Carmen Saffioti August 31, 2026 No Comments

By Tony Russo, Mile Marker, Vice President of AI Innovation & Strategy | Originally Published on MediaPost on August 31, 2026. Here’s a number I didn’t expect to be writing…

The Agentic AI Judgment Cliff We Need To Price In

Carmen Saffioti July 23, 2026 No Comments

By Tony Russo, Mile Marker, Vice President of AI Innovation & Strategy- Originally Published in AdvertisingWeek on July 23, 2026. Our agency’s open roles right now skew senior. We need…

The Cannes Indie Guide: How Indie Media Agency Culture is Stealing the Show in 2026

Carmen Saffioti June 11, 2026 No Comments

This year, independent agencies are heading to the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in droves. As highlighted by Ad Age author Lindsay Rittenhouse in her recent piece, “Independent agencies…

ChatGPT’s Ad Ambitions: A New Era for Integrated Marketing Technologies

Carmen Saffioti June 2, 2026 No Comments

In a recent Digiday feature, Anthony Costanzo, Chief Analytics Officer at Mile Marker Agency, weighed in on OpenAI’s strategic push to bring retail and commerce advertisers into ChatGPT. While OpenAI…

The True Cost of Global Conflict: How Ambitious Brands Are Navigating Uncertainty

Carmen Saffioti May 6, 2026 No Comments

What began as a regional conflict in the Middle East is now a compounding drag on the global advertising industry. While the economics of war travel slowly—moving through oil prices,…

USPS Discounts for Direct Mail to Take Advantage of in 2026

Carmen Saffioti April 24, 2026 No Comments

The Analog Advantage: Why Direct Mail is Still a Customer Acquisition Champion Despite digital media’s continuous efforts to supplant analog channels, direct mail carries on and remains an extremely successful…

How Signal-Poor Brands Can Make Automation Work Anyway

Carmen Saffioti April 14, 2026 No Comments

Marketing automation platforms were supposed to simplify everything. Feed the machine enough data, trust the algorithm, and let performance take care of itself. For ecommerce brands, that promise has mostly…

Ad Marketplace Resilience: Why Brands Are Embracing Uncertainty

Carmen Saffioti March 18, 2026 No Comments

Something counterintuitive is happening in the advertising marketplace right now: despite a cascade of global economic and geopolitical crises, budgets are largely staying put. And that is because so many…

A CMO’s Reality Check on AI: Why Brands Are Asking the Big Questions

Carmen Saffioti March 13, 2026 No Comments

Something counterintuitive is happening in the advertising world right now: AI technology is moving at breakneck speed, but marketers are taking a much more measured approach. In a recent Digiday…