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TODAY’S MAZE
Happy Monday! Ad spend is projected to jump nearly 10% this year, and autonomous agents are the driving force. It marks a pivotal shift toward automated campaign management.
In today’s MarketMaze focus:
Agentic AI boosts spend
Google unlocks PMax data
eBay ads overspend caps
TikTok attracts adult buyers
Optimizing for AI search
+Handpicked recent news you need to know
LET’S ENTER THE MAZE!
- Artur Stańczuk, MarketMaze Founder
MAZE STORY
The Maze: The Interactive Advertising Bureau forecasts a 9.5% increase in 2026 ad spend, driven largely by the rapid adoption of autonomous AI agent tools for campaign management.
Customer acquisition remains the top priority for 54% of buyers despite a 10-point drop, while the focus on driving repeat purchases surged to 25% of buyer priorities.
Connected TV captures budget share with 13.8% expected growth, a shift solidified as CTV's share of media allocations doubled between 2023 and 2025.
Marketing teams face new governance demands as agentic systems automate setup and optimization, shifting the primary investment challenge to adapting to consumer habits.
Why it matters: AI transforms from a siloed tool into an intelligent partner that coordinates media in real time, fundamentally altering how teams approach scale and strategic oversight.
What is the biggest risk introduced by using autonomous AI agents to run digital advertising campaigns?
- 🧭 Oversight Gaps (less human control in large enterprise marketing teams)
- 💸 Budget Drift (inefficient spend for small and mid-sized advertisers)
- 📉 Brand Safety (loss of message control for premium brands)
- 🧠 Skill Erosion (marketers relying less on strategic judgment)
- 🌍 Regulation Risk (compliance challenges across US and EU markets)
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MAZE STORY
The Maze: Google Ads API v23 finally introduces channel-level reporting for Performance Max, enabling developers to break down ad performance across specific surfaces like Search, YouTube, and Display.
API queries now return specific channel breakdowns instead of the generic “MIXED” value, finally granting visibility into granular performance data dating back to June 1, 2025.
Developers gain a capability advantage as asset group-level reporting remains exclusive to the programmatic interface and is currently unavailable in the standard Google Ads web UI.
Teams can now build custom dashboards that surface channel-specific insights, helping optimize spend across inventory like Maps, Discover, and Gmail without relying on aggregate guesswork.
Why it matters: This update cracks open the notorious PMax black box, giving brands the technical infrastructure to audit placement quality and allocate budgets based on actual channel efficiency.
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MAZE STORY
The Maze: eBay sellers are reporting daily ad budgets exceeding caps by up to 200% due to hidden dynamic pacing settings, while Poshmark pilots an optional buyer-funded return assurance fee to boost conversion rates.
eBay now utilizes "target daily budgets" that allow algorithms to spend up to double your daily limit on high-traffic days, aiming to balance costs over a full month rather than enforcing a hard 24-hour cap. balance costs over a full month
Seller frustration is compounded by a stealth update that enforced a 10x minimum bid increase on Priority CPC ads, pushing the floor from $0.02 to $0.20 without direct notification.
Poshmark hopes to drive conversion with a "Worry-Free" checkout add-on that lets buyers return items for fit or changed mind to third-party partner Seel without impacting seller earnings.
Why it matters: Platforms are aggressively optimizing for ad yield and conversion, but opaque fee structures and complex algorithmic changes risk eroding the trust of the merchant communities required to sustain that growth.
DATA TREASURE
The Maze: Capital is no longer spread evenly. In 2025, VC flowed hard into fewer categories and even fewer companies, pulling value creation forward and leaving broad consumer models behind. The pattern repeats across AI, defense, SaaS, and startup cohorts.
AI concentration: AI absorbed $198B in 2025, nearly 50% of global VC, while total deal count fell, signaling bigger checks into fewer platforms
Defense inflection: Defense tech jumped from ~0.3% of VC pre 2022 to ~2% globally by 2025, led by the US and Europe after security priorities reset
Segment rotation: Marketplaces fell from ~40% of VC in 2015 to <10% in 2025 as SaaS climbed to ~60% and manufacturing gained share
Time compression: Startups founded after 2015 reached trillions in enterprise value years earlier than 2000s cohorts, even with less capital
Why it matters: Capital now rewards speed, scale, and strategic relevance. Ecommerce and consumer aggregation face tougher math, while software and hard tech pull investment forward. For operators and investors, timing matters more than ever.
DATA TREASURE
The Maze: Marketers think they have months, not years. Most believe visibility in AI driven search must be fixed fast or risk disappearing.
Over 70% expect full AI search optimization within six months, signaling urgency more than confidence.
Teams assume this is a content task, but success depends on structure, clarity, and trusted answers, not keywords.
Early movers aim to become default answers, not top links.
Why it matters: As discovery shifts from pages to answers, ecommerce brands that do not adapt will lose demand before they notice traffic falling.
BRIEFING
🏬 Everything else in Ecommerce & Big Tech
🇺🇸 Amazon faced allegations that American workers were disproportionately targeted over H-1B visa holders following the cut of 16,000 roles.
🇫🇷 Carrefour appointed a new marketing head for India as it targets an April 2026 store launch to capture the booming market.
🇺🇸 Urban Outfitters encountered criticism and calls for reform for using the 'Temper' gig economy app to staff stores, often bypassing standard employment rights.
🇺🇸 Google accessed 3.2x more unique URLs than OpenAI according to Cloudflare data, giving Search a massive data advantage over GenAI models.
🇺🇸 Music Publishers sued Anthropic for $3B, claiming the AI firm used pirated song lyrics to train its Claude models.
🌐 WordPress introduced a new AI agent skill designed to speed up the feedback loop for developers building on the platform.
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THAT’S IT FOR TODAY!
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See you next time in the maze!
MarketMaze team
