Nothing beats the feeling of taking off ski boots after a day on the slopes. But ahead of the 2026 Winter Olympics and Paralympics in Milan and ski resort town Cortina d’Ampezzo, some marketers are preparing to be in their mountain gear for a little longer.

While the Winter Games have fewer sports compared to the summer cycle and tend to draw a smaller audience, there are a number of events, from ice hockey and figure skating to bobsledding and luge, that get billions of viewers around the world.

Among the sports catching the eyes of major brand marketers are skiing and snowboarding. There’s an abundance of reasons why, execs told Marketing Brew, from the practical, like the sheer amount of equipment in use and events outside of Olympic years, to the vibey, like off-slope culture and athlete personalities.

“There’s definitely that element of style and personality that comes through, and then it’s much easier, as a result, for brands outside of the snow to start thinking about how they might work with [skiers and snowboarders],” said Charlie Wade, chief client officer at VML Live, which has worked with clients on Olympic campaigns. “It’s kind of a dream.”

Continue reading here.—AM

A Madison Avenue makeover capped off 2025, with Omnicom becoming the largest holding company in the world after acquiring IPG. At the first big ad industry event of the year, the company leaned on its combined strength to pitch the new and improved Omnicom to advertising clients.

At CES this month, the holding company seemed to push back on what some in the industry viewed as the primary reason behind the union. “The acquisition of IPG wasn’t about getting bigger,” George Manas, chief growth and solutions officer at Omnicom, said during a presentation at the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas about the newly combined company. “It was about building the strength of scale that you, our clients, need to win in the age of influence.”

With that said, executives did emphasize its new size throughout the pitch.

“Omnicom is now the largest media organization in the world,” Ellen Griffin, COO of OMD, noted during the presentation, adding that the holding company oversees over $70 billion in global media spend and has “40,000 media specialists sitting in over 70 markets.”

Still, Griffin echoed Manas and specified that the scale of the new Omnicom isn’t just to be bigger. “This isn’t size for the sake of size. This is leverage.”

Read more here.—KM

January always starts off with a bang for marketers and brand execs getting back into office after the holidays, with both CES and the National Retail Federation (NRF) annual show held in the first two weeks of the month.

During this year’s conferences, innovations around AI were inescapable, and agentic AI in particular, which could have big implications for the ways consumers shop and brands market, got lots of attention. Marketing Brew compiled the biggest announcements below so you don’t have to ask ChatGPT.

Consumer-facing and retail AI’s big moment: Google debuted a number of shopping-focused agentic AI offerings. At NRF, the company rolled out Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), an open standard that provides agents working on e-commerce tasks ranging from discovery to post-purchase with a common operation language. The protocol, developed with partners including Wayfair and Etsy, will support a checkout option that will begin appearing on select product listings in Google’s AI Mode in Search, as well as in the Gemini app.

Google also announced Business Agent, which lets brands deploy an agent in Google Search to serve as a “virtual sales associate” to consumers, according to a Google blog post. Google also announced Gemini Enterprise for Customer Experience, which lets brands deploy their own agents to support the customer journey. (Retailers like Lowe’s and Kroger have already started employing the tool.)

Microsoft also trotted out its own agentic shopping offerings around NRF, including Copilot Checkout, which lets consumers purchase products from brands like Urban Outfitters and Anthropologie in the company’s AI assistant. Shopify merchants can also use Microsoft’s new Brand Agents, which are designed to answer shopper product questions and engage with them conversationally.

“The retailers that thrive will be the ones that unify their business with intelligence that reaches every corner of the value chain,” Kathleen Mitford, corporate VP of global industry at Microsoft, said in a press release.

Continue reading here.—JS

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