All Marketing knowledge

In the UK you almost always need someone's permission before sending them a marketing email or text - unless you can tick every box of the 'soft opt-in' exemption. Marketing to other businesses is lighter-touch, but not a free-for-all. And since 5 February 2026 the ICO can fine breaches up to £17.5 million, so a permission-based list isn't just good manners - it's the law. What counts as direct marketing (and why it matters) Direct marketing is any advertising or promotional

s.Oliver's new campaign uses AI to pair Heidi Klum with a digital clone of her 1990s self, dramatising the brand's decades-long claim on casual style.

TF1 Pub's 2027 plan unveils 'Puissance Max' cross-video buys, an 'Autopilot' agentic-AI suite, and a push to win France's €12bn local advertising market.

Unlimitail and The Trade Desk are letting advertisers activate 80+ Carrefour purchase-based segments self-service on the open web — no bespoke build required — starting in France.

DeepIntent has launched Cora, billed as the first fully agentic marketing platform for healthcare — letting marketers direct AI agents in plain language across strategy and activation.

Otto Group fashion retailer bonprix is embedding AI through the whole customer journey, with new CMO Nicolai Johannsen insisting each use case must show ROI quickly.

Neobroker Scalable Capital is running a cheeky 'Bist du besteuert?' campaign to position itself early for the Altersvorsorgedepot, the state-backed successor to the Riester pension.

Digital agency Curious Company is repackaging past bespoke builds as subscription software modules — a bid to swap one-off project fees for recurring revenue.

Audiotainment Südwest is taking the Hamburg/Schleswig-Holstein media authority to court for refusing to re-tender FM spectrum freed when a rival station went dark.

Forecaster Madison & Wall has raised its German ad-market outlook to 2030, but the growth is almost entirely digital while linear TV keeps shrinking.

In-store retail-media specialist Médiaperformances has launched subsidiaries in Spain, Poland, Portugal, Italy and the UK, claiming first-mover status as a pan-European omnichannel player.

The ADMTV and specialist DK have launched a metric measuring CO2e per completed viewed second per 1,000 contacts — and it shows social video far out-emitting TV.

Paris-based Actionable, founded by ex-Criteo Europe boss Nicolas Rieul, has raised $10m to scale predictive and causal AI that scores entire customer journeys.

French research group Ifop has acquired Paris trend-forecasting house NellyRodi, fusing survey data and social listening with long-range trend consulting under one roof.

US publishers and brands including Time and Wayfair are building ads and data feeds aimed at AI agents, not humans, as agentic shopping begins to reroute buying decisions.

US news publishers are spending hundreds of millions a month buying search traffic to offset AI-driven organic declines, with paid-search budgets up 274% in three years.

A new tool from Royal Mail Marketreach, JICMAIL and Adwanted lets planners buy direct mail and door-drops alongside regional OOH, radio and cinema for the first time.

AXA has partnered with Publicis Sapient to deploy AI agents at scale across markets including the UK — a sign of how agency groups are becoming operational transformation partners.

Radiocentre is urging the government to delay any early Freeview switch-off, warning it could push radio transmission costs up more than 50% and threaten station closures.

Grindr has agreed to pay £26m to settle a UK group action from around 12,000 users over alleged data-sharing with ad partners — a landmark warning on the cost of ad-targeting data leaks.