'From buzz to business': Streaming, AI and commerce networks stand out at AWNY 2025

Hot Ones host Sean Evans turned up the heat at this year’s Advertising Week in New York inviting a few unfamiliar faces to his infamous table. Executives from Major League Baseball and Gap braved the hot wings — and the questions — in a session that stood out visually from the hundreds of panels and thousands of speakers over the four-day event.

Elsewhere in midtown, the buzz centered on how more activations and off-site events are popping up outside the main venue. The Guardian, Variety and Nature Made all hosted side conferences, drawing their own crowds. Noticeably absent this year were the flashy brand activations like Netflix’s Squid Game experience, which turned heads last year right as marketers streamed in each morning.

Inside the conference, advertising’s biggest topics — with AI leading the pack—continued to dominate discussions. But amid the expected, new advancements and perspectives pushing the industry forward emerged. Here are the standout moments across streaming, commerce media and AI.

TV’s heightened expectations

Several panels zeroed in on the maturation of streaming. With connected TV (CTV) claiming 46.4% of all U.S. TV viewership this August, according to the latest Nielsen data, streaming is fully center stage.

“I remember sitting in this room two years ago and live streaming sports was barely a thing,” Scott Nagy, SambaTV’s vice president of commercial partnerships, quipped as he opened one panel. “And look where we are now.”

With increased popularity, though, comes heightened expectations. Executives from across the industry shared that they’re still ironing out pain points like unifying measurement to match the many and always-evolving ways to stream. Even industry titan Nielsen is in the thick of the transition, balancing decades of legacy data with its new big data future.

“From an operational standpoint, it’s a lot to move the Titanic,” Lisa Mallen, AMC’s senior vice president of agency and client partnerships, said during a panel. “While everyone has the right intentions, there’s years and years of data that have been built on certain legacy systems.”

Although agencies and publishers are deeply involved in the complexities of measurement Mariel Estrada, head of video currency at Omnicom, emphasized during a panel that brands have always demanded accuracy and precision.

“Clients may not be dissecting methodologies and datasets, but they know fragmentation is happening,” Estrada said.

Commerce media continues growth

Another highlight of the week was American Express’ launch of its commerce media network. Amex now joins Mastercard as the second payment network in the last week to launch an ad business alongside Chase and PayPal, which inaugurated the trend with their own networks earlier this year. PayPal’s network further offers a tool to help smaller businesses create their own ad networks.

It’s quickly becoming a crowded field, but Amex clearly sees this launch as a point of differentiation.

“Our focus is connecting great brands with high-spending customers,” Jacob King, senior vice president of Amex Offers, said during a panel.

Amex card members spend 2.9 times more than those from competitors with ad networks, according to King.

“We’re not the biggest player; we’re not the largest; we don’t have the most scale, but we know what we’re showing up to the table with.”

Meanwhile, Mastercard sees 160 billion transactions on its platform every year and has already signed up 25,000 advertisers to its media network. Nili Klenoff, the company’s executive vice president of commerce media and innovation, said on a panel that its platform has data from 500 million consumers.

“Commerce media is one of the most foundational changes that has occurred in the last 10 years of advertising,” Vihan Sharma, chief revenue officer at LiveRamp, said during a panel.

AI gets actionable

AI is always a hot-button issue, but marketers are now charting a path with clear business initiatives replacing lofty, philosophical musings about its future potential.

ChatGPT also marked its next era of enterprise strategy, launching partnerships with Spotify, Uber, Expedia and Zillow this week.

“AI is finally moving from buzz to business,” said Mac Hagel, Razorfish’s president, head of media and client lead. “Marketers are done with hype. They want AI to be accountable, measurable and immediately tied to outcomes.”

Josh Peters, Bombora’s vice president of global data partnerships and strategy, works more on the online publisher side. He agreed with Hagel that AI is moving from hype to action, with more publishers utilizing AI to automate ad operations, testing and optimizing audiences and dropping low revenue demand.

“I’ve seen the conversation very slowly start to get out of the panic phase and into, OK, this is a thing, it exists,” Peters said, adding, “2026 is really going to be a lot of how do we take advantage of this moment versus fret about it.”