MercadoLibre

Mercado Libre CMO: Marketing Gave Up Boardroom Influence

At Cannes Lions, Mercado Libre CMO Sean Summers argued that marketing’s loss of influence in the boardroom is largely self-inflicted: many CMOs drifted away from commercial realities and stopped speaking the language of business. Summers, who is chief marketing officer and EVP of Mercado Ads at Mercado Libre, said marketers must demonstrate short-term business results through performance and demand-generation to regain credibility and resources for longer-term brand building. He framed creativity and commercial accountability as complementary, described Mercado Libre’s approach of pairing bold brand work with strict performance targets, and highlighted the company’s long-term creative partnership with agency Gut. Summers also noted a shift at Cannes from AI novelty toward practical AI applications that amplify human-led creative ideas.

Pacvue Launches MCP Server for Commerce Media AI Access

Pacvue announced the launch of its MCP server, making commerce media reporting data accessible to enterprise AI tools via the Model Context Protocol (MCP). Report MCP, the first capability available, lets brands and agencies pull Pacvue advertising reports across retail and marketplace platforms (Amazon, Walmart, Instacart, Kroger, Target, Sam’s Club, Chewy, DoorDash, eBay, Bol, Mercado Libre, Criteo, Citrus, and others) directly from AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, and Claude using plain-language requests. Pacvue built MCP compatibility into its existing platform so existing report types, permissions, and data access remain intact. Report MCP is generally available now; Pacvue says additional MCP capabilities are in development. Sunava Dutta, Pacvue’s Chief Product Officer, framed the server as a secure way for AI assistants and enterprise workflows to interact with commerce media reporting data.

Visa Targets Trust Layer for AI Agent Payments

Visa is positioning itself as the trust and identity layer for emerging "agent commerce" ("B2AI"), based on a Visa survey of roughly 2,000 U.S. consumers and 500 businesses showing a business-side readiness for AI-to-AI commerce but consumer hesitancy around fully autonomous purchases. The newsletter highlights survey statistics (e.g., 60% of consumers would not let AI spend without explicit approval; businesses report high pilot/adoption rates) and argues Visa's strengths—verified identity, fraud detection, and transaction credentialing—could mediate AI-driven purchases. The piece also covers related industry moves: Ramp released an AI-focused CLI and programmable "Agent Cards" to enable agent workflows in finance, Anthropic is raising enterprise distribution via a PE-linked JV while OpenAI is building a competing deployment vehicle, and Visa is rolling out AI dispute-resolution tools. The article flags a new fraud surface created by agent-to-agent transactions and names early vendor activity (e.g., Oscilar) addressing agentic fraud and compliance.