PetSmart

Accenture Buys Whalar to Own Creator Marketing Moment

Accenture acquired the client-facing agency Whalar (the agency arm, not Whalar Group), signaling consultancies’ growing push into creator marketing by owning the budget-holder relationship and the broader technology and operational stack. The piece argues creator marketing has become an enterprise-scale challenge—requiring CRM, commerce, paid media, content management and data infrastructure—and likens the shift to programmatic’s rise. Veteran marketer Jamie Gutfreund created Apples to Apples, a public mapping of 70+ creator-tech companies across 100 criteria to help marketers compare discovery, measurement, commerce and data ownership capabilities. Case examples include Maeve, which used Agentio (AI-driven discovery/persona matching) to scale YouTube creator activity and saw durable returns. The briefing also includes OpenX CMO Amanda Forrester’s view that the SSP label is likely to disappear as AI and direct publisher relationships reshape the stack. US creator ad spend is cited at $43.9 billion this year (Interactive Bureau of Advertising).

Marketers Increase AI Use; Technical Skills Lag

Digiday+ Research, based on a survey of 142 brand and agency professionals and interviews with marketing and tech executives, finds marketers’ adoption of AI has climbed sharply (from 44% in 2022 to 86% in 2025) but organizational tech skills, upskilling and strategic use lag behind tool adoption. The report notes many companies favor out-of-the-box AI tools (85% of respondents), while fewer build on existing LLMs (40%) or train proprietary LLMs (19%). Firms have appointed chief AI officers (brands such as General Motors, Mastercard and ZocDoc; agencies including Golin, Luckie & Co. and Horizon Media). Interviewees flagged economic concerns about GPU/TPU infrastructure costs, gaps between baseline user familiarity and advanced internal usage, and growing platform interoperability (e.g., Adobe integrating Google models and Google Vertex AI).

Hightouch Hits $100M ARR with AI Marketing Tools

Hightouch, a seven-year-old startup, reached $100 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) after adding $70 million in ARR since launching an AI-powered marketing creative product in late 2024. The platform helps marketers autonomously build on-brand images and videos by connecting to customers’ creative toolsets (Figma, photo libraries, CMS) and leveraging brand assets to avoid hallucinations from generic foundation models. Clients cited include Domino’s, Chime, PetSmart and Spotify. Hightouch is co-led by Kashish Gupta and Tejas Manohar, employs about 380 people, and was valued at $1.2 billion after an $80 million Series C in February 2025 led by Sapphire Ventures.