Skai

Walmart Adds Negative Keywords for Sponsored Search

Walmart Connect has added negative-keyword functionality to Sponsored Products search campaigns, enabling advertisers to exclude specific queries so ads won't appear for those terms. Announced in late July 2026 and now live in the Walmart Connect Ad Center and available via partner technology providers including Pacvue, Skai, Quartile, Teikametrics and DataCaciques, the tool is designed to improve budget efficiency, reduce irrelevant traffic and support campaign optimization. Agencies and vendors—including Pacvue, Podean and Flywheel—have long requested the capability, which aligns Walmart with competitors (Amazon added negative keywords in 2019; Sam’s Club Connect offered them for years). Industry observers say the change could shift where brands allocate spend, potentially raising CPCs on competitive category terms while lowering account-level ROAS that was previously inflated by branded-term spend.

Survey: Media Buyers Unready for Agentic Revolution

Kiri Masters argues that despite widespread announcements of AI agents for media buying, most media buyers and brands lack the data infrastructure and integrations required to adopt agentic workflows. A Skai survey of 332 paid media practitioners found a mean 'agentic readiness' score of 35.7/100, with 30% unprepared, 49% exploring, and only 3% having AI embedded at scale. Retail media and CPG brands score below the 'Building' tier, and very few organisations expose agent-readable data or end-to-end orchestration. The piece highlights the gap between C-suite enthusiasm and practitioner readiness and warns that agentic advantages will depend on retailers and platforms making data accessible to agents.

Private Buyers Submit Bid for Criteo

Anthropic has updated its AI agent Claude Cowork to run from the web and mobile apps (iOS and Android), enabling scheduled tasks and background sessions that execute even when a user’s laptop is closed. According to Anthropic’s support documentation and social posts, Cowork sessions and files live in a user’s Claude account and can run remotely, so planned tasks (for example, preparing a Quarterly Business Review) will execute at scheduled times without the originating device staying on. The feature is being released as a beta and will initially roll out to paying subscribers on Anthropic’s Max plan. No additional apps are required; a new Cowork button will appear in the chat interface after rollout.