Skai's 2026 US ShopAble Media Awards recognize the brands and agencies leading media into the agentic age. SAN FRANCISCO, CA - May 13, 2026 - Skai, the leading omnichannel platform for commerce media, just announced the winners of its 2026 US ShopAble Media Awards. The awards honor consumer goods brands and agencies for outstanding results achieved through Skai's platform. As marketing enters the age of agentic AI, brands and agencies face a new set of demands: acting on data faster, coordinating across more channels, and building the operational infrastructure to let AI work alongside human teams. This year's ShopAble Media Awards winners distinguished themselves through rigorous, results-driven use of Skai, from deploying AI-powered diagnostics across entire agency portfolios to turning CTV exposure into a direct path to conversion. The outcomes speak for themselves. This year's winners: * Code3 won the Celeste AI Pioneer (Agency) award for using Skai's purpose-built GenAI agent across forecasting, new-to-brand analysis, reporting, and optimization to unlock hidden revenue opportunities on Amazon Ads. * DoorDash was recognized with the Celeste AI Pioneer (Brand) award for lifting conversions 18%, reducing CPA by 22.9%, and surfacing inefficient budget allocation using Celeste AI for predictive diagnostics. * WPP Media earned the Omnichannel Retail Media Excellence award for achieving up to 292% media efficiency for Church & Dwight, with signals from Skai's Incremental API integration flowing automatically into media buying decisions across multiple brands and retailers. * Opella was honored with the Commerce Data Excellence award for driving a 23% revenue lift by leveraging Skai's Profitero+ integration to power data-driven, real-time bid optimization. * Grain Group won the award for Full-Funnel Amazon Excellence (Agency) for pioneering the first sequential full-funnel architecture built on Skai's CTV Center, delivering an 85% revenue lift and 53+ million impressions for Cambio Roasters. * Dr. Squatch was awarded Full-Funnel Amazon Excellence (Brand) for rewiring its Amazon growth strategy with Skai, combining automation, competitive intelligence, and DSP to unlock smarter full-funnel growth. * The Estée Lauder Companies received the Search Shopping Excellence award for using Skai's PMax Asset Optimizer to uncover underperforming copy lines, refresh creative faster, and turn hidden inefficiencies into stronger returns. * Elliet Ross, Marketplaces Sr. Specialist at Tinuiti, was named Skai Champion of the Year (Agency) for her commitment to continuous testing, optimizing, and helping others win while remaining curious, competitive, and always one step ahead. * Carolyn Nagele, ECommerce & Shopper Marketing Manager at Hormel Foods, was named Skai Champion of the Year (Brand) for helping shape the roadmap, embracing new capabilities early, unlocking smarter growth with Celeste AI, and driving adoption of Competitive Insights higher by 3,000%. "This year's honorees show what it looks like when leading brands and agencies move from talking about AI to actually leveraging it," said Stephanie Herndon-Rasse, Chief Customer Officer at Skai. "They brought creativity, diligence, and real strategic thinking to their work, and the results reflect that. Congratulations to the winners of the 2026 US ShopAble Media Awards for setting a new standard of excellence in commerce media." About Skai Skai is the leading omnichannel platform for commerce media, enabling brands and agencies to connect data, insights, and execution across the world's largest publishers and retailers. Built for the agentic era, Skai's platform unifies planning, activation, measurement, and retail operations in a single integrated system. With its open architecture and AI capabilities, including commerce media agent Celeste AI and support for custom AI agents via its Model Context Protocol (MCP), Skai enables organizations to drive smarter decisions, greater efficiency, and improved performance across every channel. Trusted by over 8,000 brands and agencies, such as PepsiCo, Sanofi, Estée Lauder, Publicis, Tinuiti, and WPP, Skai integrates with more than 300 publishers and retail media networks, including Amazon Ads, Walmart Connect, Criteo, Google, Microsoft, Meta, and TikTok, and is headquartered in San Francisco with nine international offices. Learn more at skai.io for more information.

Ad firms settle with Trump FTC over claims they boycotted conservative media. FTC aims to stamp out brand-safety standards that hurt Breitbart and Musk's X. FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson testifies during a House subcommittee hearing on oversight of the Federal Trade Commission on May 15, 2025. Credit: Getty Images | Tom Williams The Federal Trade Commission pressured three advertising firms into settlements that will likely result in more ad spending on conservative media platforms. The FTC and eight US states filed a lawsuit against ad firms Dentsu, Publicis, and WPP yesterday, and simultaneously announced settlements with all three companies. The complaint alleges a conspiracy of "various interested parties to demonetize disfavored conservative news and opinion sites by denying them digital advertising revenue." The FTC filed suit in US District Court for the Northern District of Texas, which happens to be Elon Musk's preferred judicial venue. In a press release, the FTC claimed that starting in 2018, the three firms "unlawfully colluded to impose common 'brand safety' standards across the digital advertising industry... The ad agencies, together with their primary competitors Omnicom and Interpublic Group, operated through trade associations to establish a common 'Brand Safety Floor' to target 'misinformation.'" The FTC also said that "firms like NewsGuard and the Global Disinformation Index used this misinformation designation as a means to promote the demonetization of disfavored political viewpoints." "This unlawful collusion not only damaged our marketplace, but also distorted the marketplace of ideas by discriminating against speech and ideas that fell below the unlawfully agreed-upon floor," FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson said. "The proposed order remedies the dangers inherent to collusive practices and restores competition to the digital news ecosystem." Omnicom and Interpublic which merged last year, are already subject to a similar FTC order. The FTC complaint recycles various claims made by conservatives about brand-safety initiatives that attempted to reduce ad spending on sites distributing misinformation and other objectionable content. One of the FTC complaint's main targets is the ad industry's Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) project, even though it was shut down nearly two years ago after a lawsuit filed by Musk's X. GARM, a World Federation of Advertisers project, set a Brand Safety Floor standard on misinformation "to ensure that advertising revenue would be denied to the conservative website Breitbart specifically," the FTC said. As a result, "conservative publishers identified as publishing what the Brand Safety Floor defined as 'misinformation' suffered dramatic declines in their sales of digital advertising inventory," the FTC said. A similar Brand Safety Floor standard was imposed by the American Association of Advertising Agencies' Advertiser Protection Bureau (APB), the FTC said. The FTC's new lawsuit also complained that Media Matters for America pressured advertisers to remove ads from Fox News and X. Media Matters is a nonprofit journalism organization that drew Musk's wrath in 2023 when it published an article showing that X placed ads next to pro-Nazi posts. Trump FTC stamps out brand-safety initiatives. Musk lost a lawsuit against advertisers last month when a judge decided that the X boycott was legal. In another case, a judge blocked an FTC investigation into Media Matters, finding that the FTC retaliated against Media Matters after it "engaged in quintessential First Amendment activity when it published an online article criticizing Mr. Musk and X." Despite those losses, the Trump FTC has continued using its power to pressure ad companies into ending brand-safety initiatives. Last year, the FTC imposed merger conditions prohibiting advertising boycotts in its approval of Omnicom's $13.5 billion acquisition of Interpublic. This week's settlements with Dentsu, Publicis, and WPP impose similar requirements. The deals were approved by US District Judge Mark Pittman the same day they were filed. The settlements bar the ad firms from making agreements with third parties to refuse placement of ads "based on Covered Bases." The settlements define Covered Bases as follows: "Covered Bases" means (1) Political or ideological viewpoints (including viewpoints as to the veracity of news reporting or other politically or ideologically contested facts, such as their characterization as "misinformation," "disinformation," "bias," or similar terms); (2) adherence to journalistic standards or ethics established or set by a Third Party; and/or (3) commitment or adherence to diversity, equity or inclusion (DEI), such as diverse ownership or casting. Covered Bases shall not include fraudulent content. The settlements prohibit the use of third-party individuals or entities involved in "rating, ranking, or evaluating Media Publishers according to Covered Bases." A business can still avoid advertising on certain platforms if these third parties are not involved, as the settlements let each ad company make agreements with each client about how to direct that client's advertising spending. The states that joined the FTC lawsuit against the ad companies are Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Montana, Nebraska, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia. The ad firms agreeing to the settlements did not admit the allegations in the complaint. Jon is a Senior IT Reporter for Ars Technica. He covers the telecom industry, Federal Communications Commission rulemakings, broadband consumer affairs, court cases, and government regulation of the tech industry.