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Marketing & Growth

What new AI-driven ad channels and media-buying agents should founders watch beyond Meta and Google?

AppLovin's Axon engine opened self-serve to all ecommerce advertisers in mid-2026 and already rivals Meta's Audience Network on conversion for some categories, TikTok's Smart+ keeps widening automation, and agent-to-agent media buying (with standards like AdCP) is moving from concept to early production. For a founder the play is to master one core channel first, then use these emerging channels as cheap arbitrage while big advertisers are still slow. Expect your role to shift from clicking buttons to setting goals and guardrails for buying agents.

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More in Ads & Performance Marketing

How do founders use AI to generate and test ad creatives at scale? 18 → Why use AI for audience research, copy variants, and campaign analysis? 19 → What are real examples of small teams running big-league paid campaigns with AI? 18 → Which AI tools should a founder actually put in their first ad stack? 18 → How do founders create AI UGC and avatar video ads without a creator budget? 19 → Should founders let Meta, Google, and TikTok's AI automation run their campaigns? 16 → How do founders use AI to research competitor ads and find winning angles? 17 → How much should founders budget for ad testing, and when should they kill or scale a creative? 18 → When do AI-generated ads backfire, and how do founders avoid the AI slop trap? 17 → How do founders use AI to build and optimize landing pages that convert ad clicks? 18 → Should founders advertise inside AI platforms like ChatGPT? 19 → How do founders use AI to measure what is actually working across channels? 16 → How are Indian D2C brands and startups using AI in performance marketing? 16 →

Also in Starting Up

The same ground, over in Grow & market, our Starting Up track.

What growth metrics should I actually track as an early-stage startup? 3 → Should I even be running paid ads at this stage? 2 →
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