May has been one of those months where the industry handed us a lot to talk about, and not in a slow-burn kind of way.
Publicis is acquiring LiveRamp. Forrester says principal media is a business necessity. Hershey spent a year building an AI system to run its own media mix modeling, and its VP of Media is telling the world that the data and the technology should belong to the brand, not the agency. Jeff Green is on stage in Miami calling out every middleman in the ad supply chain and telling them to earn their fee.
If you have been paying attention, none of this comes as a surprise. The pressure on transparency, governance, and ownership has been building for years. What is different in 2026 is the pace. Deals are getting done, narratives are being set, and the window for procurement to shape the outcome is narrowing.
This issue covers all of it. I also share a summary from ProcureCon Marketing EU, where our guru and close collaborator Tina Fegent shares her insights on key topics. I attended Catalyst SF, and we believe these two events confirmed for us that the procurement community is ready for this moment. Whether we actually rise to it is the more interesting question.
As always, I have done the reading so you do not have to. But I would strongly suggest you click through on a few of these.
- When your agency owns the data infrastructure, first-party data rights and contract governance are no longer optional clauses. Review them now.
- The burden of proof has shifted to vendors. Demand itemized breakdowns of your programmatic supply path and ask every partner what its fee buys.
- AI-powered measurement is a brand asset, not an agency deliverable. Negotiate ownership of the tools and the data that powers them.
- Governance is not the enemy of principal media. It is the only responsible way to allow it. Build the framework before you approve the practice.
When Your Agency Owns the Pipes: What Marketing Procurement Must Do Now That Publicis Is Acquiring LiveRamp
On May 16, 2026, Publicis Groupe announced it is acquiring LiveRamp for $2.167 billion, a 30% premium. If you work with Zenith, Starcom, Spark Foundry, Leo Burnett, or Saatchi and Saatchi, this deal has direct implications for your contracts, data rights, and ability to independently verify media performance. Publicis has been building a very deliberate stack: Epsilon for data in 2019, now LiveRamp for identity and data co-creation at scale.
With this acquisition, your agency will soon own the pipes that your first-party data runs through. This article lays out what that means in practical terms for marketing procurement, what questions to ask your agency today, and what contract clauses you can no longer afford to leave vague. The moment to act is now, before the ink dries.
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What ProcureCon Marketing 2026 Tells Us About the Future of Marketing Procurement
ProcureCon Marketing brought together over 450 procurement professionals from the world's top advertisers in June 2026. The conversations on the floor confirmed what many in this community have been feeling but not quite naming: the role of marketing procurement is being redefined in real time, and not everyone is keeping up. From AI-driven sourcing workflows to rethinking agency compensation models that no longer reflect how work actually gets done, the conference surfaced a set of themes that are no longer theoretical.
Tina Fegent was on the ground and brings back a practitioner's read, with clear implications for anyone responsible for agency relationships, spend governance, or building the case for procurement's seat at the table.
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Seven Takeaways Every Procurement Leader Should Know From Catalyst San Fran
Catalyst SF, hosted by Art of Procurement, is one of the most rigorous executive-level events in the procurement calendar, and the 2026 edition was no exception. The theme was clear: AI is no longer a future state for procurement. It is already making decisions, often faster than operating models, governance frameworks, and leadership accountability can catch up.
Christine Moore was in the room and came away with seven concrete takeaways that go well beyond the usual conference recap. From questions about role clarity in an agentic environment to how procurement is beginning to prove strategic value in language that resonates with the CMO, this piece is required reading before your next quarterly planning conversation.
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"We Should Own It": Hershey's Programmatic Chief on AI Agents and Media Mix Modeling
Vinny Rinaldi, VP of Media and Marketing Technology at Hershey, spent a full year building an agentic AI system that now runs marketing mix modeling monthly across Hershey's entire brand portfolio. Previously, the company received full-year data analysis months after campaigns had already ended. Today the cycle runs in under three weeks. The system, built on Mutinex and Tracer, connects sales data, campaign performance, and media modeling into a continuous, AI-powered measurement loop.
Rinaldi is direct on ownership: the data fuels the asset, and the asset belongs to Hershey, not the agency. For marketing procurement leaders negotiating data rights and technology ownership in agency contracts, this is one of the most instructive practitioner examples of 2026.
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The Programmatic Auction Is Changing in Real Time. Here's How.
Nearly 20 years after real-time bidding launched, generative AI is beginning to restructure the programmatic auction from the inside out. This clear-eyed explainer from AdExchanger walks through exactly how the ecosystem works today, from the role of SSPs and DSPs to how AI is changing the speed, logic, and quality of bid decisions.
For marketing procurement professionals responsible for media buying oversight, this piece builds the vocabulary and mental model needed to ask harder questions of your agency and tech partners. If you have ever sat in a meeting and nodded through a programmatic update without fully understanding the mechanics underneath, this is the article to read first.
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Why Forrester Is Wrong About Principal Media
In January 2026, Forrester published "The Truth About Principal Media," claiming the practice is becoming a business mainstay and may soon represent a third of all media billings. Marketing Procurement iQ pushes back with evidence. Advertisers do not consider principal media a necessity. Many reject it outright, and those who do participate allocate only modest budgets. When your agency buys inventory for you while also selling it to you, the conflict of interest is structural. Required reading before any principal media conversation with your agency.
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The Answer to the Principal Media Question Is Governance
Simon Lawson argues that as agencies shift from acting as agents to acting as principals, the answer is not a ban on the practice. It is governance. Misaligned incentives, structural conflicts of interest, and eroding trust are symptoms of a governance gap. Clients who build robust media investment governance frameworks, with clear transparency expectations, data ownership clauses, and disclosure requirements written into contracts, are far better protected than those relying on goodwill alone.
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The Transparency Tipping Point
MMC's founding partner argues that 2026 represents an inflection point for advertising transparency. Platform consolidation, AI-driven automation, and holding company acquisitions have made the ecosystem more complex and the stakes higher. The piece covers what effective contract governance looks like in practice, why short-tenure procurement leaders tend to default to price over value creation, and why audits should be viewed as educational tools rather than recovery exercises.
The observation that transparency enables better relationship management, not just compliance, is one worth bringing into your next agency review. Governance and brand ambition are not in tension. They are the same conversation.
Read the full article →AI Is the Means, Not the Mission
Drew McLellan makes a deceptively simple point: the agencies getting AI right are the ones keeping their mission front and center, using technology as a means to deliver on it rather than restructuring around the technology itself. For procurement professionals sitting across the table from agencies pitching AI capabilities, this piece offers a useful lens for separating genuine strategic integration from feature theater. The question to ask is not "what AI are you using?" but "what mission does it serve?"
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Marketing Procurement Has Earned Its Seat at the Table. Now We Must Earn the Right to Keep It.
The pandemic gave marketing procurement its C-suite moment. The question now is whether the function has built on that access or is quietly ceding ground back to marketing and finance. Earning the seat was the easier part. Keeping it requires fluency in business outcomes, not just cost management. It requires procurement professionals who can speak in the language of brand, of risk, of competitive advantage. The piece does not soften the critique: the function risks becoming a compliance layer if it does not evolve its value proposition.
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