Meta named Alex Schultz, its longtime chief marketing officer, the company's first-ever chief data officer and promoted Denise Moreno to CMO, both appointments signaling a deeper push to apply AI inside the company's own marketing engine. Meanwhile, Paramount consolidated its ad tech teams under a newly hired EVP, and World Cup sponsors are pouring money into influencer campaigns that, despite growing sophistication, still haven't cracked the broadcast production wall.
Meta reshuffles marketing leadership around AI
Schultz spent nearly two decades as Meta's top marketer before moving into the newly created data role. Moreno, his successor, has more than 15 years at the company. The dual moves come as Meta tries to navigate the same AI adoption challenge thousands of other marketing teams face - figuring out how to move beyond experimentation and into day-to-day practice. This internal challenge mirrors what many marketing departments are tackling as they explore AI for Marketing tools and strategies.
Neither executive offered a detailed road map, but their public statements underscored the expectation that AI will reshape how Meta markets itself. "The teams that win won't be the ones that hand everything to the machine," Moreno wrote on LinkedIn. "They'll be the ones that pair AI's speed and scale with human judgment and taste." Schultz, in his own post, said he's "increasingly convinced that data, research and experimentation are going to continue [to] be some of the most important strategic capabilities for every company, but they need to be transformed." The focus on pairing technical capability with human expertise sits at the heart of many AI leadership frameworks, including AI Learning Path for CMOs.
Paramount unifies ad tech as merger questions linger
Paramount's ad tech and product teams are now consolidated under EVP Hugh Williams, a former Google leader hired in June, according to a memo seen by Business Insider. The reorganization splits the group into five areas: product management, engineering, advertising solutions, client relations, and data - the last of which still lacks a leader. CEO David Ellison has made updating Paramount's ad capabilities a priority, as the company's tech stack has fallen behind competitors like Netflix and NBCUniversal.
The restructure follows the earlier convergence of the Paramount+ and Pluto TV ad tech stacks, a project that gained traction after the 2025 Skydance merger. The timing comes with added significance because Paramount is in the process of trying to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery and would benefit from folding in WBD's NEO ad platform. If UK regulators slow or block that deal, the internal rebuild gives Paramount a fallback - a homegrown ad tech base rather than relying on a deal that may not close.
World Cup influencers earn real budgets but no broadcast role
FIFA and World Cup sponsors are leaning harder on social creators, shifting attribution away from easy-to-game metrics like clicks and views toward what Digiday described as "more nebulous" factors, such as a brand's share of voice during a major cultural moment. Creators also report that FIFA has been unusually hands-off, providing stadium access, on-site production facilities, and even player interviews - a contrast with the Olympics' restrictive approach.
Despite this momentum, influencer content still lives in a separate universe from the actual broadcast. Fox Sports, the U.S. World Cup broadcaster, placed two creators in a transparent Times Square cube to watch matches for $50,000 each. That campaign hasn't been referenced during live broadcasts, and the battalions of FIFA-credentialed influencers filling the stadiums are never integrated into the production. Influencers are earning a larger share of marketing budgets, but joining the main broadcast product remains the next, unmet step.
Why this matters for marketers
Meta's C-suite reshuffle signals that AI is moving from a marketing side project to a leadership-level discipline, forcing marketing executives to build stronger data and AI fluency. Paramount's ad tech consolidation shows that even major media companies are racing to close gaps in their tech infrastructure, which affects the tools and inventory available to buyers. And the FIFA influencer example makes clear that while creator budgets are rising, the real prize - making influencer moments part of the core media experience - still hangs out of reach. Marketers who can push for that integration stand to unlock far more value than those who treat influencers as a separate line item.
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