Live from the 2026 World Economic Forum in Davos, Karin Timpone, founder and CEO of ClearPrompt, unpacks how to implement AI with focused, phased approaches rather than sweeping transformations and keeping the focus on business strategy. 

What you’ll learn:

• Why CMOs are perfectly positioned to lead AI strategy across organizations
• How to break down AI implementation into focused, phased pilots instead of betting the entire farm
• The difference between technology adoption and strategic impact
• How to build cross-functional alignment in the C-suite around technology and strategy
• Pick one lane and go deep rather than trying to master all of AI
• Why it’s important to lean into industry moments that connect you with peers facing similar challenges

Karin Timpone is the founder and CEO of ClearPrompt, an AI-powered business strategy platform designed for marketing leaders. With extensive experience as chief marketing officer at MLB and Marriott, Karin brings deep expertise in technology adoption, digital transformation, and strategic marketing innovation. 

Her work has helped leading brands like Disney and Marriott integrate emerging technologies into core business operations, making her insights and expertise essential for marketing executives seeking to position themselves as true business strategists.

Introducing: Frontier CMO

In an era where the marketing playbook is being rewritten daily, how can brands stay ahead? Joshua Spanier, Google’s VP of AI and Marketing Strategy, pulls back the curtain in Frontier CMO, his new podcast and weekly insights letter featuring the marketers, thought leaders, and industry pioneers who are reinventing marketing.

Josh previews the tough questions and unfiltered conversations featured on Frontier CMO, including:

• AI as a leadership test: exploring the “human” side of the AI revolution. As technology and tools advance the challenge becomes equipping marketing teams to leverage these technologies
• Brand relevance and connection: writing the next playbook for brand relevance by showing up as a main character in the places and spaces that connect with your audience
• Agentic Commerce: understanding the transition from “speed vs. certainty” to a world where shopping is fast and smart
• The new marketing organization: knowing where AI makes work faster and smarter and restructuring teams to keep up. Redefining agency partnerships to elevate insights and creativity in real time

Each episode of Frontier CMO features tactical, practical steps all leaders can take to navigate the future of marketing. Find it wherever you get your podcasts: YouTube | Apple | Spotify

Episode Highlights: 

[8:00] Create AI Tools That Unite C-Suite Alignment Around Business Strategy — Karin’s innovation with ClearPrompt was building an AI platform that bridges the critical gap between human strategic thinking and technology acceleration by converting business strategy intake into instant, collaborative drafts the entire C-suite can understand. The unlock isn’t creating better marketing plans faster; it’s creating a shared strategic foundation where finance, operations, creative and marketing teams all interpret the four Ps, growth template, brand positioning, and message hierarchy identically. Rather than marketing departments using AI to produce outputs in isolation, this approach positions the CMO as the orchestrator of enterprise strategy, using AI to accelerate consensus-building across functional areas. 

[11:10] Position AI as a Means to Better Execution, Not the Goal Itself — Karin reinforces that technology—whether AI, blockchain, or video—has always served as a tool to connect more authentically with customers, never as an end in itself. The mistake many leaders make is treating AI adoption as the objective when the actual objective is driving growth, deepening customer relationships, and improving brand reputation. This distinction matters because it shifts conversations from “Should we use AI?” to “What business problem are we solving, and does AI accelerate our solution?” Your foundation in communications, authenticity, and storytelling remains non-negotiable; AI simply amplifies these capabilities by processing data faster and personalizing narratives at scale. 

[13:38] Tie Every AI Initiative Directly to Strategic Business Outcomes — Karin emphasizes that introducing AI systems without connecting them to explicit business strategy and measurable outcomes creates costly misalignment across creative, analytical and platform teams. The critical move for CMOs is to orchestrate simultaneous conversations across creative, analytics, and customer platform teams using an agile framework that asks: “In Phase One, what specific business outcome are we testing?” Every AI project must ladder up to growth, competitive differentiation, or customer lifetime value. This specificity transforms AI from a vague tech initiative into a concrete business lever that your entire C-suite understands and can rally around. 

[16:17] Pick a Lane Instead of Boiling the Ocean with AI — Karin advises CMOs to avoid trying to master all AI applications simultaneously, since the technology is constantly evolving and expanding. Rather than becoming an expert in every AI facet, Karin recommends that CMOs identify one strategic priority that aligns with their existing initiatives, such as storytelling, data analysis, customer insights, or speed-to-market. By selecting a focused lane, you can build credibility and momentum with your team, making AI adoption feel natural rather than forced or intimidating. Bonus: you leave associated analysis paralysis behind, too. 

Ads from a handful of major brands—including Expedia, Qualcomm, Best Buy, and Enterprise Mobility—have begun appearing inside ChatGPT responses, a spokesperson for OpenAI told ADWEEK.

Online wedding vendor The Knot Worldwide is also running ads inside ChatGPT, said a spokesperson for the company. Best Buy and Enterprise Mobility also independently confirmed to ADWEEK that they are participating in early tests. Expedia and Qualcomm did not respond to requests for comment.

“We believe ads play an important role in continuing to support broad access to AI,” said Asad Awan, ads and monetization lead at OpenAI told ADWEEK in a statement. “By working closely with partners in this pilot, we’re able to thoughtfully test new ad experiences and learn together to ensure ads are separate and clearly distinct, relevant, and useful while maintaining the trust people place in ChatGPT.”

The early experiments offer a clearer picture of how OpenAI is beginning to build an advertising business inside its flagship chatbot—starting with a small group of brands, limited inventory, and tightly controlled placements. The AI company previously confirmed to ADWEEK that it wants advertisers to pay at least $200,000 for its early ad test.

OpenAI began rolling out ads inside ChatGPT for free and Go users on Feb. 9 as it looks to diversify its revenue beyond subscriptions. Holding companies including Dentsu, Omnicom, and WPP have lined up to test placements in the chatbot, bringing brands such as Adobe, Audemars Piguet, Audible, Ford, Mazda, and Mrs. Meyer’s into early experiments, ADWEEK previously reported.

ChatGPT’s ad business may be underway, but early signals suggest OpenAI is prioritizing restraint over scale, limiting placements to a small pool of advertisers and a fraction of user queries.

Adthena analyzed more than 500 prompts on ChatGPT and found ads appeared in roughly 0.8% of responses. These ads were from Expedia, Qualcomm, Best Buy, and Enterprise Mobility, the search intelligence platform  told ADWEEK.

The findings suggest that, while OpenAI is officially running ads, it is starting with a curated, and conservative approach to ad frequency, according to Adthena. 

That scarcity could also signal how OpenAI is positioning early access to advertisers, working with a curated mix of enterprise brands and select partners as it shapes its ad offering.

Lenovo arrived at CES 2026 with ambition that went far beyond a keynote.

In this episode of The Speed of Culture, Matt Britton sits down with Milo Speranzo, CMO for Lenovo North America, to break down what it took to deliver Lenovo’s sold-out Sphere showcase, the product story behind AI PCs, servers, wearables, and Motorola, and why edge computing AI privacy now shapes a new hardware refresh cycle.

Milo also explains why Lenovo chose the Sphere, how a company-wide effort brought 14,000 people together, and what Lenovo wants customers to understand about the next era of AI. 

The conversation also explores the Lenovo FIFA World Cup partnership, FootballAI analytics, and Milo’s leadership mantra for 2026: learn, iterate, and be a goldfish.

From edge computing AI privacy and permission-based trust to an end-to-end portfolio that spans phones, PCs, servers, and wearables, Milo lays out how Lenovo is positioning itself for the AI PC refresh cycle already taking shape.

Milo’s career began in command and control roles with the US Air Force, followed by leadership positions at Dell Technologies. Today, Milo brings that mix of operational discipline, sales perspective, and creative conviction to Lenovo’s brand and go-to-market strategy across high-growth categories, helping define the direction of the Lenovo AI ecosystem.

Key Takeaways:

[01:39] Why Lenovo Took CES to the Sphere — Milo explains the conviction behind hosting a major Lenovo moment at the Sphere during Lenovo CES 2026 Sphere. After a successful pivot toward commercial and B2B audiences the year before, Lenovo saw demand from small and medium businesses and global accounts alike. That momentum led the team to embed its North America showcase into CES itself. The result was a sold-out venue and clear validation that the audience showed up for Lenovo’s technology story.

[06:21] The End-to-End Lenovo Ecosystem and the AI Agent Vision — Milo outlines Lenovo’s core announcements, from late-stage wearables concepts to ThinkSystem servers for AI inferencing and the new Lenovo Qira intelligent agent, designed to orchestrate tools across devices. He ties it all back to portfolio depth. Phones, wearables, PCs, servers, and storage sit within one Lenovo ecosystem, allowing Lenovo to build toward a personal AI twin that supports daily work, creativity, and productivity across contexts.

[09:31] Edge AI Turns Privacy Into a Purchase Driver — Privacy moves from a side concern to a buying requirement. Milo describes the potential of AI that runs at the edge on the consumer PC, even without an internet connection, as a direct response to customer demand. This shift toward edge computing AI privacy delivers speed, control, and confidence in how data is handled. It also enables real-world use, from flights with unstable Wi-Fi to environments where connectivity cannot be assumed.

[12:15] Why the AI PC Refresh Cycle Has Already Started — The pandemic created a massive hardware wave that is now aging out. Milo sees a new AI PC refresh cycle emerging as older devices struggle to run modern AI tools efficiently. Highly technical teams lead the shift, including engineers, architects, and advanced creators whose workflows demand AI-ready machines. From there, adoption spreads outward, positioning the AI PC as the anchor of the next enterprise and consumer upgrade cycle.

[14:42] Wearables, Always-On Devices, and the Trust Question — The Lenovo wearable AI companion proof of concept raises questions that go beyond the user. Milo emphasizes sensitivity to social trust, transparency, and visible indicators when devices record. Lenovo approaches this through internal governance and external validation rather than self-grading. For Milo, readiness for mass adoption depends on earning trust as much as advancing capability.

[21:53] FIFA World Cup, FootballAI, and AI as a Level Setter — Milo connects Lenovo’s Lenovo FIFA World Cup partnership to a larger idea: AI that can help small and medium businesses compete beyond their size, and Football AI Pro will apply that logic to all FIFA World Cup teams. By democratizing analytics, smaller nations gain access to insights once reserved for the largest programs, turning the World Cup into a live demonstration of Lenovo’s AI ecosystem.

AI agents are moving beyond answering questions — they’re starting to complete tasks like booking flights or making purchases. This week, Google unveiled WebMCP, a protocol designed to help websites keep up with this shift.

A Google spokesperson told ADWEEK the protocol is necessary because it provides the connection that AI agents need to perform more complex tasks more accurately on the open web.

The protocol is currently available for early preview, which means developers can test the features before it officially launches.

“The goal is to create a standard way for exposing structured tools, ensuring AI agents can perform actions on your side with increased speed, reliability, and precision,” wrote André Cipriani Bandarra, staff developer relations engineer at Google, in a blog post.

Most AI agents currently navigate websites the way a human would, by clicking through pages, scanning buttons, and attempting to complete checkout or make a booking step-by-step. This clunky process is prone to errors.

According to Google’s blog post, WebMCP lets websites expose structured actions for AI agents — essentially the list of predefined tasks they can perform — giving agents a more reliable way to interact with a site instead of guessing which buttons to click or forms to fill.

“By defining these tools, you tell agents how and where to interact with your site. This direct communication channel eliminates ambiguity and allows for faster, more robust agent workflows,” Bandarra wrote.

The protocol could help ecommerce sites guide agents through product searches and checkout flows more reliably, enable travel providers to support flight searches and bookings, and allow customer support systems to accept more detailed, automatically completed tickets, per the blog.

Tech companies are building the infrastructure for agentic AI

Google’s announcement comes amid similar efforts across the industry.

Anthropic has promoted its Model Context Protocol (MCP) for connecting AI systems to external tools and data. Amazon has introduced its own framework for agent interactions across its adtech stack. Trade groups and adtech companies are also rolling out standards, including AdCP, aimed at structuring how AI handles campaign data and media workflows.

WebMCP is designed to play nicely with other standards. The Google spokesperson described it as a complementary, open protocol.

While Anthropic’s MCP requires backend server-side integration, the spokesperson said, WebMCP lets websites use their existing stack for agentic capability.

Many organizations will likely support both to ensure their high-value functionality is accessible wherever users engage with AI agents, the spokesperson added.

All of these moves underscore how quickly the web is being retooled for an agent-driven future.

But marketers might also find new challenges getting these competing protocols to interoperate. If not, all of these protocols will simply add more fragmentation. Still, if AI agents are going to transact, search, and execute on behalf of people, web infrastructure needs to evolve.