Everyone is back on campus and Fall 2026 is off to a busy start so far! I was gone most of the Summer doing both research related and fun trips including presenting a new AI and advertising paper at the International Conference for Research in Advertising in Barcelona, Spain. This paper was a joint effort between research colleagues at Texas State University (Rick Wilson and Kristen Sussman) and a graduate student in my program at UT (Haya Hasan). We examined a new form of advertising, Fake Out-of-Home or FOOH, and how it engages consumers using various CGI and AI driven techniques.

*Bright, Laura F., Rick T. Wilson, Kristen Sussman, and Haya Hasan (2026), “A Computational Analysis of Fake Out of Home (FOOH) Advertising Techniques Using Real Time Agency Data,” International Conference for Research in Advertising, Barcelona, Spain, June 25 – 27.




To further pursue my new research stream related to AI and its impacts in the advertising world, I also had the opportunity to develop a pre-conference workshop for the American Academy of Advertising in Austin this year. Alongside Hairong Li, from Michigan State University, I developed a half-day workshop to highlight how AI is changing advertising pedagogy and the adaptations we need to make as faculty. It was well attended and awesome to learn from so many outstanding academic and industry colleagues!

*Bright, Laura F., and Hairong Li (2026), “Integrating AI into Advertising Education,” Pre-Conference Workshop for the American Academy of Advertising Annual Conference, Austin, Texas, March 26 – 29, 2025.

It has also been a joy to continue working with many of my favorite co-authors this year on a variety of exciting and innovative research projects … here is what we have done so far …

*Iyer, Pooja, and Laura F. Bright (2026), “Moving Towards Privacy Footprints: Measuring and Regulating Consumer Data in Advertising,” Special Topics Session for the American Academy of Advertising Annual Conference, Austin, Texas, March 26 – 29, 2025.

*Bright, Laura F. (2026), “AI Impacts on Advertising and Public Relations Careers,” Webinar for the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, January 27, 2026.

*Wang, Laurent, Laura F. Bright, Yannic Meier, and Miriam Metzger (2027 – in press), “Behind the Banner: Transparency and Consumer Responses in Data Driven Advertising Environments,” In Advertising Theory. Shelly Rodgers and Esther Thorson (Eds.), Taylor & Francis Publishing. ISBN and Doi TBD.

*Iyer, Pooja, and Laura F. Bright (2026), “I’m In This Industry and I Don’t Know How to Protect My Data”: An Exploration of Advertising Practitioner’s Perceptions and Solutions to Consumer Data Privacy Regulation,” In Advances in Advertising Research Series (Vol. XVI), Freya De Keyzer (Ed.), Springer Nature Publishing. ISBN and Doi TBD.

*Iyer, Pooja, and Laura F. Bright (2026), “Privacy Regulatory Remedies,” In Encyclopedia of AI in Marketing, Ladhari, R. (Ed.), Springer Nature Publishing. ISBN and Doi TBD.

*Safaoui, Asma, Laura F. Bright, and Matthew S. Eastin (2025), “Privacy Concerns in Digital Public Communications,” In Research Handbook for Public Communication, Matusitz, J. (Ed.), Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd. ISBN and Doi TBD.

*Iyer, Pooja, and Laura F. Bright (2025), “Transformation of the Advertising Industry: Big Data and AI Make the Case for a Revised Advertising Curriculum”, Journal of Advertising Education, https://doi.org/10.1177/10980482251345467.

More coming soon! Stay tuned :).