What you need to know in advertising today

Publicis, one of the four global ad agency holding groups, today launched its ambitious artificial intelligence platform Marcel in partnership with Microsoft.

The ad group will be hoping Marcel can knit together the diverse talent across its agencies, as the wider industry undergoes a major shift.

Marcel is named after Publicis Groupe's founder, Marcel Bleustein Blanche. It's a company-wide AI assistant that is designed to help agency employees connect with one another.

To read more about Marcel, click here.

In other news:

Europe's looming privacy law GDPR may hand an advertising opportunity to two unexpected players. Target and Walmart could benefit because while advertisers plan to keep spending on digital media, they're likely to turn to companies that have direct data relationships with consumers.

MoviePass said a $300 million lifeline could sustain it for over a year, but that money could slip through its fingers. Experts say the financial instrument described by MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe is not what is generally considered to be an equity line of credit and is subject to the whims of the public market.

Confessions of a Facebook parking valet. Business Insider spoke to some, to hear what it's like working on the front lines at one of the world's biggest companies.

Obama explains why he signed a deal with Netflix and how he thinks it will help solve our political divide. He spoke publicly about his deal with Netflix at a tech conference on Wednesday.

Facebook is taking a page from Amazon, Walmart, and Ikea. It is launching a new home-services feature for Marketplace, which looks a lot like other existing services that offer vetted professionals for hire, like Angie's List and Amazon Home Services.

In a Twitter rant, Elon Musk vowed to create a news credibility rating site called 'Pravda' - here's how that's connected to Russia. Pravda is the name of a Russian newspaper that served as the official newspaper of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.