Future of Marketing Briefing: Memes used to be a joke. Now they’re a strategy

May 08, 2026

By Seb Joseph Last month, a U.S. Special Forces soldier was indicted for insider trading — not on stocks, but on a prediction market. He had detailed knowledge of a military operation. He bet on it. The platform where he placed those bets responded to the indictment with something close to a shrug.

That shrug tells you everything about the world marketers are only beginning to understand. It’s one where a meme can move a market, and a market can become a meme. Where the internet’s lingua franca — irony, virality, the shared joke — now has real stakes attached.This is a member-exclusive article from Digiday. Continue reading it on digiday.com and subscribe to continue reading content like this. …read more

Source:: Digiday