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Edition #476
On advertising to agents, CES & programmatic on planes.
Welcome to 2025, with CES in full swing, it is a little quieter in the start to the year. Did you go? Thoughts?
I hope you all had a good break. ICYMI here was my 2024 recap.
This was an interesting take from Perplexity’s CEO, serving ads to agents.
“Aravind explains, Instead of showing ads to humans directly, advertisements would be targeted at AI agents that work on users’ behalf.
Users never see ads, they simply tell their AI agents what they need for eg if he gave, “I’m going to go to Rambagh for two nights, plan my schedule, do my bookings”
In the backend, Multiple vendors compete for the agent’s attention & companies bid for the agent’s consideration. So everything happens at the AI level.
Agents can also use more compute power to analyse offer to find out advertising attempts & make decisions based on user preferences. Also users can instruct their agents to ignore certain brands , this will remain confidential to between the agent & the user.“
Tied to this Marty Swant was tweeting about how brands may change their campaign execution to optimize for LLMs. And this seems inevitable, with LLMs also being built into many data pipelines, content that flows through them more efficiently will have bigger impact.
Notable stories this week
- Reddit intros new trends tools for businesses and an AMA ad format.
- The year creators took over.
- With a ban on the horizon, TikTok creators are changing their approach to brand partnership contracts.
- Substack’s social media vibe shift.
- Eric Seuferts 2025 predictions for mobile marketing.
- Honey’s deal-hunting browser extension is accused of ripping off customers and YouTubers.
- Comcast to launch Universal Ads in bid to win smaller advertisers over from tech.
- Ritson’s top marketing moments of 2024: Part 1.
- The definitive Digiday guide to what’s in and out for advertising in 2025.
- In tandem with Starlink in the planes, United will go programmatic with its ads.
- IAS new AI powered measurement tool connects media quality with campaign outcomes.
- Disney opens live sports ad inventory to real-time programmatic buys.
- Yahoo places curation at the center of its CES pitch.
- Optimizing campaigns for LLMs.
- WPP asks staff back to the office 4 days a week.
- Meta swaps to more automated moderation, inspired by X.
- Have we reached peak ad network?
- New GroupM CEO unveils 5-year plan.
- Omnicom Media Group and Roku partner on viewer search data. They also did the same with TikTok.
Deals/M&A
- CNN received an investment of more than $70m from WBD to invest in the company’s digital pivot.
- New Growth Investment pushes Whatnot to $5b valuation.
Campaign of the week
- Enchanted Soudah: Nature in the clouds. National Geographic with Soudah.
View all 2024 best campaigns.
Smartest commentary
- “We’re all for AI – if it makes things faster. Speed is the name of the game.” –Adam Goodman, GM, Yahoo DSP.
Datapoints of note
- [IAS] By shifting to higher-quality supply paths, we’re delivering a 25% decrease in costs per conversion and a 33% decrease in the cost of quality impressions for a leading global technology brand.
Events
- Native Advertising Institute is holding their first US based event in April.
View all 2024 datapoints of note.
That’s it for this week.
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