Edition #500
Facebook has creators backs again, Substacks secret weapon & more AI summaries.
In 2014 I wrote on my personal blog about a year of health and wellbeing. And that year was pivotal, but it also really was the start of a decade of continuing to improve on health & fitness.
That year we also started a newsletter called This Week in Native Ads. And I know some readers will remember that! As you’ve come along for the journey
In fitness, it takes about 500 reps to get anywhere and maybe it’s the same in newsletters. Many readers have gone from Account Managers to C suite in this time, or exited multiple companies, been around the world and back. Delivered their best work, been at the forefront of change.
That’s been neat, to be part of your journeys (the best part really). And we also have evolved over time. We’ve broadened, and elevated the conversation, but still try to provide that balance across the industry, and highlight the stories that were overlooked. Relevant data, commentary and the deals shaping the industry.
But so it’s with delight to celebrate 500 editions! Thank you for reading. And now’s a good time as any, if you enjoy this newsletter to forward on to friends, it’s the best way for them to discover it.
Back to this week, NotebookLM surprised (me) not long ago with their usage numbers. And with this weeks launch of featured notebooks, it’s starting to make sense. In essence they’re encouraging folks to build trusted repositories of information, that we can then all go query. A safe place for a corpus of knowledge.
Read the full announcement here.
And with publishers hurt by the initial advances in AI, this presents another opportunity for them to build new products, off the top of the tools.
Imagine a ‘Tariffs Notebook’ with all the historical information, as written in-situ, about previous tariffs. Or say Time Inc with their new Longevity outlet, a Longevity notebook (in fact there is a Longevity one above).
As more evidence and examples of the business opportunities created by AI, the fear will quieten down.
Notable stories this week
- Suspected AI Content Halves Reader Trust and Hurts Ad Performance.
- Facebook moves to restrict the reach of unoriginal content.
- Google Discover adds AI summaries, threatening publisher with further traffic declines.
- Substack.com got more traffic than the Wall Street Journal and CBS News in June.
- Fox News to license “Ruthless” podcast as part of digital expansion.
- Media companies enter AI race with their own chatbots.
- Substack’s Secret Weapon.
- Rebuffed by Chrome, Perplexity Launches AI Browser Comet, OpenAI Reportedly Prepares Its Own.
- Try featured notebooks on selected topics in NotebookLM.
- How the Time AI Audio Brief was built.
- Gaming’s ad dilemma.
- AI platforms are driving more traffic — but not enough to offset ‘zero-click’ search.
- The Information launches new video product called TITV.
- Agentic Adtech Firm Clinch Scraps CPMs for Monthly Subscription Pricing.
- The Media’s Pivot to AI Is Not Real and Not Going to Work.
- Behind the IAB Tech Lab’s new initiative to deal with AI scraping and publisher revenue loss.
- Perplexity CEO on Comet, the future of search and the AI talent wars.
- Wiley’s AI Pivot: A new era for academic publishing.
- Why Sam Altman and OpenAI are making a web browser.
- Meet Cindy Rose, set to become CEO of WPP.
- How the ad ecosystem penalizes quality journalism — and what comes next.
- Goodbye RTB, hello AI(TB).
- Scholastic Became a Children’s Publishing Giant. Now It Needs a Turnaround.
- Behind Hyundai’s Cannes-Winning Thriller Using Only Car Cameras.
Deals/M&A
- Linkby raises $15m for its hybrid PR and affiliate marketing network.
- David Ellison’s Skydance Has Held Talks to Buy Bari Weiss’ The Free Press (Report).
- Olyzon Raises $5M to Bring AI Agents and CTV Show-Level Targeting to the US.
- Amplitude acquires Kraftful to power customer-first product building.
Campaign of the week
- Lexus at Milan Design week, with British Vogue.
View all best campaigns on Marca.
Smartest commentary
- “The success of MCP is the first proof point that the world favors open and decentralized AI” -Guillermo Rauch.
Datapoints of note
- The conversion rates we’re seeing across the Gumshoe AI user base are 2-4x higher for b2c traffic and up to 20x higher for b2b traffic so LLM traffic being 20x more valuable means 5% LLM traffic is same value as the 95% other traffic.
- Research found a 14% decline in both purchase consideration and willingness to pay a premium for products advertised alongside content perceived as AI-made.
- Nearly 90% of Advertisers will Use Gen AI to Build Video Ads.
- AI Overviews dropped from showing at the top 98% of US search results to 87.6% in June.
- Google said more than 40m videos have been made using its AI video model Veo 3.
Events
- Drinks in London coming up in August, let me know if you want to join.
That’s it for this week.
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