Edition #505
On Google, creator brand safety and influencers in the corporate box.
My homework is to read the Google ruling. It’s ~230 pages. But hey at least it’s double spaced.
After Perplexity made a bid for Chrome, I feel like that had an impact. Because it demonstrated even through Google is a behemoth, it is prone to disruption, and even has interest from new upstarts. So much so, that they could be buyers for the assets. This gives weight to the idea of the market could fix problems Google has by competing and winning business from them.
But BI has a good piece on the biggest winners from the Google antitrust decision? Its AI rivals..
And Ronan’s piece opened with “Even when they lose, they win.”.
One takeaway from that “Google must share limited search data (not ads) and offer rivals syndication services to support competition.”.
Which is super interesting, will be intriguing to see what that opens up. Separately OpenAI has said it can’t compete with Google’s quality of data when it comes to search. There have been a few tweets about this aspect, finding how Google relies on ‘how users engage with content’ as a heavy signal.
Which is a signal, only a select others get. This of course, is something we’ve tackled at Nudge, building a model to predict how much someone will engage with a piece of content. So nice to see validation on the value of this from Google, as a ranking signal.
Separately Ben Dietz had a great take on creator brand safety. Which ties in a bit with this Vice piece ‘How the World Fell in Love With a Summer of British Chaos‘.
Puck covers Influencers at the Open. With the idea that, you can’t just have a corporate box, you need to have influencers to help activate it and cut through online, as validation, that yes you have a box there. Everything is a marketing event now.
Notable stories this week
- OpenAI, without access to Google’s data, it would be impossible to achieve the same level of accuracy.
- Google’s antitrust win is an L for everyone else who sells ads online.
- The biggest winners from the Google antitrust decision? Its AI rivals..
- Grok will soon have product recommendation ads within Grok when it is ready.
- Honey Co-Founder Ryan Hudson Has A New Plan For An AI Ad Network.
- Rooter launches AI-powered adtech tool rStream to allow creators monetise content.
- a16z returns to Substack.
- Users, Publishers, and AI: Everybody Wins.
- Perplexity Ad Chief Tax Patel departs.
- Microsoft’s Copilot Outpaces ChatGPT in US Mobile Growth, Data Shows.
- Ad buyers lose key tool as Prebid breaks auction tracking system. Argh!
- Google expands messaging platforms in Ads beyond WhatsApp support.
- Financial Times owners sue search engine Perplexity for copyright infringement.
- An influencer inside the Rolex Box.
- More money is flowing into creator marketing — just not directly to creators.
- Apple plans AI-powered web search tool for Siri to rival OpenAi, Perplexity.
- The NFL has struck a content licensing deal with sports business news outlet Front Office Sports.
- Group Black is pivoting to target a wider audience after its plans to help Black-owned media fell short.
- Judge blocks Google’s exclusive search deals, lets Chrome stay in antitrust ruling.
- Washington State imposes a state ad tax.
- Streameast, which got 136m monthly visits was shut down.
Deals/M&A
- Advertising group Dentsu explores sale of international business.
- Atlassian buys The Browser Company.
- Empower acquires Ocean Media, forming a $1.5b independent.
- Symmetri raises $6m to help brands compete in the ‘AI Agent’ economy.
- Paramount in talks to buy Bari Weiss Free Press for up to $200m.
- Roqad buys Zeotap’s Audience Data Business.
Campaign of the week
- Prada with AirMail. Classic integration, right place, right audience, right time.
Smartest commentary
- [On Google] “Even when they lose, they win.” –Anonymous.
Datapoints of note
- More than a million people got Comet access this morning.
- ChatGPT gets 18 minutes of daily time on mobile.
- Search Engine Referral Report for Q2 2025.
- Events generate more than 50% of Semafors overall revenue.
- Only 17% of publishers cite ARPU as their primary KPI. 35% say they have no single guiding metric at all. Just 11% describe their organization as “very aligned” on shared goals. 70% lack a consistent process for balancing ads vs. subscriptions.
Events
- What should I host next? Any requests?
That’s it for this week.
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