Edition #552
Is this ChatGPT’s breakout moment ALA Facebook Pages moment? Loads of M&A, this years Barbour.
With hindsight, you can pinpoint, points in time when a business took off. With Facebook, it was ‘Fans’ on business pages and then ads, could help you get more fans.
This week, we have OpenAI finally releasing their business console, to give you stats on how you are showing up inside AI. This is it, this is the pivotal moment, where businesses can get data, and then use that to adjust their strategy.
The question will be, from here, can they grow their consumer use, fast enough in tandem. Lets see.
On the other hand, every other day we are hearing about ecommerce sites blocking AI Agents. Which, is a game of whac a mole. But for consumer adoption, they don’t want to have to figure this out.
So, this likely in the near term, pushes advantage to Siri. Where App developers can set how Siri can interact with their apps & businesses. And consumers are already comfortable with the data permissions.
Talking about allowing agents to transact on your site or app. AirBNB on their earnings said no material bookings from Instinct/Muse, yet I’m not sure there is an accurate way to ascertain if one was done? And then Uber also said the same, almost no one uses AI agents to book their Uber.
Reminds me of the Amazon button, to order an uber, the app is already good enough and shows the mission critical information.
But those are the calls, this is the breakout moment for ChatGPT ads, and the tide shifts towards Siri even further with every ban of an AI agent generating commerce on a website.
Notable stories this week
- The Onion is trying to sponsor a college football bowl game.
- ChatGPT is about to show brands their mention count.
- Introducing Businesses in ChatGPT.
- Can an AI agent be your next CMO? At some small startups, it already is.
- Anthropic strikes its first licensing deal, with the AP, for election coverage.
- Medium is launching a new note taking app.
- ChatGPT Ads got brands to bite. Now comes the hard part.
- The Trade Desk and Distillery link AI agents to reshape audiences mid-campaign.
- Why I’m wary of a Publicis owned LiveRamp and your CMO should be too.
- Meta adds mini app creation option to Muse.
- Adobe and Disney announce multi year AI partnership.
- The podcast boom is hitting a messy reality for CMOs.
- Yahoo is betting the house on its new AI.
- How Perplexity helped Get Maine Lobster.
- The Trade Desk’s revenue slipped in Q3. If it wants to grow it must evolve.
- The Great Disconnect.
- Publishers face Google AI ad labels in California, South Korea and Vietnam.
- Criteo is a survivor, but expanding beyond retail media.
- Google is testing a native ad blocker for Chrome on your phone.
- Hollywood backs NYT in AI copyright fight with OpenAI and Microsoft.
- ChatGPT is now showing ads while images are being generated.
- TiVo Ads Craig Chin on why the future of CTV advertising starts at the Home Screen.
- The Bulwark joins Vox Media’s podcast network.
- Adobe’s CMO on why it’s made its biggest brand campaign in 5 years.
- WTF is the AI training opt out policy token.
- BuzzFeed stock in free fall as pivot to AI blows up in its face.
- Google AI mode asking searchers to continue with this search.
- Second order effects.
- Koah launches an ad support Claude Code.
Deals/M&A
- Viant buys Waymark for $20m.
- Tano wants to make creator marketing as easy as buying Meta ads. See the pitch deck that helped it raise $4m.
- iHeart weighs options for Podcast unit, including possible sale.
- After blocking Muse, Amazon now lets users text Alex to help them shop.
- ‘We are looking more now’: The Trade Desk is eyeing the M&A aisle.
- What could The Times buy with its AI bucks?
Campaign of the week
- Peak of handcrafted, Barbour is back with their Christmas Film collab with Wallace & Gromit.
Smartest commentary
- “Brand advertising becomes more important in an AI world” –Benji Shomair, OpenAI.
- “Advertising builds trust…there are a lot of spaces in the physical world which also produce impressions, but at a much cheaper price compared to the digital world.” –Nik Storonsky, Revolut.
- “Advertisers don’t allocate budgets based on industry ideology. They allocated based on consumers and outcomes.” –Terry Kawaja.
Datapoints of note
- An Emarketer survey found that 38.7% of SMBs are reporting meaningful new traffic from AI tools.
- 64 percent of young Americans surveyed believe brand posts are becoming so similar that they blend together. While 45 percent of respondents said they do not mind being sold to on social media, 68 percent prefer branded content that does not feel like an advertisement.
Events
- Whiskey tasting getting penciled in, if you want to join, let me know.
That’s it for this week.
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