Edition #514
To GEO or not to GEO, Adobe wades in, John Lewis & programmatic kill switches.
For those that missed, last week I opened up a NotebookLM of the newsletter.
If you had a play, what did you do? Was it useful?
Maybe some ideas of prompts to copy/paste/modify:
- Based off topics discussed this year, what should I prepare for next year?
- Can you give me three talking points for the holiday party
- I’m doing strategic planning, and I’m considering <these things>, is there anything else that should be on my radar?
- Catch me up on [specific topic] like I’ve been away for six months.
- Are there any predictions or forecasts made earlier in the year? How did they pan out?
- What’s one story from each quarter that I should definitely know about?
I had a few ask me about GEO providers this week – anyone have a POV? A few people said to me, they were just testing a few, rather than any individual one in particular.
Adobe clearly sees it shifting into their key buyers radar and in turn acquired SEMRush this week.
I think the tactical thing is, people have seen traffic drop and now there’s a bigger reliance on organic. So, how can we get more organic.
But tugging at the back of my mind is, brands have yet to see the full impact of AI Agents, the disruption of the web, so I see this as more, the first in, I’m predicting a big year of change for marketers.
Notable stories this week
- How GPT sees the web.
- What I Meant When I Said Substack Isn’t Cool.
- The ‘hot dog vs sandwich’ problem in AI advertising.
- The agentic turn inside programmatic advertising.
- A programmatic ‘kill switch’? Why Google’s RTB Control isn’t sparking panic.
- Snap launches Topic Chats.
- Disney to let fans become part of the content with AI?
- FT launches first Substack newsletter to target younger readers.
- The new SEO is GEO – and no one really knows the rules.
- Liquid Death lands a commercial inside ‘The Running Man’.
- Europe wants to cut down on annoying GDPR Cookie Pop-ups.
- Time partners with Galactic to launch prediction market platform.
- Meta’s CMO says big tech’s soaring spending on AI is ‘aggressive, but not crazy’.
- X launches ‘Chat’ encrypted direct messaging service.
- Idealo lawsuit: Google ordered to pay 465 million euros in damages.
- AI royalties for small and midsize publishers: collective licensing’s next big play.
- Fox News hires Palantir to build AI newsroom tools.
- Stack Overflow is remaking itself into an AI data provider.
- Microsoft advertising adds AI-powered imager animation to boost video creation.
- TikTok will let you choose how much AI-generated content you want to see.
- Which LLM sends the most traffic per prompt.
- How Amazon aims to do more with less.
- A publisher just made $174 from AI crawlers. It could change the industry.
- The Economists Ferrari approach.
Deals/M&A
- Adobe acquires SEMRush.
- Agentio raises $40m to make creator marketing more programmatic.
- Digital veterans raise $2m+ seed round to launch new food media startup.
- Realeyes spins off ‘Adverteyes’ to focus on ad performance, outcomes.
- Telegraph sale to RedBird collapses after newsroom opposition.
Campaign of the week
Smartest commentary
- “A good editorial staff—people who’ve spent actual years developing taste—can pull you into something unexpected. Finding a beautifully written story by accident feels rare now, and it’s a reminder of why editors matter. It’s the antidote to hours of TikTok GRWM purgatory or falling into some YouTube conspiracy vortex. When every moment of “discovery” is algorithmic, even when the information is technically good, we lose the joy of being surprised.” –Chris Black.
Datapoints of note
- Meta reported over a 5% increase in ad conversions on Instagram and 3% gain on Facebook feed, driven by generative AI-based GEM.
Events
- Final of the year – coming up December. Open to any newsletter readers.
That’s it for this week.
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