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Edition #484
A rapid uptick in new users from LLMs, brand safety AI agents and Substack goes brand.
We all saw it coming, the growth of LLMs as an acquisition source, but interesting to see two businesses in the past week note their growth directly from them.
Mercury bank, and Vercel app platform both experienced approximately a threefold increase in their signups, driven from the LLMs. Notably ChatGPT as the biggest source.
Mercury noting exponential rise of signups from AI search.
And then Vercel said ChatGPT refers 4.8% of new sign ups.
It’s kind of interesting, you can envisage Mercury is from people researching a good bank for startups. And Vercel, for this influx of AI applications folks are building whilst vibe coding. So they are a natural cohort of solutions for the early audience in LLMs. But extrapolating that out, you can see how it could be a significant source for any product.
It kind of reminds me of podcast advertising early on. I remember visiting an agency and the founder going, my young developers say ads don’t work, they use ad blockers, and I asked them yeah but what products are they buying? And where are they finding out about them? Mentions in their fav podcasts. Don’t sleep on mentions in LLMs.
It does stress the urgency though for companies to open up themselves to LLMs, as otherwise you can completely miss a whole market segment or trend. By simply not being present. Or you turn up too late, when it’s already crowded.
One undercurrent, is the rapid growth, has ChatGPT made some changes in how they share sources/links? They must have. That also mirrors, the huge growth ChatGPT saw, adding another 100m users in rapid fashion. However, like search, you are beholden to the whims of their algorithm. They could change it and that traffic drops away.
This really underlines the importance of word of mouth, maybe we’ll see a resurgence in word of mouth marketing.
Notable stories this week
- Software is now content.
- Adam Neumann quietly builds new media startup.
- BuzzFeed Studios is embracing AI and turning branded content into actual movies.
- How creators are bringing their paid subscription audiences to Substack.
- M.M.LaFleur bets on Substack as its next big marketing play amid branded newsletter boom.
- Here come the brands (to Substack).
- Candid or branded? Advertisers are flocking to NYC street-style accounts.
- Marketers rethink cheap programmatic as ad waste mounts.
- Reddit unveils new content moderation and analytics tools to boost user engagement.
- Struggling Product Behind The Trade Desk’s Revenue Woes Angers Buyers and Publishers.
- Scope3 takes on IAS, DoubleVerify with Custom AI Agents for Brand Safety.
- Advertisers put SSPs and curators under the microscope in sell-side push for ad tech fee transparency.
- Sonos scraps video player – does this hurt TTD’s Smart TV OS?
- Beehiiv and Stocktwits partner
- Advertisers expect ad spend slowdown amid tariff uncertainty.
- Capturing attention and leads: Sigma’s internal ad strategy in action.
- The hidden world beneath the shadows of YouTube’s algorithm.
- Is there any reason to separate your media analytics from your media planning and buying, not really!
- Washington Post to overhaul newsroom structure.
Deals/M&A
- Tastemade bought by Wonder.
- Redbird acquries Paved.
- Chartbeat acquires ad software company FatTail.
- Thanks raises $2.6m to scale its customer-first ad network.
Campaign of the week
- Basecamp sponsored a UFO in Levls IO flight simulator game.
- An Italian backdrop, two world-class drivers and a Peroni Nastro Azzurro 0.0% surprise for 2025.
View all 2024 best campaigns.
Smartest commentary
- “It’s 2025 and most content is still written for humans instead of LLMs. 99.9% of attention is about to be LLM attention, not human attention.” @karpathy.
Datapoints of note
- Ninety-four percent of US advertisers said they were concerned about the impact of tariffs on ad spend, according to a survey of 100 “advertising decision-makers” by the Interactive Advertising Bureau conducted in February. Of those surveyed, 45% said they planned to reduce overall ad spend.
- Pixalate Research Finds 14,906 Google & Apple-Hosted Mobile Apps With 32+ Million Downloads in Europe Likely Violating GDPR.
- Substack now has over 5m paid subscribers.
- Seeing Open Web CPMs down significantly YOY.
Events
- Native Advertising Institute is holding their first US based event in April.
- Media breakfast on the 19th, let me know if you’re about and want to join.
View all 2024 datapoints of note.
That’s it for this week.
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