Edition #550
Drawing Prada highlights the value of hand crafted creative, Meta goes to 90 minutes & the Anthropic S1 drops.
Prada is the Campaign of the Week, with their hand crafted campaign, you’ll like it. This was an obvious implication of AI generated ads, that broadening and lowering the costs of production, would then lead luxury brands, to lean into hand made.
That being said, just because it was obvious, doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy it. But it taps into a wider vein or thread, that has been popping up. Brands, are seeking ways to creatively stand out, they always have. And trying to do that, in amongst 2,000 different creatives optimized for social, means it’s near impossible to have a creative execution, that can have a shared cultural experience. Which is driving the return of prestige media, or larger scale sponsorships, where it is easier to create a creative response in a shared experience.
The shared experience, gives the water cooler effect. We talk about it, partly because, we know it was a shared experience.
Another anecdote, which surprised me, was that election spend on the midterms is above the last election. A friend recalled, how they are just trying to get every single impression they can before Tuesday. Wow.
This, and the expanding of marketing budgets in response to AI, is making 2026 a stellar year.
The Anthropic S1 dropped this week, the document that previews the investment case & risks, ahead of a company going public. But a takeaway from it, their ambition is to be the B2B solution. And somewhat famously, they haven’t done any publisher deals.
So their view is, that general model training, is ok, off publicly available content. That is accessed in a reasonable manner. And so, lets say you accept that, a general model, is trying to figure out, general language and knowledge.
So their argument is, you shouldn’t have to pay additional licensing for that. As the expectation is, it’s for general outputs. And we’re not here to create specific consumer driven knowledge. We’re for business and enterprise knowledge.
However, other models are going, we also, want to be able to crawl your site, get the latest information and ground our queries in your data. And for that, we want a license to do so (but serve it to us in the right format etc etc).
So, for now, they’re not doing ads.
This approach, has put the Internet Archive in the crosshairs, as LLMs if they couldn’t reach content, would just get it from there. But then that meant publishers would stop pushing their content there, defeating the purpose of the archive in the first place. The Atlantic has a piece on just this issue.
Notable stories this week
- LinkedIn’s B2B Audiences are now available on CTV via Google DV360.
- Weiden+Kennedy launches entertainment division to make movies and shows – with and without brands.
- Related: From product placement to creative partnership: the new age of branded entertainment.
- Creators say it’s difficult to make money from news – with platform rules and brand guidelines.
- Nexxen & Brainless leverage Smart TV Home Screen advertising to expand audience reach.
- Pinterest opens its inventory to programmatic buyers.
- Mastercard partners with MrBeast.
- Substack cofounder: No deal with The Ringer, even as talent flocks to platform.
- Netflix users are watching less, not opening the app as often.
- Reddit moves to logged in experience as AI eats search.
- FreeWheel, Universal Ads headed to NBCU.
- The Times of London is gearing up to test ‘macro payments’.
- StackAdapt expands cross channel retargeting capabilities for ChatGPT Ads.
- Grok releases the first seven minutes of its AI-generated Odyssey.
- The Daily Mail tests GEO with brands ahead of AI visibility product.
- Instagram tests videos up to 90 minutes long but unlike YouTube it’s not sharing ad revenue.
- OptimizeRX is going programmatic.
- Why Spotify is struggling to grow its advertising business.
- Creators who show their sources build trust.
- A former CNN executive wants to take on YouTube with his own app.
- Vox launches its first app with an eye toward building paid memberships.
- Creators are now classified as small businesses, but what does that actually mean?
- Apple’s Safari crackdown pushes ad tech toward server side solutions.
- Google stock falls after earnings miss.
- Substack launches lists.
- TikTok playbook outlines the value of its high end ad options.
- Meta pledges to consult publishers before finalizing its new terms.
- The New York Times is adding more AI features to its cooking app, and users aren’t thrilled.
- Why the internet needs a memory.
- The case for the open internet by Jeff Green.
- Where have all the car commercials gone?
- Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway to launch Pivot Post newsletter.
- Life is back!
- Condé Nast’s Q4 Ad Business is forecast to fall short by over $35m.
- Walmart Opens Shopper Audiences to advertiser son its CTV Platform, Vibe
- Axios ahead: 2028 and beyond.
- Media 2031.
Deals/M&A
- Stagwell acquires Publisher Monetization network Freestar. Congrats Kurt!
- Meta acquires AI data platform Sundial. Meta acquires AI data platform Sundial.
- MacArthur Knight back $21m investment fund for local news.
Campaign of the week
- Drawing Prada, their hand crafted campaign. Wonderful.
Smartest commentary
- “Most content is commingled into individualized AI feeds, constantly adapting to match minds and interests. Humans will crave distinction and connection. Axios will serve them inside the LLMs and outside, in physical events and perhaps encrypted feeds beyond AI’s reach.” –Jim Vanderhei, Axios.
Datapoints of note
- 75 percent of consumers consider more brands when using AI search, and 54 percent have converted with a new brand.
- Supply side targeting now captures 37% of programmatic spend as buyers flee DSP constraints.
- Half of Shoppers plan to buy gifts like meals or event tickets these holidays.
Events
- Whiskey tasting getting penciled in, if you want to join, let me know.
That’s it for this week.
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