Edition #501
On quiet periods, AI search (lots there) and a return to brand marketing.
Ahead of earnings, public companies enter what is known as a quiet period. Where they won’t comment on stories or make big announcements. This is to clear the air and avoid any unfair releases or advantages. And to give focus to the earnings.
Now, savvy reporters and activists will sometimes use this window, to drop news, knowing the firm can’t or won’t respond.
A critical eye should go on these reports, because, the company can’t really offer a rebuttal till after earnings. By which time, the media narrative has probably moved on. And if it was bad, why dredge it back up. And those releasing the reports, know that, but they get the media spotlight for a bit, before it moves on. If the report is good enough to hold up to scrutiny, you’d want their comment on it.
This effect is that ahead of earnings, narratives can fester and swirl.
And I think that’s what we’ve seen with Google and AI Overviews. With almost hysteria around it.
That said, Google has now released earnings, with search growing, monthly active users up. And buried, is that the CPC on AI Overviews is higher, because the traffic converts better.
This means, as we roll from traditional search to AI search, the traffic we all receive, is going up in quality. Out with the old, in with the new. Monetization of this new high quality traffic hasn’t caught up yet, but it will.
Through dramatic change, beware of those trading fear for social impressions, and dig in to form opinions yourself.
Notable stories this week
- F1 proves it’s time for brands to become creators not just advertisers.
- How brands can rise about low-quality AI content.
- Facebook notifying accounts when they get expanded reach due to posting high quality content.
- Substack as OnlyFans.
- Can The Washington Post’s TikTok Guy Make It Without The Post?
- Amidst The Market Panic About “AI Slop”, YouTube Is Playing Chess
- Why LLMs might finally be good news for Premium Publishers.
- Newsweek hasn’t felt the AI squeeze.
- Google seeks licensing talks with News Groups.
- The new Google Trends API.
- WaPo pivots “third newsroom” to a more commercial venture.
- Gmail tests Demand Gen ecommerce ads in promotions tab.
- Publishers races against Google Zero doomsday clock.
- AI Search is growing more quickly than expected.
- Searchers less likely to click on links in Google Search with AI Overviews. Full report from Pew here.
- CMOs might be pushing ahead on AI, but lack of measurement’s holding them back.
- Why the CTV ad industry needs to prioritize more native ad formats.
- YouTube could be forced to promote British public service TV content.
- The return of brand marketing.
Deals/M&A
- Substack raises $100m. Congrats Hamish and team!
- Bari Weiss seeks more than $200m for media start-up The Free Press.
- Brainless acquires Exverus Media.
- Jeff Bezos is considering possible acquisition of CNBC.
Campaign of the week
- Ebay getting in front of car owners in their partnership with Top Gear Magazine, reminding them where else they could be getting their long weekend gear (or where to sell gear no longer needed).
Smartest commentary
- “Substack is a remarkable success as a cultural phenomenon. It is synonymous with the accelerated shift from institutional media to individual-led media.” –Brian Morrissey.
Datapoints of note
- Linkedin reach among creators drops 50%.
- TripleLift achieved a significant milestone during Prime Day 2025, recording a 10x growth in advertiser spend year-over-year compared to 2024.
- AI Overviews, Google’s AI search product that summarizes search results, now has upward of two billion monthly users across more than 200 countries and territories, Pichai said during Wednesday’s earnings call. That’s up from 1.5 billion monthly users last quarter.
- The Gemini app, which has the company’s AI chatbot, now has more than 450 million monthly active users.
- 34% of US adults have used ChatGPT, about double the share in 2023. And ChatGPT users send 2.5b prompts a day.
- Netflix [ad] impressions, as measured by DV, increased by 400% in the first half of 2025.
- 10% of the new websites created on the internet last month were built with Lovable.
- 66% of the people find Google’s AI Mode results more helpful than Google Search.
- Reddit forecasts $1.8b in ad revenue.
- AI Mode has 100m users.
- Netflix hunting to double its ad sales by the end of 2025.
Events
- Drinks in London coming up in August, let me know if you want to join.
That’s it for this week.
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