Skip to content
Edition #483
Who is winning the AI search wars, newsletter hustlers and AI spending your ad dollars.
I wrote on this a while ago, but the thesis was that ChatGPT etc had a huge risk of being undermined by Google itself, because it has the muscle memory and ability to roll out AI products to billions.
And this story from BI seems to confirm that,
Google said Monday that it now sees more than 5 trillion searches a year. Barclays analysts took that figure — along with previous company disclosures — and did some back-of-the-napkin math to conclude Google queries may have grown over 20% over the two years since ChatGPT’s launch in late 2022.
Basically, bringing AI overviews in, from this lens, arguably is just the next evolution of search. It doesn’t mean ChatGPT can’t grow in other ways, for new use cases. But reinforces the notion that Google isn’t really threatened. At least for now.
Brian Morrissey’s piece on Newsletter Hustlers got sent to me a couple of times this week. Give it a read, I love the analogy. And also it show’s creator culture, around newsletters, is like a business in a box. We wrote on the origin of the newsletter a few years back, and newsletters tend to grow in times of distrust of mainstream media, then things zag and they start to join the fray. It’s an enduring pattern, zig zag.
Notable stories this week
- Newsletter hustlers.
- Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian teams with Kevin Rose to resurrect Digg.
- Snapchat shares insights into effective branded content approaches.
- Is Gen AI the saviour or destroyer of content marketing?
- Partnership ads: Instagrams money-making move for content creators.
- You’re not switching analytics tools. You’re switching how you work.
- ChatGPT isn’t slowing down Google just yet, and these numbers prove it.
- AI will soon dominate ad buying, whether marketers like it or not.
- What it means to measure ‘true ROI’.
- Creatives struggle with inconsistency metrics when measuring ad performance.
- Google has pulled nearly 200 apps due to extensive Android ad fraud scheme.
- Big changes afoot at Mozilla.
- Patch scales to 30,00 US communities with AI newsletters.
- Publishers no longer need to wonder if they’r on MFA blacklists.
- The future of media is based on AI, not IDs, says GroupM Brian Lesser.
Deals/M&A
- Viant technology announces acquisition of Lockr. Congrats Keith!
- Publicis Groupe to buy Loathe in a rare instance of agency-led ad tech consolidation.
- T-Mobile’s talks with Blis end in $175m sale.
- Firsthand raises $26m for brand agents.
Campaign of the week
- F1 Kick Sauber on Top Gear. Fun branded film for their car launch.
View all 2024 best campaigns.
Smartest commentary
- “AI buying agents are going to be directing upwards of 80% of digital media buys by 2030” –Ben Hovaness, Chief Media Officer, OMD.
- ^ I would predict a lot higher!
Datapoints of note
- Google said Monday that it now sees more than 5 trillion searches a year. Barclays analysts took that figure — along with previous company disclosures — and did some back-of-the-napkin math to conclude Google queries may have grown over 20% over the two years since ChatGPT’s launch in late 2022.
- Key stat: 36% of UK and US content and creative professionals cite inconsistent metrics across platforms and limited resources as the biggest hurdles in measuring digital content performance and ROI, according to October 2024 data from Canto and Ascend2.
- Netflix content spending, set to hit $18b in 2025, is ‘not anywhere near a ceiling’ CFO says.
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.
|
|---|