Edition #522
The protocol that will change the internet, Super Bowl Ads and everything OpenAI ads.
Fun fact, a kiwi directed three of the Super Bowl ads! Taika Waititi. I love that. When I watch, I’m usually trying to figure out which were filmed in New Zealand, often it’s at least three to four. But that was a neat fact I didn’t know. And who doesn’t love Taika, right?
The AI ads, didn’t get much credit from the industry, but the takeaway is that, they’re still trying to figure out what is the right message, for the majority of Americans who don’t yet use AI regularly.
We must remember though OpenAI and Anthropic are the challenger tech companies. Google must like that the two challengers are scrapping. Rather than focused on the behemoth.
But we’re still early days and there’s still a lot of innovation and development to come. This week, we even saw Google talk about WebMCP, a browser mechanism to access the MCP on a site. Meaning the chat assistant, accesses that on behalf of the user instead of parsing all the HTMl. Smart.
But how many people have MCPs? Today, virtually no one, mainly developer tools. But expect that to change.
Notable stories this week
- Retargeting has found its way to the chatbots.
- When AI Slop breaks the signals buyers trust.
- How Dave Jorgenson took the Washington Post video audience with him.
- Not just ‘A F**king Magazine’: The unexpected renaissance of corporate publications.
- OpenAI’s plan for ChatGPT ads starts with brands, not agencies.
- How The New York Times uses a custom AI tool to track the “manosphere”.
- ChatGPT starts serving ads, drawing early interest from major agencies.
- Your brand wasn’t built for machine speed.
- ChatGPT’s cheapest options now show your ads.
- Publishers are turning to AI-powered mathmen, but can it trump political machinations?
- Should news publishers be on Apple News? A UK report finds mixed results.
- The future of marketing looks a lot like engineering and AI roles.
- Moltbook suddenly goes viral, stirring up the tech community.
- OpenAI research quits over ad launch.
- Omnicom, WPP, and Dentsu Line Up Brands for OpenAI Pilot.
- Of course they’re putting ads in AI.
- AI licensing deals, protection measures aren’t slowing web scraping.
- Jeff Bezos made a mess at the Washington Post. It’s up to him to fix it.
- TBPN branded their gong with our brand and that’s driven a bunch of business.
- Why clipping is the new dominant form of media.
- A data rich view of how (and what) local news is working on Substack.
- Introducing AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools.
- The Athletic invest in live blogs, video to insulate sports overage from AI scraping.
- YouTubers aren’t relying on ad revenue anymore – here’s how some are diversifying.
- Xpln.ai enables attention-driven programmatic buying via Index Exchange.
- Amazon is considering launching an AI content marketplace for publishers.
- The case for and against bringing programmatic in-house.
- WebMCP is available for early preview.
- Programmatic is drawing more brands to this year’s Winter Olympics.
- Amazon Prime Video sued over ads in standard plan.
- How IKEA is making trendjacking part of its personality.
- Articles published on X up 10x, read up 17x.
- [From me] Is AI normal technology?
Deals/M&A
- Brandlight raises $30m to lead enterprise CMOs into the era of AI-native ads.
- Food52 sold for $10.3m as bankruptcy auction breaks up company.
- Candle Media sells ATTN back to its cofounders.
Campaign of the week
- You can just build things from OpenAI.
- M&S with their ‘Only Ingredients’ range.
Smartest commentary
- “The underpants of Moltbook have been exposed. 99% of its 1.5 million users are fake accounts, and the founding team staged the whole thing themselves.” 36kr.
- “The main reason that ads aren’t a surprise is because they’re the best way to bring a service on the internet to the largest possible number of consumers.” –Brian Kim.
Datapoints of note
- X reaching over 1b users in its community of apps. Articles published up 10x. Read up 17x.
- Grok reached 314m total visits in January.
- Across more than 20,000 short-lived domains, we found that the average lifespan was just over 95 days, with ads appearing roughly 60 days after registration. That window is short enough to outrun most blocklists, keyword scans, and domain-level quality checks.
- Bloomberg Media Tops 700,000 Subscribers as Revenue Rises 6% in 2025.
- Apple News is fairly opaque but the report estimates that the paid version (Apple News+) has more subscribers than any other individual news brand in the U.K. with 1.7 million subscribers. About half of the subscription revenue generated — roughly $136 million — is distributed to partner publications.
- Spotify hits a record 751m monthly users.
- 65% of ChatGPT usage qualifies as search, but this can be lower depending on how you define search.
- Super Bowl LX draws nearly 125m viewers, down 2% from 2025.
Events
- Next breakfast is coming up, let me know if you’d like to join.
That’s it for this week.
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