In “A Billion-Dollar Question Hangs Over the New AI Search Marketing Industry,” The Wall Street Journal examined the crossroads of search engine optimization and generative/answer engine optimization (GEO/AEO) yesterday — are they the same?
Answer: Depends on who you talk to.
The WSJ’s Patrick Coffee found one entrepreneur (Benjamin Houy) who returned to traditional SEO after concluding that tactics for SEO were essentially the same as GEO.
But, Coffee also spoke with entrepreneurs having a slightly more nuanced “take” who think GEO is going to result in “a merging of disciplines” such as Profound CEO James Cadwallader.
From the article:
“Part of the solution for companies seeking bigger or better profiles in AI results is to make sure large language models have material to ingest, for example by putting out more news releases, according to Cadwallader. That matters more than in traditional SEO because LLMs generally need more information to answer detailed, conversational questions that build on a given user’s history.
‘There’s no mystery around it,’ he said. ‘If you create lots of content, the models will suck it in.’”
Read more in The WSJ. (December 18 – subscription)
Coffee also previewed the article on LinkedIn here and pulled an impressive stat:
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“Data from Semrush shows that Black Friday LLM referral traffic to big retail sites grew 800% year over year.”
From tipsheet: It was only a month ago that Semrush data showed “PRnewswire[dot]com was the top percentage gainer per prompt in ChatGPT month-over-month.”
Send more press releases in 2026!
LLMS & CHATBOTS
Developments
- Introducing GPT-5.2-Codex (December 18) – OpenAI
- Anthropic launches enterprise ‘Agent Skills’ and opens the standard, challenging OpenAI in workplace AI (December 18) – VentureBeat
- 24 companies join the US Genesis Mission to boost the use of AI for scientific discovery (December 18) – Bloomberg (subscription)
RETAIL MEDIA
Walmart Connect talks AI products
Walmart Connect SVP of sales Ryan Mayward walked Marketing Dive’s Chris Kelly through his company’s advertising solutions yesterday.
Mayward said that “CTV as a whole is the fastest growing part of Walmart Connect, and Vizio is helping to fuel that.” But AI is central to his company’s success, too.
From Marketing Dive:
“Walmart Connect is expected to make announcements related to AI at the annual CES trade show in January, but has already applied AI to several parts of its adtech stack.
AI is integrated into its creative builder, where it can create image and video content quickly, cheaply and with high quality. The tech also powers a programmatic solution that has democratized advertiser access to display inventory in its app, and has improved bidding and optimization in the search experience. Similarly, AI technology is helping brands build their own shops in the Walmart app in just minutes.
Outside of advertising, Walmart is experimenting with AI through Sparky, its customer-facing generative AI assistant, and via a partnership with OpenAI that will bring shopping to ChatGPT. And while the rise of agentic commerce could change how consumers shop — and how advertisers spend on Walmart Connect — the retailer is embracing experimentation.”
Read: Inside Walmart Connect as retail media, CTV convergence accelerates (December 18) – Marketing Dive
From tipsheet: Walmart is another company to watch when it releases its earnings report in 2026. How do Sparky and ChatGPT deliver to the bottom line? This feels like an important narrative to track in 2026: yield from the chatbot.
PLATFORMS
The Trade Desk’s Jeff Green on re-org
“Yesterday we did the biggest re-org in TTD history. It is all an effort to spread out the ~750 people we hired just this year (so far) and focus all ~4000 to make the best of 2026! Of course we made big additions to our C-Suite this year with new a COO, CRO, and CFO. You’ve probably seen those announcements. But many don’t know this…
At TTD we’ve been hiring while other tech players have put in place hiring freezes. But even more importantly, we’ve assembled an amazing team—one of the best ever pointed at ad tech and the monetization of the open internet…”
Read: Jeff Green, CEO, The Trade Desk on Linkedin last night. (December 18)
RETAIL MEDIA
Lowe’s doubles conversions w/ chatbots
It’s another chatbot-on-a-publisher-website story: home improvement retailer Lowe’s website is seeing the benefits of working with OpenAI, according to Modern Retail. Signal, anyone?
Conversational commerce is here and just needs to get some ads to push it over the line.
Modern Retail’s Melissa Daniels reported this week:
“Mylow, a shopping assistant powered by ChatGPT that launched in March, is already driving double the conversion rate for online shoppers compared to those who don’t use it. But looking ahead, Joe Cano, Lowe’s SVP of Digital Commerce, said the company envisions doing more with AI-powered visualization to help people figure out what to buy — for example, what products they need to create a midcentury modern dream kitchen, or what furniture and fixtures would complete their country cottage office.”
From tipsheet: The shopping assistant has come a long away from “ye olde” decision tree. Though there was no discussion of ads within the Lowe’s chatbot, from a Lowe’s perspective, why wouldn’t you run targeted media in, or around, the chatbot?
Hey OpenAI: Idea. Why don’t you work with select retailers and optimize your partners’ chatbot ads. In the process, you could fine-tune an ad strategy for the “mother ship” on ChatGPT[dot]com.
Something to watch for in 2026.
BRANDS
Agentic workflow previewing campaign results
What if you could see campaign results for your creative before the campaign ran?
That’s the pitch coming from Adverteyes[dot]ai and its CEO Max Kalehoff as he announced a new integration on LinkedIn of his company’s tech with Clinch’s omnichannel ad platform.
Mr. Kalehoff explained:
“By embedding sales-validated human attention and emotion signals directly into an agentic creative workflow, Clinch is pointing to what’s next: predicting how real people will respond before media dollars are spent.
This helps advertisers rise above the flood of AI content slop, bot traffic, machine-generated media metrics, and self-reported survey claims.”
Read more on LinkedIn. (December 18)
Adverteyes positions itself as a creative intelligence company.
More: Clinch Introduces “Predict IQ Scores” to Help Advertisers Validate Creative Effectiveness Pre-Launch (December 18) – Clinch
From tipsheet: Realeyes spin out of Adverteyes in November is a concentrated effort to productize Realeyes tech in advertising as well as target the emerging opportunity with AI.
TECH
Salesforce acquires AI marketing startup
The Information reported on Wednesday that Salesforce bought AI marketing startup Qualified, founded by CEO Kraig Swensrud, for between $1 billion and $1.5 billion.
“The deal reflects the large number of companies that are still using the web to generate sales leads. Qualified sells an AI agent called Piper that companies can use to greet website visitors, determine what products they’re interested in, and relay this information to human salespeople. Salesforce already offers similar features through its agent-building service, Agentforce, but Qualified, co-founded by former Salesforce executives, has deeper experience in this area.”
Read more in The Information. (December 17)
From tipsheet: M&A feels like it’s picking up.
PEOPLE MOVES
Now hiring
- John Nitti and Sam Cox join AdMarketplace as Global Chief Business Officer and Chief Product Officer, respectively (December 18) – press release
- Michael Kassan Joins Mediaocean vice chairman of its board (December 18) – press release
MORE
- “AI and Publishers in 2026: Compete or Collaborate?” (December 18) – ExchangeWire
- Opinion: “The Open Internet Can Still Win If Buyers and Sellers Unite Around Radical Transparency” (December 18) – Kurt Donnell, CEO, Freestar on AdExchanger
- AdCP: “At Ebiquity, a new role signals marketing’s shift from metrics to meaning” – Digiday (subscription)
- The Signals That Will Shape AI Ads (December 18) – Debra Aho Williamson on The AI Ad Economy
- Apple Boosting Ads On App Store (December 18) – MediaPost