Cuisinart found that an AI-generated video created with Amazon Ads outperformed a traditionally produced version in a month-long A/B test, according to AdExchanger’s James Hercher.
Amazon’s AI creative toolkit includes two complementary tools: the conversational Creative Agent, launched last September as part of Creative Studio, and its AI Video Generator, which has steadily advanced over the past two years.
Kelsey Smithuysen, Amazon Marketing Director for Conair (which owns Cuisinart), said she expects the quality of AI-generated videos to continue improving to the point where they can be used with little or no editing.
Read: “For Cuisinart, AI-Generated Ads Are As Handy As A Kitchen Blender” (August 5) – AdExchanger
From tipsheet: AI is compressing the time between merchandising decisions and creative execution. As creative generation becomes nearly instantaneous, retail media campaigns can adapt to shifting products, inventory and promotions faster than traditional production allows.
SEARCH
Microsoft joins party: AI visibility + paid media
In a LinkedIn post highlighting recent product updates, Microsoft Advertising says marketers should use its new AI Visibility Topic Insights in Clarity, its free behavioral analytics tool, to improve not only generative engine optimization (GEO), but also paid search campaigns.
Here’s how, according to Microsoft:
- “Check your search terms against grounding queries.” (Grounding queries are: “The retrieval queries an AI system generates behind the scenes to find information needed to answer a user’s prompt.”)
- “Adjust keywords and negative keywords.”
- “Adapt ad creative and landing pages based on competitive intelligence.”
Keep in mind: Data such as a “grounding query” is only from Microsoft’s Copilot chatbot and other experiences powered by the Bing search index. Clarity can’t help you with the internals of ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, etc., other than referral information.
Microsoft Advertising also highlighted new Microsoft Performance Max experiments and expanded Ad Preview Hub to support Performance Max creative.
Read: Microsoft Advertising Product Newsletter (August 4) – LinkedIn
Related: See tipsheet’s Tuesday coverage of how Jellyfish, Profound and Evertune are combining AI visibility with paid media.
From tipsheet: Microsoft is bringing the same trend into search advertising. AI visibility is no longer just an SEO metric. It’s becoming another media signal that can inform campaign optimization across advertising platforms.
LLMs & CHATBOTS
Developments
- Org changes: “The next chapter of our AI momentum” (August 5) – Google
- Introducing Muse Code and Muse Spark 1.2 (August 5) – Meta AI
- Sandisk Revenue Soars on AI Data Storage Demand (August 5) – The Wall Street Journal (subscription)
FINANCIALS
Earnings reported yesterday
Public companies continue to report their latest quarterly financial results.
AppLovin
- Markets: AppLovin stock was down 15.7% in after-hours trading yesterday.
- Stat: Revenue of $1.924 billion, up 53% year-over-year; Adjusted EBITDA of $1.614 billion, up 58% year-over-year, with an 84% Adjusted EBITDA margin.
- CEO Adam Foroughi: (on the earnings call) “Adjusted EBITDA grew to a bit over 1.6 billion dollars, up more than 50 percent year over year. While this result lands just below our guidance range, the incremental investments were exactly where we believe they should be, in our technology.”
- CEO Adam Foroughi: (during earnings call Q&A) “In Q2, we didn’t have the same amount of [model] uplift that we normally have in any other prior quarter.”
- Company: AppLovin Announces Second Quarter 2026 Financial Results (August 5) – AppLovin
- AppLovin Investor Relations
- News: AppLovin Says Second-Quarter Results Fell Short of Its Standards (August 6) – The Wall Street Journal (subscription)
Shopify
- Markets: Shopify stock was up 16.9% yesterday.
- Stat: “Shopify achieved 34% revenue growth (33% in constant currency) and 18% free cash flow margins.”
- Harley Finkelstein, President, Shopify: “This was a monster quarter: more than 30% growth in GMV AND revenue AND gross profit AND free cash flow. We power every kind of business, and with AI, we’re expanding what’s possible for all of them. No one else comes close.”
- Lauren Nemeth, VP of Global Enterprise Revenue, Shopify on LinkedIn: “Here’s what’s underneath the numbers: Merchants are converting more of the traffic they already have. They’re spending less time on the operational toil that used to eat their week. They’re opening up revenue streams in agentic commerce that didn’t exist a year ago. And the Shop consumer ecosystem is compounding for all of them at once.”
- Company: Shopify Reports Second Quarter 2026 Results (August 5) – Shopify
- Shopify Investor Relations
- Read: Shopify says AI search is driving more traffic and sales, not replacing Google” (August 5) – TechCrunch
- Read: Shopify shares soar as forecast shows AI is boosting business, not disrupting (August 5) – CNBC
LiveRamp
- Markets: LiveRamp stock was unchanged in after-hours trading yesterday.
- Stat: “Total revenue was $214 million, up 10%; Subscription revenue was $160 million, up 8%; Marketplace & Other revenue was $54 million, up 15%.”
- CEO Scott Howe: “Fiscal 2027 is off to a strong start, with Q1 revenue
and operating income ahead of our internal projections. We continue to make good progress with our AI and agentic initiatives with the launch of the LiveRamp Agent Builders Lab and new partnerships with OpenAI, Databricks and Adobe. Finally, our previously announced transaction with Publicis Groupe
remains on track to close before the end of calendar 2026.” - Company: LiveRamp Announces Results for First Quarter Fiscal 2027 (August 5) – LiveRamp
- LiveRamp Investor Relations
Magnite
- Markets: Magnite stock was up 6.4% in after-hours trading yesterday.
- Stat: “Revenue of $192.8 million, up 11% year-over-year; Contribution ex-TAC attributable to CTV of $97.1 million, up 36% year-over-year, exceeded the high end of the guidance range of $90 to $92 million.”
- Stat: “Full-Year 2026 Expectations: Raising total Contribution ex-TAC growth to be between 13% and 14%, up from at least 11%.”
- CEO Michael Barrett: “We are pleased with our agentic product launches and partner support, and view these as a great future tailwind. We are uniquely positioned between supply and demand, and with our agentic offerings we believe we will benefit from serving as vital infrastructure for the future of digital advertising.”
- Company: Magnite Reports Second Quarter 2026 Results (August 5) – Magnite
- Magnite Investor Relations
- News: Magnite Doesn’t Want To Be A DSP. It Just Wants To Own The Decisioning Layer (August 6) – AdExchanger
Criteo
- Markets: Criteo stock was down 23.8% yesterday.
- Stat: “Appointed Connor McGogney as Chief Financial Officer, Effective August 10, 2026; Q2 2026 Media Spend of $1.1 Billion”
- CEO Michael Komasinski: “While our second quarter top line performance was disappointing, our long-term strategy remains unchanged. We remain confident in our Commerce Intelligence strategy and are strengthening execution, diversifying our business and positioning Criteo to help shape the next generation of AI driven commerce.”
- Company: Criteo Reports Second Quarter 2026 Results (August 5) – Criteo
- Criteo Investor Relations
- Read: “Criteo sinks as weak outlook overshadows earnings beat” (August 5) – Seeking Alpha
More earnings:
- Taboola: “Another quarter beating our ex-TAC and Adj. EBITDA guidance. The momentum we’re seeing gives us the confidence to raise our Full Year ex-TAC guidance to 9%.” (August 5) – Adam Singolda, CEO, Taboola on LinkedIn
- Zeta Global: “We just announced our Q2 results… Our 20th straight “beat and raise”; Raised annual revenue by $33 million to $1.818 billion; $443M in revenue, up 44% Y/Y (28% excluding M&A)” (August 4) – David Steinberg, CEO, Zeta Global on LinkedIn
- “The New York Times’s Revenue Rises 11%” (August 5) – The New York Times
From tipsheet: AI is becoming table stakes across advertising. The winners are no longer the companies announcing AI, they’re the ones proving it through faster growth, higher margins and stronger guidance.
PLATFORMS
Creative diversity beats creative perfection
Since making its self-serve ad platform, AppLovin Ads, generally available in late June (tipsheet Q&A), AppLovin has been publishing best practices for marketers.
In an article arguing that “more creative compounds into incremental customers on AppLovin,” the company says advertisers should continuously expand their creative libraries rather than search for a single winning ad. Because its AI predicts performance before significant delivery, marketers can test more creative with less wasted spend.
According to AppLovin, “The median user sees 8 distinct ads across 10 impressions before making a first purchase,” and ads that perform best on social often aren’t the ones that drive incremental customers on AppLovin’s platform.
Read: “The importance of creative volume and diversity” – AppLovin
Meta has made a similar case, arguing that AI is shifting competitive advantage from audience targeting toward creative diversification.
Read: “The Creative Advantage: Unlocking the Power of Diversification with Meta Andromeda” (April 2025) – Meta
From tipsheet: AI is changing the economics of creative testing. As AI lowers the cost of both generating and testing creative, marketers can afford to produce more specialized ads and let AI match the right message to the right customer.
MARKETING
Marketing leads AI transformation
From Ad Age reporter Asa Hiken:
-
“Zapier, the AI automation platform popular with brands and agencies, recently combined the roles of chief marketer and AI transformation officer, reflecting how brand leaders are taking the reins of technological change across their organizations in ways that extend far beyond advertising.”
Zapier CMO Dan Slagen has the title CAITO (Chief AI Transformation Officer). See LinkedIn.
Read: “Why Zapier put its CMO in charge of AI adoption—and what marketing leaders can learn from it” (August 5) – Ad Age (subscription)
From tipsheet: AI transformation inside enterprises may start with marketing, which is ironic because it’s often viewed as the first function to cut during downturns. In the AI era, marketing may become the proving ground for enterprise AI before the rest of the organization follows.
LLMs & CHATBOTS
ChatGPT Ads keeps expanding
From a “ChatGPT Ads Product Updates” email sent late yesterday, OpenAI announced several additions to its advertising platform, including:
- More conversion optimization: Conversion-optimized product feed campaigns (oCPC) entered beta, with new ways to clone and bulk-create conversion campaigns.
- Better measurement: New integrations with Triple Whale and Hightouch, plus expanded Pixel diagnostics and automatic Advanced Matching to improve conversion attribution.
- More commerce features: Testing multi-product carousel ads for product feeds.
- International expansion: ChatGPT Ads will launch in Brazil and Mexico in the coming week.
OpenAI also added dynamic URL parameters that automatically populate campaign and ad identifiers in landing-page URLs.
The ChatGPT Ads team is shipping quickly. Its previous product update arrived less than two weeks ago.
Related: “Hightouch supports Conversions API for ChatGPT Ads, helping advertisers set up better measurement and optimization in days” (July 29) – Hightouch blog
From tipsheet: ChatGPT Ads is entering the same maturation cycle as earlier digital advertising platforms. The focus is shifting from launching ad formats to improving optimization, measurement and advertiser workflows—the infrastructure that ultimately drives advertiser spending.
MEDIA
Reddit modernizes moderation for AI era
Reddit is overhauling its infrastructure and moderation tools, introducing an AI-powered Rules Hub that interprets community rules using large language models instead of keyword matching.
But human moderators will still be involved. A company news release explained in part:
-
“With Rules Hub, moderators will be able to choose which rules should be automatically enforced, decide what happens when a rule is triggered (send to queue, filter, or remove), preview the experience before enabling it, and review logs and insights to understand how community rules are performing.”
The company also plans to shift more third-party apps onto its Developer Platform while narrowing public API access over time.
Read: “Modernizing Reddit’s Infrastructure and Moderation Tools” (August 5) – Reddit
More: “Modernizing Reddit’s infrastructure with you” (August 5) – User “spez” (Reddit CEO Steve Huffman) on Reddit
From tipsheet: Reddit is evolving from open APIs toward a more governed platform. By combining LLM-based moderation, a managed Developer Platform and narrower public API access, Reddit is asserting greater control over how AI systems and other software access its data, interpret community rules and take actions.
MORE
- A debate is brewing over the risks and rewards of serving ads to AI agents (August 5) – Business Insider (subscription)
- TikTok Rolls Out Longer-Form AI Video Ads (August 5) – MediaPost
- Earnings: “Disney Looks to Make Disney+ the ‘Digital Centerpiece’ of Company” (August 5) – Adweek
- NAI issues ‘dos and don’ts’ guidance for AI, agentic workflows in adtech (August 5) – IAPP
- Opinion: Attribution is the comfort blanket of B2B marketing. (August 5) – Chris Bagnall on The Drum (registration)