Late yesterday, Amazon announced Q3 2025 earnings which included impressive growth from Amazon Web Services (AWS). In response, Wall Street investors sent the company’s stock up 10% in after-hours trading.
CEO Andy Jassy said in the earnings press release:
“We continue to see strong momentum and growth across Amazon as AI drives meaningful improvements in every corner of our business. AWS is growing at a pace we haven’t seen since 2022, re-accelerating to 20.2% YoY. We continue to see strong demand in AI and core infrastructure, and we’ve been focused on accelerating capacity…”
Buried in the financial statement was a 24% year-over-year increase for “advertising services” which netted out to $17.7 billion for the quarter —that’s almost 10% of Amazon’s $180 billion of net sales for Q3.
Read:
- Amazon cloud records 20% sales growth, topping estimates (October 30) – CNBC
- Amazon[dot]com Announces Third Quarter Results (October 30) – press release
SELL-SIDE
Ad tool benefits for Reddit
Social web publisher Reddit announced third-quarter revenue (“Revenue grew 68% year-over-year to $585 million.”) above estimates and attributed the gains to “AI-powered advertising tools that are boosting marketing spending on the social media platform.” Read more on Reuters. (October 30) Read the shareholder letter, too.
Reddit also said it would launch its own automated AI-enabled ad system similar to other platforms such as Meta’s Advantage+ and Google’s Performance Max.
More:
- Reddit Announces Third Quarter 2025 Results (October 30) – Reddit
- Interview: Reddit CEO on data scraping lawsuits against AI companies: ‘We see both sides of this’ – CNBC
From tipsheet: On where users are coming from today, CEO Steve Huffman said 50% of traffic comes direct, 50% comes from Google Search. He added, “Chatbots are not a traffic driver today.” That’s interesting. Reddit has been seen as a key site for marketers to place content for answer engine optimization (AEO) purposes. But, where’s the referral traffic, if any? Back to the marketer’s site somehow? Or, is AEO all about just being listed with no expectations on referrals?
TECH
Google earnings: AI edge, room to grow
In the wake of Wednesday’s Q3 2025 earnings report by Alphabet/Google, New Street Research analyst Daniel Salmon was unequivocal about the results in a note to investors:
“Search and Cloud growth underscore [Alphabet’s] AI edge
Strong topline results in ‘Search & Other’ along with positive qualitative color on the health of AI Overviews and monetization were a significant positive against the backdrop of (fading) doubt about [Alphabet’s] Search business and its ability to weather the storm of evolving consumer habits in the new AI paradigm. Cloud bookings and revenue growth were ahead of Street and in line with our thesis that continued capacity unlocks against a tight demand backdrop will continue to create a strong revenue growth trajectory.
[Alphabet] is firing on all cylinders following the antitrust remedies, moving quickly to bring its leading AI models to all areas of the business, including in personalized ad creative and content recommendations…”
Among many AI highlights shared by Alphabet executives with Wall Street analysts on Wednesday: Gemini as a workflow tool for ads. Philipp Schindler, Google SVP and CBO, said:
“We’re also applying Gemini internally to help us serve customers with increased speed, intelligence, and efficiency. Our Sales teams use Gemini enriched with Ads knowledge to streamline customer interactions. This increased productivity by over 10%, led to hundreds of millions in incremental revenue, and frees up sellers to engage with more customers at a deeper, more strategic level.”
Later, in response to an analyst’s question on Google Search’s AI Mode and AI Overviews, Schindler gave a brief ads update:
“…for the AI Overviews, even at our current baseline of ads, whether above, below, and within the AI response, overall, we see the monetization at approximately the same rate, and this is a great baseline for further innovation. We talked about this. We’re excited about where this can go.
And on the AI Mode side, we’re testing ads in AI Mode, and we’ll continue to test and learn before we expand this any further. So this in combination with what we mentioned about the commercial query overall development, I think we’re in a good place here.
You could also argue that on queries that historically have not been well-monetized, we think there’s a potential opportunity here where you can obviously imagine that we can build this out with smart AI integration.”
Read: Alphabet Q3 2025 earnings transcript. (October 29)
TECH
Meta’s Advantage+ infrastructure in Q3
On Meta’s earnings call this past Wednesday, Meta executives provided a rosy update at the intersection of Meta’s AI-enabled ad system, Advantage+, and the models and architecture which support it (Lattice, Andromeda and GEM).
For the optimization architecture known as Lattice, chief financial officer Susan Li shared that it continues to be refined and rolled out. She said on the earnings call, “In Q3 we rolled out Lattice to app ads, which drove a nearly 3% gain in conversions for that objective.
If Lattice is for prediction and optimization, Andromeda is the company’s AI-powered retrieval & infrastructure engine which pulls in ads to be shown to users. On that note, Ms. Li said, “We also significantly improved performance of Andromeda in Q3 by combining models across retrieval and early-stage ranking into a single model, driving a 14% increase in ads quality on Facebook surfaces.”
On GEM (“Generative Ads Recommendation” system which assists in personalization), and in answer to a question by a Wall Street analyst regarding expectations for future improvements for Meta’s ad tech, Ms. Li steered the answer toward the end product – Meta’s Advantage+ ad system – and said, “Advantage+ is an ongoing platform by which we both continue to expand the feature set that is available in Advantage+, and then expand the extensibility or the coverage of that feature set to — the broader set of advertisers.” Put another way, the innovation and updates never stop.
Read Meta’s Q3 2025 earnings call transcript here (PDF). (October 29)
More: “Meta’s investments in AI are delivering truly noteworthy improvements to its core business: conversion-optimized advertising…” (October 29) – Mobile Dev Memo analyst Eric Seufert on LinkedIn
LLMs & CHATBOTS
What’s up, Perplexity?
- Introducing Perplexity Patents: AI-Powered Patent Search for Everyone (October 30) – Perplexity
- Perplexity AI defeats trademark lawsuit over ‘Perplexity’ name (October 28) – Reuters
- Perplexity AI CEO Aravind Srinivas, PhD 21, on why he ditched pitch decks (October 21) – UC Berkeley Haas
TECH
AdCP reaction: The Trade Desk
The Current, a trade publication run by The Trade Desk, weighed in on Ad Context Protocol (AdCP) on Wednesday.
In a post titled, “A new agentic AI standard has the ad industry talking. What’s the big deal?”, The Trade Desk’s editorial manager Travis Clark wrote, “As of now, the so-called agentic revolution seems to be slow-going — more promise than practice.” —and, to his credit, Mr. Clark found industry voices on both sides of that opinion.
IAB Tech Lab CEO Anthony Katsur said, “What we don’t need is another industry trade group. (…) We have structures within the Tech Lab that are open-sourced, and anyone can work in [such as Ads[dot]Cert]. We already have solved some of the problems that this AdCP initiative is trying to… There’s no need to reinvent the wheel in some areas.”
Read more in The Current. (October 29)
Related: The Trade Desk Swipes at Walled Gardens in New Brand Campaign (October 30) – Adweek (subscription)
From tipsheet: Given that The Current could be seen as a mouthpiece for The Trade Desk — a major potential source of demand for AdCP — the article’s tone suggests muted enthusiasm from the company.
TECH
AdCP reaction: Omar Tawakol
Ad tech entrepreneur and current CEO of startup Rembrand, Omar Tawakol, weighed in on Ad Context Protocol yesterday and expressed interest:
“We see value in the new AdCP initiative, but I want to clarify where I think this will take hold. The programmatic auction process is entirely fair (and even optimal) for items that fit into a real-time bidded auction process and that is the majority of impression opportunities. However, not all media opportunities fit that model.
What about a sponsorship of a creator episode or the sponsorship of a show?…
Mr. Tawakol’s question relates directly to his startup, Rembrand, and its AI-enabled product placement solutions for online video advertising.
Read more from Mr. Tawakol on LinkedIn. (October 30)
More: Rembrand to test an MCP server that will interact with AI agents and generate ads as part of the AdCP initiative (October 29) – MediaPost
AGENCIES
WPP to invest more in AI
“WPP lowered its full-year organic revenue growth guidance as it reported weak third-quarter results in its first quarterly report released under new CEO Cindy Rose, who admitted that the holding company “hasn’t gone fast enough in adapting to the evolving needs of our clients…”
More:
- Cindy Rose reveals WPP turnaround plan—simplify the business, rebuild media, invest more in AI (October 30) – Ad Age
- Third Quarter 2025 Trading Update (October 30) – WPP
STARTUP
Making ads shoppable
The Trade Desk announced an “integration” with Shopsense AI for its sponsored product ads technology. Shopsense AI CEO Glenn Fishback said that the integration would give “brands a way to drive measurable commerce outcomes across premium content environments.” Read more detail on LinkedIn. (October 30)
And, see more on Shopsense.ai which explains, “Our Multi-Agent System automates, refines, and scales shoppable integrations in real time, ensuring every product match aligns contextually with content and audience intent.”
Adweek’s Trishla Ostwal reported, “The deal, made through The Trade Desk’s OpenPath supply integration, lets advertisers place shoppable product listings directly next to relevant editorial content—like a Nike shoe ad beside a marathon training article or a cookware link under a recipe video.” Read Adweek. (October 30)
From tipsheet: In the context of this integration or partnership, Shopsense pitches turning “content into commerce.” Another way of looking at it may also be turning ad placements into ecommerce websites. Ads keep getting “richer.”
TECH
What is ‘good data’
On Wednesday, Experian VP of product Budi Tanzi provided his company’s point-of-view on what “good data” means in a company blog post. All roads lead to Experian, as one might expect, but along the way he offered a framework: “In AI-driven marketing, data quality now defines success. ‘Good data’ in AI isn’t about volume; it’s about the balance of accuracy, freshness, consent, and interoperability.” And then he defines each of the four elements.
Read more from Mr. Tanzi on Experian’s Marketing Forward blog. (October 29)
SELL-SIDE
Getting around paywalls with AI browsers
The Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) saw a new challenge for media companies looking to fend off unauthorized (and uncompensated) access to content via AI.
CJR reported that OpenAI’s Atlas and Perplexity’s Comet—both AI-enabled browsers—can bypass paywalls:
“For instance, when we asked Atlas and Comet to retrieve the full text of a nine-thousand-word subscriber-exclusive article in the MIT Technology Review, the browsers were able to do it. When we issued the same prompt in ChatGPT’s and Perplexity’s standard interfaces, both responded that they could not access the article because the Review had blocked the companies’ crawlers.”
As the reporters note, the fix may not be an easy one for publishers:
“Because AI browsers like Comet and Atlas appear in site logs as normal Chrome sessions, blocking them might also prevent legitimate human users from accessing a site. This makes it much more difficult for publishers to detect, block, or monitor these AI agents.”
Read more. (October 30)
From tipsheet: For some password-protected publishing systems, the content is viewable even if you don’t have the password. CJR identified this as a “client-side overlay paywall.” Perhaps this signals a move to server-side paywalls in the age of AI?
MORE
- Apple beats on Q3 expectations, stock rises on strong outlook despite poor China sales (October 30) – Yahoo! Finance
- LLM optimization in 2026: Tracking, visibility, and what’s next for AI discovery (October 28) – Search Engine Land
- Canva’s new ‘Creative Operating System’ is actually a marketing workspace (October 30) – The Verge
- Google Labs & DeepMind Launch Pomelli AI Marketing Tool (October 29) – Search Engine Journal
- “Meta’s AI tools are going rogue and churning out some very strange ads” (October 30) – Business Insider