LLMs & CHATBOTS
OpenAI Names First AOR
“The appointment marks OpenAI’s first global media agency partnership, following a mix of in-house and project efforts. It comes as OpenAI accelerates its consumer marketing investment.”
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OpenAI Names PHD Global Media AOR As It Ramps Up Advertising (August 6) – Adweek
From tipsheet: OpenAI is getting all the “oars in the water” as they prepare to eventually go public.
LLMs & CHATBOTS
Quarterly results and AI performance
With quarterly earnings reports moving into the rear view mirror, CNBC took a look at “The winners and losers in tech’s AI-powered ad race” on Friday.
VP Jasmine Enberg, a principal analyst at eMarketer commented on the ad industry’s results, “I think one of the things that its earnings taught us was that you can spend a lot of money on AI when your core business is doing well, and especially when your core business has been already benefiting from the investments that you’ve made in AI…” – i.e. companies such as Meta and Google.
The article noted that good results in the ad industry began with the consumer’s willingness to spend.
Read more on CNBC. (August 8)
BRANDS
Amazon’s Brand+, Performance+
CEO Adam Epstein of AI-enabled media planning tech platform, Gigi, joined Mobile Dev Memo analyst Eric Seufert for an in-depth look at the Amazon ad system known as Amazon DSP.
From tipsheet: I’m not sure I’ve heard or read a better, “real world” overview of the Amazon DSP than this podcast.
Mr. Epstein explained the details of Amazon DSP’s growth and its importance to the overall Amazon ad business. Sponsored listings dominate today, but it’s capped—it can only grow so big—said Mr. Epstein. The DSP, he said, is the future growth engine by using AI as well as targeting ad tech firms’ margins (The Trade Desk gets a mention) and more partnerships – such as the one with Roku which extends audience matching, and therefore measurement signal, across CTV inventory.
Messrs. Seufert and Epstein discussed Amazon DSP’s AI products: (lightly edited)
Eric Seufert: “I want to talk about Amazon’s AI-enabled automation products. [Amazon has] Brand+, Performance+. It would be forgivable for someone to bucket those two into the [Google] Performance Max and [Meta] Advantage+ paradigm, but talk to me about how they are different.
Adam Epstein: “Yeah, so they’re very different products than the AI products that have come out from Google and Facebook over the past few years, in that they are just audiences. So it’s not… you give an outcome and let the AI go ‘off the rails’ and will report on the ultimate output of that outcome, and then the Performance+ campaigns will go on any type of inventory within Google’s capabilities, and Advantage+ will go on any type of inventory within Meta’s. Within Amazon, it’s literally just building an audience.”
Hear more on the Apple Podcasts app. (August 6)
Mr. Epstein said that despite Meta’s momentum with DTC and Facebook’s SMB market, the ultimate opportunity with AI in ads is with whomever controls spend with the largest brands (admittedly his own company’s target client). He is a believer in agencies, too, where Epstein believes margin expansion is on its way.
More: “Podcast: Amazon’s advertising strategy (with Adam Epstein)” (August 6) – Mobile Dev Memo
BRANDS
Superintelligence and the marketer
“‘One of the products they’re currently working on allows Meta’s AI technology to sift through all the videos and Reels across Meta’s platforms and make them all contextually indexable,’ said Shamsul Chowdhury, global evp paid social at Jellyfish.”
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Meta’s Superintelligence Labs is already becoming part of the pitch to marketers (August 8) – Digiday
AGENCIES
Future of the FTE
Podcast: “In this episode of Signal & Noise, [Brett House, Rio Longacre] and guest Shiv Gupta (Founder & CEO of U of Digital) dive into the seismic impact AI is having on the advertising industry. They explore Meta’s bold push toward fully automated media buying, question the future of the agency FTE (full-time employee) model, and examine how AI could upend traditional workflows while opening the door for new roles, business models, and human-centered strategy.”
- “Rise of the Machines: Is the Media Buying FTE Model DOA with Shiv Gupta” (August 6) – MediaRadar
- And, listen on the Apple Podcasts app.
SELL-SIDE
About those Google Search referrals
Search Engine Roundtable’s Barry Schwartz reviewed last week’s blog post by Google VP Liz Reid, which said in so many words, that search referrals to publishers are as robust as ever and, if anything, only being enhanced by Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode.
Mr. Schwartz found one person that agreed with VP Reid: Google’s President of Europe, Debbie Kostin. Ms. Kostin wrote on LinkedIn:
“AI is driving the most significant upgrade to Google Search we’ve ever seen. And with AI Overviews and AI Mode, we’re seeing that people are searching more than ever…”
Read more on LI. (August 6)
But as Mr. Schwartz polled his sources – which he kept adding to the article – almost all disagreed with Google as some called the big tech firm’s positioning a form of “gaslighting.”
SEO consultant Aleyda Solis saw a double-edge sword in Google’s announcement about improved search traffic as she explained on on X:
“Sorry, but if most of the sites that have ultimately increased in clicks/traffic despite AI Overviews are mainly the biggest platforms on the Web -owned by big corp’s- (that Google has partnerships with as well, like Reddit) and Google’s own ones (like YouTube), rather than independent sites offering information, products and services, owned by small or medium sized businesses it does hurt the health of the Web ecosystem.”
Read more on Search Engine Roundtable. (August 7)
From tipsheet: The real-time and at-scale nature of social media content appears to be something that AI prefers. How search and answer engines balance “real-time” with trusted evergreen sources will be something to watch.
TECH
AI and The Trade Desk
In an article on Friday titled, “Ad Tech Company Trade Desk Downgraded as Amazon, AI Reshape Digital Market,” The Wall Street Journal’s Patrick Coffee looks into the details of The Trade Desk’s stock drop of more than 30% post-earnings..
According to Mr. Coffee, AI and its effect on diminishing search traffic to the open web is one reason for the reduced prospects for The Trade Desk.
Analyst Brian Wieser of Madison and Wall told the WSJ that “Trade Desk’s narrow focus as a demand-side platform selling digital ad inventory to brands and agencies explains both its continued success with marketers and the skepticism of analysts. (…) ‘At the end of the day, this is a single-product company in a niche part of the industry,” said Wieser. ‘The company is doing great. I think that one has to separate the valuation of the company from the company itself.’”
Amazon’s DSP is the other culprit. Read more. (August 8)
More:
- The Trade Desk Reports Second Quarter 2025 Financial Results (August 7) – The Trade Desk IR webite
- The Trade Desk Appoints Rembrand’s Omar Tawakol to its Board – Omar Tawakol on LinkedIn
From tipsheet: This isn’t the first publicly-traded board for Mr. Tawakol. He’s also on LiveRamp’s board.
TECH
Contextual and the LLM
On AdTech AdTalk’ most recent podcast, hosts Chalice AI’s Adam Heimlich and Gamera’s Gareth Glaser take the deep dive on, well, everything they can possibly fit into an hour about ad tech. Worth a listen. Aditude’s Justin Wohl joined in.
The team discussed the steady commodification of contextual in ad tech.
Also, Mr. Heimlich revealed how his firm is using Meta’s Llama and other large language models (LLM) within Snowflake’s data cloud to find contextual categories of web pages. Mr. Glaser was adamant that Prebid’s (open source tools for header bidding) contextual capabilities needed an update given Heimlich’s revelation.
Hear the episode on YouTube now. (August 8)
Or, hear it on the Apple Podcast app shortly.
TECH
Pinterest Performance+ AI platform
Last Thursday, Pinterest reported earnings which did not meet Wall Street investors’ expectations as the stock slipped 10%. However, the results showed Pinterest’’s transition to AI ad tools is having benefits.
CEO Bill Ready “touted that AI tools from Pinterest are improving the ‘actionability’ of its advertising,” according to Investor’s Business Daily on Friday.
Post-earnings call, analyst Albert Fox of AInvest wrote about the long term strategy for the social media company:
“Pinterest’s AI-driven ad strategy is not merely a response to competition—it is a calculated effort to redefine its role in the digital ecosystem. The launch of Pinterest Performance+, an AI automation suite, has already delivered measurable results. Beta tests showed a 10% improvement in cost per acquisition (CPA) and cost per click (CPC) for advertisers, with case studies like Prada and Walgreens demonstrating outsized gains. These tools are not just incremental upgrades; they represent a fundamental shift toward real-time optimization and intent-based targeting.”
More:
- Pinterest’s Q2 2025 results (August 7) – Pinterest Investor Relations
- Pinterest profit miss overshadows Gen Z, AI-driven growth (August 8) – Reuters on Yahoo!Finance
PROMPT
What is one data type for ad targeting that is not available now, but will be in 5 years?
Response from Mistral’s Le Chat:
Predicting a specific data type for ad targeting that isn’t available now but will be in five years involves some speculation, but one emerging area is Biometric Data. This could include data from advanced wearable devices and health monitors that go beyond current capabilities. Here are a few examples…
MORE
- Will GEO replace SEO – or become part of it? (August 8) – Search Engine Land
- End of De Minimis Alarms E-Commerce Sellers, Consumers (August 5) – The Wall Street Journal
- Amazon may bring ads to Alexa+ in least surprising move ever (August 5) – Tom’s Guide
- B2B: “Travel Agents’ 2025 Strategies: AI, Sustainability, and Digital Marketing” – WebProNews (August 8)