AI company Anthropic seized an opportunity to differentiate itself from OpenAI yesterday as OpenAI’s ChatGPT begins to articulate an ad strategy.
Anthropic didn’t say ads were bad, but they weren’t right for the chatbot:
“There are many good places for advertising. A conversation with Claude is not one of them.
Advertising drives competition, helps people discover new products, and allows services like email and social media to be offered for free. We’ve run our own ad campaigns, and our AI models have, in turn, helped many of our customers in the advertising industry.
But including ads in conversations with Claude would be incompatible with what we want Claude to be: a genuinely helpful assistant for work and for deep thinking.”
Anthropic has pursued a primarily B2B strategy with its LLMs and coding tools as well as its chatbot Claude whereas OpenAI has led with a consumer strategy via ChatGPT.
Claude and agentic commerce
But, Anthropic made clear the company sees opportunity with agentic commerce for Claude and, therefore, its own consumer strategy:
“We’re particularly interested in the potential of agentic commerce, where Claude acts on a user’s behalf to handle a purchase or booking end to end. And we’ll continue to build features that enable our users to find, compare, or buy products, connect with businesses, and more—when they choose to do so.”
Read: “Claude is a space to think” (February 4) – Anthropic
Anthropic loves Super Bowl ads
Ironically, Anthropic plans on making an ad buy in the upcoming Super Bowl in order to further roast OpenAI and ChatGPT over its “ads in a chatbot” choice.
The Wall Street Journal’s Suzanne Vranica reported, “Anthropic’s goal is to position itself as a ‘different choice’ for users based on business models and values, said Andrew Stirk, the company’s head of brand marketing.”
Read: “Anthropic Takes Aim at OpenAI’s ChatGPT in Super Bowl Ad Debut” (February 4) – The Wall Street Journal (subscription)
From tipsheet #1: So, you can’t be a helpful assistant and have ads nearby? This is a precious point of view. See Google Search.
And yes, Google has the Gemini chatbot and it will not have advertising anytime soon as it looks to differentiate its chatbot from ChatGPT. Nevertheless, Google Search pulses with the Gemini LLM and monetizes with ads at will.
Will there be a separate ad-supported Claude someday if adoption takes off with consumers? Yes – and particularly as advertising continues to improve due to AI innovation.
From tipsheet #2: How agentic commerce plays out with Anthropic and one of its largest investors, Amazon, is something to watch. You can bet Amazon will be defending its enormous and high-margin ads business in any agentic commerce product.
LLMs & CHATBOTS
Developments
- OpenAI models could help power Alexa as part of Amazon investment deal (February 4) – CNBC
- Meta’s new Avocado model is company’s most capable pre-trained LLM, according to a company memo (February 4) – The Information (subscription)
- Microsoft’s Pivotal AI Product Is Running Into Big Problems (February 3) – The Wall Street Journal (subscription)
LLMs & CHATBOTS
Reaction: Anthropic, ads and Super Bowl
Industry reaction to Anthropic’s statement and Super Bowl ad varied.
Here’s a sample:
“First, the good part of the Anthropic ads: they are funny, and I laughed. But I wonder why Anthropic would go for something so clearly dishonest. Our most important principle for ads says that we won’t do exactly this…” – Sam Altman, CEO, OpenAI on X (February 4)
“This kind of condescending attitude toward digital advertising is economic chauvinism, and it represents a desire for technological gatekeeping. And the idea that ads will necessarily influence chatbot content is overstated, borderline anachronistic…” – Eric Seufert, analyst, Mobile Dev Memo on X (February 4)
“Users have ad-free alternatives of similar (or better) quality, and will likely move there to avoid ads. Anthropic’s statement doubles down on this by positioning it as a counter to the direction of OpenAI.” – Ruben Schreurs, CEO, Ebiquity on LinkedIn (February 4)
“I wonder what Anthropic’s [Super Bowl] ad is supposed to do for them… why step on the feet of a company that is no direct API competitor? Or perhaps they want to weaken the prospective ad revenue stream that OpenAI might use to finance growing their own API business? (Which they will certainly do.)” – Karsten Weide, analyst, W Media Research on LinkedIn (February 4)
From tipsheet: Outside of the advertising industry — and for users that never liked advertising in their chatbot to begin with — the reaction appeared to be decidedly in Anthropic’s favor.
FINANCIALS
Alphabet reports big Q4 2025
Yesterday, Alphabet/Google reported results for Q4 2025: “Consolidated Alphabet revenues increased 18%, or 17% in constant currency, to $113.8 billion.”
17—18%?.. that’s incredible for a $4 trillion company.
The company’s performance exceeded Wall Street’s expectations, according to CNBC.
In its earnings press release, Alphabet highlighted double-digit ads strength in Google Search, which is enabled by Gemini LLMs.
And similar to Meta and other AI giants, Alphabet/Google’s capital expenditures are going way up, too:
- On ad revenues: “Google Services revenues increased 14% to $95.9 billion, led by 17% growth in Google Search & other, 17% in Google subscriptions, platforms, and devices, and 9% in YouTube ads.”
- On YouTube: “YouTube revenue across ads and subscriptions exceeded $60 billion for the full year 2025.”
- On Gemini: “Gemini App has grown to over 750 million monthly active users.” (Was 650 million in October, 350 million last March and 90 million in October 2024. Source.)
- On AI infra spending: “…our 2026 CapEx investments are anticipated to be in the range of $175 to $185 billion.”
On X late yesterday, Wall Street analyst Gene Munster said about Google’s Q4 results and the slide in the company’s stock price after-hours: “[Google] down 1% on these results is hard to believe and speaks to investors’ fears are not going away. Good news is investors over time will likely give the stock credit.”
Post-earnings report, Google VP/GM of Ads and Commerce Vidhya Srinivasan made several observations on LinkedIn including: “With AI Max – which uses AI-powered features that tap into keywordless targeting – brands like Aritzia (case study) found new high-value customers that traditional strategies miss. For Aritzia, this resulted in a remarkable 80% incremental uplift in conversion value.” Read more. (February 4)
Read: “Alphabet Announces Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2025 Results” (February 4) – Alphabet Investor Relations (PDF)
SELL-SIDE
Publisher People Inc. delivers Q4 results
Within parent company IAC’s Q4 2025 results released yesterday, People Inc. showed resiliency as it moves away from its dependency on dwindling Google Search referral traffic.
AdExchanger’s Anthony Vargas covered IAC’s earnings call, which included People Inc. CEO Neil Vogel, and reported:
“This drop-off in search referrals contributed to a 13% year-over-year reduction in People Inc.’s core sessions in Q4.
No big deal, though, because People Inc.’s digital revenue grew by 14% YOY in the same quarter, to a total of $355 million. It was the company’s highest digital growth rate in the last five quarters.”
The company’s D/Cipher contextual ad targeting platform is also showing traction in spite of a digital ad market that Vogel said was a “six out of 10”.
Read more in AdExchanger. (February 4)
More:
- IAC Inc. (IAC) Q4 FY2025 earnings call transcript (February 4) – Yahoo! Finance
- “People Inc. Q4 2025 is the clearest Google Search wake-up call yet…” (February 4) – Matthew Scott Goldstein on LinkedIn
PROTOCOLS
Agentic protocols and adoption
Spinning out of this week’s IAB Annual Leadership Meeting, Adweek’s Trishla Ostwal reviewed the early days of advertising protocols and observed yesterday:
“IAB Tech Lab’s ARTF is more preoccupied with how efficiently code runs, while AdCP is more concerned with creating a shared language that allows agents to run natural language instructions correctly. But each protocol points to a future in which AI agents can plan, buy and optimize media across platforms more easily.”
Visibility on protocol traction is still ahead as Bryan Quinn, cofounder and president of Shopsense AI, told Ostwal:
“Some of these protocols may have some headwinds as they try and navigate the internal dynamics on getting prioritization against other opportunities that have incremental revenue attached to them.”
Read more in Adweek. (February 4)
From tipsheet: Things are just getting started.
BRANDS
B2B marketing: Adobe buying ads to talk AI
Adobe spent nearly $1.4 billion on advertising in 2025 to try and strengthen its brand as a company that will benefit from AI transformation, according to Bloomberg.
The company’s market cap stands at approximately $113 billion today — down more than one-third from its value a year ago — as public markets fret that Adobe’s software subscription business model is going to be overrun by AI and competitors.
Bloomberg’s Brody Ford provided context on Adobe’s spend:
“The marketing effort was more than a 30% increase over the prior year’s spending, according to filings from the maker of creative software. It also represented a significantly higher share of sales going toward advertising than other major tech companies like Salesforce Inc. and Meta Platforms Inc.”
Read more in Bloomberg. (February 4 – subscription)
From tipsheet: Adobe’s past four quarters have shown steady ~10–11% year-over-year revenue growth as well as increased profitability. But, the negative Wall Street sentiment about traditional SaaS companies has been overwhelming.
RETAIL MEDIA
Advertising opportunity for Uber
On Uber’s earnings call for its Q4 2025 financial results, Uber executives addressed Uber’s delivery advertising and its growth, which is well beyond its initial target.
According to a Motley Fool earnings call transcript, incoming CFO Balaji Krishnamurthy said in response to a Wall Street analyst’s question:
“So on ads, we are very pleased with the momentum that we are seeing.
As you rightly pointed out, we had, many years ago, talked about 2% as the potential ceiling for penetration with delivery advertising. What we are seeing is that the opportunity size here is potentially much larger. And as we think through where we are on the journey with enterprises versus SMBs, SMB ad penetration is a lot higher (…) and enterprise year-on-year growth is now outpacing SMBs by a lot more. So in a way, enterprise advertising is playing catch up.
And that means there is going to be a lot of runway here. At the same time, our products on grocery and retail are a lot more nascent, and there is going to be an opportunity for us to grow there as well.”
Read the transcript. (February 4)
From tipsheet: AI’s involvement through ads targeting, optimization, workflow, etc. is not explicit here. But, the Uber example could be a way AI opportunity manifests itself in the future: retail media keeps growing.
SELL-SIDE
Skai integrates Reddit’s ad platform
“Exciting to see how Skai leads the way when it comes to publisher integrations for our clients, so they can be where they need to be…In an era of AI-powered discovery, trusted human conversations matter more than ever.
That’s why I’m so excited to announce Skai’s new partnership with Reddit, Inc., the home of over 100,000 communities and the No. 1 most-cited domain across AI platforms…”
From the press release:
“Through the partnership, Skai is building native support for Reddit Ads within its omnichannel platform, bringing Reddit into core planning, execution, and measurement workflows. Initial capabilities focus on account connectivity, reporting, and analytics powered by Skai’s GenAI marketing agent Celeste, giving advertisers unified visibility into Reddit performance alongside their other media investments.”
Read the release. (February 4)
From tipsheet #1: Skai was Kenshoo, a performance marketing platform, up until 2021 when it tilted into an ecommerce/DTC/omnichannel offering.
From tipsheet #2: Reddit Ads ads get you cited in LLMs? Discuss.
LLMs & CHATBOTS
ChatGPT ads and the missing intent
tvScientific (part of Pinterest pending the “close”) CEO Jason Fairchild provided a review of ChatGPT ads on LinkedIn yesterday. He took all of what is known about the ad strategy at face value — he was unimpressed.
Among his criticisms, Fairchild believes OpenAI is missing a chance at relevance with the user:
“Intent is a terrible thing to waste. Search intent is the most valuable signal in advertising. When a user tells you exactly what they are looking for, the only right response is a relevant ad (not a glorified billboard).
If I were building ChatGPT’s ad business, I wouldn’t try to reinvent the wheel. I’d look at what actually works: mapping explicit intent to outcomes-driven advertising…”
Read more on LinkedIn. (February 4)
From tipsheet: Mr. Fairchild’s points are well-presented and true, for now. OpenAI’s ChatGPT ad strategy will get to where he’s pointing someday.
MORE
- “Today, CloudX is generally available…” (February 4) – Jim Payne, CEO, CloudX on LinkedIn
- When Does AI Help Vs. Hurt Marketing? This Video Ad Platform (Airpost) Aims To Draw The Line (February 4) – AdExchanger
- Cognitiv Announces Strong 2025 Business Performance Driven by 388% Growth in ContextGPT (February 4) – press release
- Opinion: “In Google Ads automation, everything is a signal in 2026” (February 4) – Search Engine Land