Yesterday, AI-enabled ad tech company Criteo announced that it has joined ChatGPT’s ads pilot.
Moreover, after testing “LLM platforms” last month with 500 Criteo retailers, the company said:
“Aggregated insights observed across Criteo’s U.S. clients show that users referred from LLM platforms like ChatGPT convert at approximately one and a half times the rate of other referral channels, reinforcing the high-intent nature of these AI experiences. As conversational discovery grows, this pilot represents an opportunity to thoughtfully evaluate how brands can participate in advertising within ChatGPT while also driving incremental demand back to retailer and brand destinations.”
Criteo CEO Michael Komasinski added on LinkedIn:
“This integration comes at a pivotal moment and represents an important step forward in advancing advertising in an emerging AI experience. We’re focused on thoughtfully shaping how brands using our platform become discoverable in ChatGPT, grounded in experiences that are additive, relevant, and built on user trust.”
Read more on LinkedIn. (March 2)
More:
- Criteo Joins OpenAI Advertising Pilot in ChatGPT (March 2) – Criteo
- “Criteo is bringing its 17,000 advertisers to ChatGPT in the first ad tech partnership in the AI ads program. (…) Why is it significant? Well, Criteo is embedded in retail media, across Google and other channels. And it’s fully invested in agentic commerce as the next big thing…” – Ad Age reporter Garett Sloane on LinkedIn
- ChatGPT’s Criteo partnership shows how ad tech is coming to AI ads (March 2) – Ad Age (subscription)
From tipsheet: Although a Criteo spokesperson couldn’t confirm that the performance data was from ChatGPT due to “confidentiality reasons”, the point is well-taken.
Do you think digital ad buyers lean forward when they read chatbot performance data like this? It’s undeniably strong marketing for Criteo or any platform or agency offering access to the ChatGPT pilot. But imagine if this performance is achievable at-scale by the end of 2026 via ChatGPT and it’s 900M weekly active users?
The pie grows.
And don’t forget about Google here in a similar time period — if not already… given its meteoric quarterly financial performance as of late. Google and its Gemini large language models (LLMs) are potentially enabling the same type of “1.5x opportunity” with their own flavors of AI chatbots in “AI Mode” and “AI Overviews” (and someday Gemini).
Google VP and Head of Search Liz Reid hinted at better “quality” visits courtesy of AI in August.
LLMs & CHATBOTS
Developments
- Alibaba’s small, open source Qwen3.5-9B beats OpenAI’s gpt-oss-120B and can run on standard laptops (March 2) – VentureBeat
- Sources: Reflection AI, which is developing open foundation models, seeks to raise $2B+ at a $20B+ valuation (March 2) – Financial Times (subscription)
- How AI Damages Work Relationships—and Where It Can Actually Help (March 2) – Harvard Business Review
LLMs & CHATBOTS
Six GEO startups in focus
Adweek’s Lauren Johnson took readers through the generative engine optimization (GEO) competitive set yesterday.
The six (6) GEO startups included in the profile: Adthena, Bluefish, Brandlight, Emberos, Evertune and “unicorn” Profound, which announced its latest funding round last week.
Citing web traffic data from Similarweb, Ms. Johnson helped readers understand the critical need for GEO services: “Between August 2025 and January, AI answer engines drove 49.5 million visitors to the ecommerce sites of five big retailers—Amazon, Walmart, Target, Temu, and eBay— (…) with Amazon grabbing 28% of that traffic followed by Walmart with 27%.”
Read: “From Adthena to Profound: These 6 Hot GEO Startups Are Shaping the Future of AI Shopping” (March 2) – Adweek (subscription)
Related: “3 Big Challenges Holding Back AI Commerce” (March 2) – Adweek (subscription)
From tipsheet: As Johnson noted, AI chatbots are discovery engines today rather than the next step of agentic commerce where fully autonomous purchase decisions may be possible.
For many, it’s hard to imagine handing over your wallet to AI unless it’s similar to today’s ecommerce subscription capabilities.
MEASUREMENT
Microsoft AI leader advocates for WebMCP
Microsoft continues to “ring the bell” on the transformation brought on by AI and agents.
Yesterday, Microsoft AI Corporate Vice President, Tim Frank, reappeared on LinkedIn to shine a light on the current limitations of APIs and apps. But, he saw promise with WebMCP, an open-source agentic protocol first introduced by Google Chrome executive two weeks ago.
Mr. Frank wrote on LinkedIn:
“As AI agents become more capable, they won’t interact with software the way humans do. They won’t browse pages or navigate interfaces. They’ll execute goals — finding the flights and booking the tickets within a single request. Which means websites and apps may increasingly function less like destinations, and more like services agents can call.
Recent developments like WebMCP, which was jointly developed by Microsoft and Google, are early signals of this direction: software exposing capabilities directly to agents rather than only through interfaces built for people. A web where agents interact with services more directly, rather than navigating pages designed for humans. In some ways, that feels like a more democratized web – fewer walled gardens, strong API dependency.”
Mr. Frank closes with this ‘zinger’: “Basically, [WebMCP] completely throws out the value of SEO and places it all in GEO.”
Read more from Frank on LinkedIn. (March 2)
More: WebMCP: Native Browser API for AI Agent Interaction – WebMCP
From tipsheet: Two weeks ago, Mr. Frank was also the lead advocate for Microsoft’s Publisher Content Marketplace (PCM) in The Wall Street Journal.
PLATFORMS
Interoperable creative and AI
Fueled by AI’s ability to rapidly and effectively generate creative, a new partnership between AI-enabled ad platforms Smartly and Amazon DSP speaks to a cross-channel, and cross-platform, interoperability trend when it comes to creative formats.
A Smartly press release noted the partnership’s benefits which will extend Smartly clients’ video ad creative across Amazon DSP’s connected TV inventory (I’ve broken it out into four categories):
- AI: “Smartly enables AI-powered creative optimization and personalization from social channels to streaming.”
- Creative for CTV: “The new capability eliminates the creative production bottlenecks that prevent many advertisers from activating CTV campaigns.”
- Cross platform: “Advertisers can then create, manage, and optimize Amazon DSP campaigns within the same workflow they use for social advertising, with real-time performance visibility across channels.”
- Measurement: “The unified approach enables cross-channel measurement of incremental reach, and the ability to streamline budget reallocation based on performance insights.”
Smartly’s SVP of Ecosystems & AI Applications, Melissa Yang, said in the release: “With intelligent creative and direct access to Amazon’s premium supply, Smartly brings the rigor and accountability modern marketers rely on.”
Amazon Ads marketing director, Erin McGee, also added: “Through this integration with Amazon DSP, advertisers and agencies who work with Smartly can now extend their proven social creative to premium streaming inventory in a fraction of the time…”
Also, Smartly confirmed to tipsheet that it will be able to use Amazon DSP’s data for targeting in CTV.
Read: “Smartly Announces Amazon DSP Integration to Extend Intelligent Creative and Campaign Management to Connected TV” (March 2) – press release
Related: “Creative is the next frontier of marketing optimization.” (March 2) – Dan Taylor, VP, Global Ads on LinkedIn
From tipsheet: With the Smartly partnership, Amazon DSP appears to be expanding its “net” by providing access to unique inventory access AND its data to ad tech platforms that could be considered competitors.
AGENCIES
Stagwell adds AI ‘visibility’ for agencies
Making a move into the GEO conversation, agency holding company Stagwell announced its entry into AI search “visibility” with Stagwell Search+ (see more), managed by its omnichannel media agency, Assembly Global.
Joe Mandese covered the news on MediaPost:
“Among other features, Stagwell says the AI-oriented search platform enables:
-
- Audits assessing a brand’s activation maturity across media channels.
- An AI search intelligence layer featuring agents that measure a brand’s discoverability, visibility and sentiment across generative surfaces.
- Outputs implementing unified, cross-channel system that influences how AI models understand and recommend brands.
- Continuous, ongoing measurement and experimentation, learning and strengthening a brand’s performance over time.”
Read more in MediaPost. (March 2)
A press release revealed that GEO firm Emberos’ product underpins Stagwell Search+. Emberos founder and CEO Justin Inman said:
“The front door of the Internet has changed. LLMs are now how people discover products and make buying decisions. Stagwell gets that — and we’re excited to partner with them to bring Emberos’ AI agents and AI Brand Orchestration infrastructure to their clients so they can win where it matters most.”
More: “Stagwell Launches Stagwell Search+: The Industry’s First Agentic Platform To Win AI Search” (March 2) – press release
Related: “After taking a brief pause last year to watch how the dust settled with the adoption of AI, multiple PE firms are now looking to build out their marketing and advertising portfolios.
PE firms that are especially active in the industry include Gemspring Capital, Shamrock Capital, Truelink Capital, AEA Investors, The Riverside Co., Keystone Capital and Svoboda Capital, according to industry experts including M&A consultants, bankers and analysts.” (March 2) – Ad Age on LinkedIn
From tipsheet: If you want to talk to big brands, you must have a solution for GEO/AEO, appears to be the message.
Dan Roberts, Assembly’s Global SVP of Search says on the new search site: “The rules of how brands are found, evaluated, and chosen are changing faster than most organisations can redraw a plan.”
TECH
Thought leadership
- Taking Stock of the AdTech Reckoning (March 2) – Kunal Nagpal, Chief Business Officer, InMobi on LinkedIn
- Why Binary Audience Decisions Aren’t Fit For The Agentic Era (March 2) – Evgeny Popov, Samba TV on AdExchanger
- The principal problem: Don’t measure what you sell (March 2) – Henry Innis, Co-Founder, Mutinex in Mumbrella
TECH
AI and The Trade Desk in review
Coming out of last week’s Q4 2025 earnings report by demand-side platform The Trade Desk, several analysts chimed in with reduced near-term outlooks for the company but saw room for opportunity led by AI innovation.
In a note to investors, Morgan Stanley analyst Matthew Cost wrote (February 26):
“We continue to assume disciplined reinvestment in infrastructure and AI capabilities, with full‑year ’26 Adj. EBITDA margins tracking roughly in line with ’25, consistent with management commentary. Our longer‑term view remains balanced. While we are encouraged by Kokai’s performance lift, the rollout of Audience Unlimited, and early traction in agentic AI‑driven tools such as Deal Desk and Trading Modes, we believe clearer evidence of sustained growth re-acceleration and competitive differentiation is required to become more constructive.”
Morningstar analyst Mark Giarelli wrote (February 26):
“The Trade Desk has a unique value proposition as an unbiased demand-side platform, but it sits at a peculiar juncture: it faces intense competition from Amazon’s DSP while also attempting to expand into the backbone of the entire advertising ecosystem. If it can show meaningful progress on key items such as Unified ID 2.0, Kokai artificial intelligence solutions, and OpenPath adoption, and it could benefit for years to come with a stronger competitive advantage than we expect. But the scale of these ambitions and competition from well-capitalized players leaves plenty of room to fall short of expectations. We will be paying close attention to updates on these transformative initiatives. We believe there will always be latent demand for an independent DSP like TTD, but advertising customers are increasingly drawn to walled-garden identity resolution tools and scale-based discounts, which can squeeze margins and make life difficult for TTD for the foreseeable future.”
More: “The Trade Desk Q4 2025 Earnings: Battling Slowing Growth” (March 2) – Karsten Weide, analyst on W Media Research
From tipsheet: The Trade Desk CEO Jeff Green will appear at next week’s Marketecture Live conference in New York City where he’ll be interviewed by Marketecture chairman and ad product leader, Ari Paparo. Should be a good one.
PEOPLE MOVES
Now hiring
- Former Yahoo ad executive Rich Riley joins Sitemetrics as CEO: “Sitemetric [is] a leading provider of construction site security, access and workforce technology and services. The platform is used extensively across complex projects nationwide by leading general contractors and data center owners.” – LinkedIn
- Christina Chung joins FreeWheel as Head of Supply Accounts: “Returning to FreeWheel as a boomerang is especially meaningful. (…) I’m grateful for the opportunity to come back at a pivotal moment for CTV and the broader supply ecosystem.” – LinkedIn
MORE
- Parade’s Founder Returns With an AI Marketing Agency That’s Quietly Making Seven Figures (March 2) – Inc.
- CT tourism businesses revamp online strategies as AI search reshapes marketing (March 2) – Hartford Business Journal (subscription)
- Marketing Has Swallowed Advertising. AI Is Swallowing Marketing – Jonathan Mendez on his personal blog
- Gracenote bets big on AI: why Samsung and Google both need its TV data (February 26) – PPC Land