Continuing to expand its advertising partnerships, OpenAI is tapping sell-side platforms to bring more advertiser demand into ChatGPT while retaining control over ad delivery.
The Information reported on Monday:
“Advertisers are using Magnite and PubMatic’s software to set spending budgets, place bids and upload their ads on ChatGPT while OpenAI’s ads system controls ad delivery, or where and how the ads are shown, a spokesperson for OpenAI said Friday in a statement to The Information. The partnerships make it ‘easier for advertisers to buy and manage ChatGPT ads through tools they already use,’ the spokesperson said.”
Read: “OpenAI Sign Deals With Magnite, PubMatic to Fill Unused ChatGPT Ad Space” (Nov. 2) – The Information (subscription)
Both companies already offer tools for buying advertising: Magnite has ClearLine and PubMatic has Activate.
From tipsheet: The partnerships give Magnite and PubMatic a foothold in conversational advertising. The commercial test is whether they bring additional advertiser spending into ChatGPT and earn enough from it to build a meaningful business.
COMMERCE MEDIA
Shopify’s agentic story beneath the miss
AI-referred orders at Shopify grew faster than AI traffic in Q3, offering evidence that AI discovery is translating into purchases. The results came alongside revenue and merchandise volume that fell short of Wall Street’s expectations, despite an earnings beat.
See press release. (Nov. 3)
On the earnings call, President Harley Finkelstein reported that AI traffic increased 2.6 times year over year, while AI-referred orders increased 3.3 times: “AI channels are sending shoppers straight to product pages at 3x the rate of organic search, and shoppers are converting 64% more often.”
Other takeaways from management:
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- Structured data matters: Searches powered by Shopify Catalog converted at twice the rate of general AI search. Catalog organizes more than a billion product pages with current pricing and inventory.
- Discovery extends beyond the obvious: Roughly three-quarters of AI-referred sales came from outside Shopify’s top 100 product categories.
- Shopify can keep earning: CFO Jeff Hoffmeister said discovery through Muse that sends shoppers to a Shopify merchant’s website preserves Shopify’s existing economics.
- AI costs are improving: Sidekick (AI shopping assistant) conversations increased 14% quarter over quarter while total Sidekick costs fell 18%, even as AI spending pressured subscription margins year over year.
Read: Shopify Q3 FY2026 earnings call transcript (Nov. 3) – Yahoo Finance
From tipsheet: AI-referred orders do not establish widespread autonomous purchasing and management acknowledged that agentic shopping volumes remain small. Still, the results suggest a new discovery channel is taking shape with structured product data becoming part of the marketing infrastructure.
COMMERCE MEDIA
Traasdahl brings retail AI inside a brand’s cloud
Retail data startup Crisp, founded by former Tapad CEO Are Traasdahl, has launched Halo, a retail AI platform that can run inside customers’ own Snowflake, Databricks or Google Cloud environments.
The company’s positioning states: “the only AI platform built to run retail.”
Will it run retail media soon?
Traasdahl explained on LinkedIn Monday:
“CPGs have spent years and significant budget investing in cloud data platforms like Databricks, Google Cloud and Snowflake and they want to manage their data there – rightly so. It means fewer instances of data moving between companies and less governance work for their internal IT teams. Those teams have built strong foundations on these cloud platforms. We designed Halo to work with that investment, bringing AI that understands retail to the data right where it lives.”
Read more. (Nov. 2)
Read: “Introducing Crisp Halo, AI built to run retail in any customer environment” (Oct. 29) – Crisp
From tipsheet: The opportunity extends to the decisions surrounding advertising: which products to promote, where inventory can support demand and whether sales justify more spending. Running AI inside a brand’s cloud could make those insights easier to use. The underlying data still depends on retailers and other providers continuing to supply it.
Related: “Agency execs call for retail media to be holistically considered beyond the lower funnel” (Nov. 3) – Digiday
CONNECTED TV
Fox-Roku moves closer
Fox’s proposed $22 billion acquisition of Roku “is poised to clear Justice Department scrutiny and move forward under a consent decree,” Semafor reported Monday, citing people familiar with the deliberations.
Roku’s quarterly results illustrate the advertising infrastructure Fox would acquire. More than 80% of its in-stream video ad impressions were delivered programmatically in Q3. Advertising revenue rose 23% to $727 million.
Its shareholder letter states: “We have integrations with every major DSP and SSP so that advertisers can buy Roku inventory wherever they already plan and buy.”
From tipsheet: A combined Fox–Roku would bring content, streaming distribution and advertising technology under one roof. Roku’s integrations could give advertisers more ways to apply AI buying tools across that inventory. How Fox connects those assets would be the next development to watch.
Related:
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- Roku: “Roku Delivers Another Stellar Quarter: Q3 Sales Soar 24% as Media and Entertainment Ad Spending Sees Biggest Growth in Four Years” (Nov. 2) – Variety
- Fox: “Midterm Elections and FIFA World Cup Power Record-Breaking Quarter for Fox Corp” (Nov. 2) – The Hollywood Reporter
PLATFORMS
Rembrand’s merger looks beyond ads
AI advertising company Rembrand is merging with Whisper World, creating WRLabs with approximately 450 employees. The largely stock-based deal is expected to close in January, Adweek reports.
The WRLabs website leads with “AI Research for Editing Professional Video.”
Rembrand’s technology already operates across Whisper World’s in-content advertising business. WRLabs plans to offer it more broadly through an API and VFXAgent, a forthcoming “coding agent for visual effects” that lets production teams edit existing footage using natural-language instructions, according to the press release.
Rembrand founder Omar Tawakol told Adweek that Whisper World standardized the selling of television placements: “They solved a problem nobody had solved, including us.” He says the combination will make its in-content advertising business profitable.
From tipsheet: The merger pairs Rembrand’s AI technology with an established advertising operation that could help fund expansion into video editing and production. The combined company would also have a growing patent portfolio. (1, 2 and pending 3, 4) The next test is whether customers beyond advertising will pay for those tools.
SEARCH
Food fight
Google’s Q3 financial results caught the attention of the All-In podcast last week. The discussion revived a July X post (which has received 5.7 million views) by OnlyFinder ad network founder Max Anderson. He accused Google of squeezing advertisers to manufacture Search revenue growth, offsetting what he claimed was an AI-driven decline in search volume.
On Monday, Google VP of Global Ads Dan Taylor pushed back on X: “The notion that Google has recently stopped running a generalized second price auction is false.”
Taylor said keyword close variants and flexible daily spending were longstanding practices, with monthly budget limits still enforced. He also directly disputed Anderson’s premise: “YoY query growth in Q3 was the highest we’ve seen in 5 years, including commercial queries.”
Read Taylor’s response on X. (Nov. 1)
AGENTS
Agent-assisted transactions
On his podcast, Mobile Dev Memo analyst Eric Seufert revisits the future of agentic commerce with Fermat Commerce co-founder and CEO Rishabh Jain.
Sharing his own experience with AI assistant Muse, Jain outlines how he sees agentic commerce evolving (lightly edited):
“The human used to navigate the website in a certain way. But now that it is agent inter-mediated, the way that humans are going to navigate the website is going to change.
And that is the thing people are not thinking about. It’s not ‘You need to have structured data and you need to have a feed.’ It’s more like you need to have a fundamentally different navigation approach for an agent inter-mediated interaction that doesn’t look like a navigation today. Instead, it helps the person finish the transaction as they’re doing it with the agent while maintaining trust.”
Podcast: “Designing eCommerce for agentic discovery (with Rishabh Jain)” (Oct. 28) – Mobile Dev Memo
From tipsheet: Agent as co-pilot. The shopper stays involved while the agent handles navigation and helps verify the purchase. Advertising still has a role: as Seufert argues in the conversation, merchants competing for an agent’s recommendation could bring us right back to an ad auction.
Shopify’s results above show the value of structured product data. Jain’s argument addresses what comes next: helping shoppers complete the purchase.
PEOPLE MOVES
Return of the CTO
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- “The Trade Desk Brings Back Dave Pickles Amid Growing Pains” (Nov. 3) – Adweek
LLMs & CHATBOTS
Developments
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- “ChatGPT consumer product lead Adam Fry on ChatGPT’s growth, the cost of personal agents, and plans to bring Chat and Work together.” (Nov. 3) – Alex Kantrowitz on Big Technology
- “AI Browsers Are A Successful Failure” (Nov. 2) – Joe Stanhope, Emily Pfeiffer on Forrester Research blog
- “Corporate America’s AI bill is ballooning. This startup raised $30 million to make sense of where the money is going.” (Nov. 2) – Business Insider
MORE
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- Apple ads: “Apple Services Revenue Reaches $31.6B” (Nov. 2) – MediaPost
- Agentic M&A: “Chord Buys Its Rival Zenlytic To Build An Agentic Version Of A CDP” (Nov. 3) – AdExchanger
- AI & the brand: “What T-Mobile’s choice of Highdive and Anomaly reveals about brand building in an AI-driven world” (Nov. 2) – Ad Age (subscription)
- Walmart + CTV: “Vibe brings Walmart’s shopping data to CTV, and I got a demo!” (Nov. 2) – AdTechGod on LinkedIn
- Creative production: “The Ad Industry’s Antidote to AI: Pencils, Clay and Stop-Motion” (Nov. 2) – The Wall Street Journal (subscription)