BCG partner Shelby Senzer interviewed Norm de Greve, SVP & Chief Growth Officer at General Motors, and discussed how GM is using AI in its marketing strategy.
In previewing the piece on LinkedIn, Senzer observed:
“GM is evolving its marketing approach in service of growth to meet that reality — grounding decisions in real demand, using AI to activate with far greater focus, and building faster testing and measurement loops to learn what’s actually working.
In a separate LinkedIn post, Mr. de Greve outlined where he thinks AI fits within his automotive marketing world:
“Tight strategy for each brand and vehicle—not trying to be liked by everyone—executed by elite creative teams. That’s how you get the highest-testing creative in recorded history.
Metrics marketing can actually own. Brand tracking that asks ‘which brands come to mind for this need?’ rather than “do you like this brand?” moves with marketing investment.
AI as a focusing mechanism, not a replacement for judgment. Our targeting system concentrates investment where lift actually exists—back-tested against everything we’d done before.”
See the full interview on BCG’s site here.
Related: General Motors’ Norm de Greve on aligning marketing across the C-suite (August 2025) – McKinsey & Co.
From tipsheet #1: When Mr. De Greve was at Digitas in the early 2010s, he was among a relatively small circle of agency executives who embraced programmatic. If past is prologue, his journey as CMO at GM could be a beacon to all marketing leaders seeking the AI opportunity in advertising and marketing.
From tipsheet #2: De Greve’s title appears to have changed from GM’s “Chief Marketing Officer” in August to “Chief Growth Officer” today.
A trend for CMOs… ignited by AI? “Don’t just market it, grow it!” – i.e., outcomes.
LLMs & CHATBOTS
Developments
- My Interview With Andy Jassy: OpenAI, Trump, Power and the Future of AWS (January 20) – Jessica Lessin in The Information (subscription)
- ServiceNow and OpenAI collaborate to deepen and accelerate enterprise AI outcomes (January 20) – ServiceNow
- Humans&, a ‘human-centric’ AI startup founded by Anthropic, xAI, Google alums, raised $480M seed round (January 20) – TechCrunch
GOVERNANCE
Tracking outcomes in the AI era
Ad industry technical standard-setting body, IAB Tech LAB, announced a new tech specification yesterday with agentic implications for digital advertising.
Called the “Event and Conversion API”, or ECAPI, the Tech Lab said the spec is “designed to standardize how marketing-related events and measurable outcomes are communicated from advertiser systems.”
From the release:
“The Event and Conversion API defines a standardized set of full-funnel events that are meaningful to advertisers, from upper-funnel engagement through lower-funnel conversion activity. By enabling advertisers to send these events in a consistent format to platforms, partners, and AI agents, ECAPI supports campaign optimization toward specific business goals while also improving measurement and insight across the marketing funnel…”
IAB Tech Lab’s VP of Measurement Angelina Eng touted the new spec on LinkedIn saying, “Less friction, better data, smarter AI optimization. It’s open for public comment now — and if you care about measurement or performance, this one’s worth a look.”
Read:
- “IAB Tech Lab Announces Event and Conversion API (ECAPI) For Public Comment” (January 20) – press release
- ECAPI (Event and Conversion API) – specification
Related: “Your CAPI Cheat Sheet: Understanding Conversion APIs” (July 2025) – AdExchanger
CONNECTED TV
Netflix Earnings: Gen AI on the way
From New Street Research analyst Dan Salmon, who covered Netflix Q4 2025 earnings release yesterday:
“Advertising revenue was revealed for the first time and was notably below our estimate at $1.5B in 2025 versus our $2.4B estimate. With that said, we think solid progress is being made, with the business expected to double again in 2026. We continue to expect the biggest driver of growth to be increased fill rate, helped by growth in the sales force and new demand from ad tech partners, which now include Amazon DSP.
Of note, the advertising business is going to be one where NFLX is incorporating generative AI into the business sooner rather than later. The company has begun testing custom ads that leverage NFLX intellectual property, and like most major ad platforms, NFLX is automating workflows and campaign planning using AI.”
More: “Netflix posts narrow earnings beat, reports 325 million global subscribers” – CNBC
LLMs & CHATBOTS
Commentary: Ads in ChatGPT
“Sponsored Intelligence and the Trillion Dollar Sentence” (January 19) – Scope3 CEO Brian O’Kelley on his BOK on Ads (and Climate) Substack
“So how can we help OpenAI build ChatGPT into a massive ads business? First, we need a way for advertisers to express their goals, standards, creative assets, offers, measurement data, and budgets in ways that Sponsored Intelligence platforms can leverage.”
Brian O’Kelley
“How much are you going to pay for your OpenAI ads? Your guide to everything in OpenAI’s new ad announcement.” (January 19) – Henry Innis, Co-Founder, Multinex on his Marketing Economics Substack
“This sounds like a product tweak. But it’s not. It’s closer to a business model fork in the road. The moment you put ads into the interface, you are no longer only shipping intelligence. You are also shipping incentives. And incentives are the invisible hand inside every consumer product that gets big.”
Henry Innis
“2026 is the year of the AI ads” (January 20) – Bostjan Spetic, Head of Supply, Teads on his blog
“Can OpenAI attract the ‘long tail’ of demand—the hundreds of thousands of small businesses that currently keep Meta and Alphabet afloat? Because of their massive brand recognition, I suspect the answer is a resounding yes. They don’t need to hunt for advertisers; the advertisers are already there, waiting for the “self-serve” portal to open.”
Bostjan Spetic
PLATFORMS
Google AI advertising momentum
Wall Street analysts appear to be fully on board with Google’s approach to integrating AI across its advertising product line.
In a note to investors last week, RBC Capital Markets raised its price target for Google’s stock. Yahoo Finance explained:
“[RBC Capital Markets] highlighted how AI Overviews (AIO) ads are now fully flowing from Performance Max, Search, and other platforms. Meanwhile, AI Mode ads are only available for AI Max adopters with mixed feedback so far. Pricing didn’t increase as much as Meta, even though conversion was stable.
The tech giant has reduced customer data requirements for targeting from 1,000 to 100 users, expanding to Demand Gen and broadening the total addressable market for a new cohort of SMBs. This allows a new cohort of advertisers access to the latest model improvements for probabilistic targeting, following a similar rollout for Search in May 2025…”
Read more on Yahoo Finance. (January 19)
Related: At Davos — Google’s AI boss Demis Hassabis says there are no plans for ads in Gemini (January 20) – Sources (subscription)
From tipsheet: It was only a year ago that Wall Street analysts worried about Google’s ability to monetize AI Overviews. UBS analyst Stephen Jiu said last January, “It is still unclear to us whether Google will be able to extract increased monetization from AI Overviews (new search format).”
BRANDS
Protocol soup
“But like other applications of AI in advertising, agentic AI success isn’t guaranteed. Along with sorting through a new alphabet soup of agent protocols — AdCP, MCP, UCP — marketers will need to have their own data, APIs and other tech stack elements prepared.”
Read: “How brands can assert control as AI rewrites advertising’s playbook” (January 20) – Marketing Dive
TECH
Opinion: Where is programmatic headed?
In an op-ed on New Digital Age, Chalice AI’s Managing Director, EMEA, Freddie Turner, posits the way forward for programmatic —and her company— in the age of AI.
She wrote:
“Programmatic advertising is already changing, most notably in how intelligence is applied. The direction is away from platform-owned optimisation and toward AI that is auditable, portable, and aligned with the advertiser’s commercial goals rather than platform incentives.”
Read more. (January 20)
h/t Lou Paskalis
From tipsheet: It may be promoting Chalice’s positioning, but it’s likely a compelling argument for marketers looking to shine a light in the “black box” of automated marketing systems.
PEOPLE MOVES
Now hiring
- Former Spotify head of sales, Lee Brown, is Chief Business Officer at Pinterest (January 20) – LinkedIn
- Former Pinterest CMO, Andréa Mallard, joins Microsoft AI as CMO – LinkedIn
- Former Snap sales chief, David Shaw, joins Comcast’s Universal Ads as Head of Global Expansion – press release
MORE
- Opinion: “Why OpenAI’s ad announcement should worry retail media networks” – Kiri Masters on The Drum
- AI adoption accelerating across real estate marketing (January 19) – Housing Wire
- “The rush to monetize AI answers could kill what makes them valuable” – former Nestlé marketer Pete Blackshaw on Ad Age (subscription)
- Most of Instagram’s ads ran on Reels in 2025, data shows (January 20) – CNBC
- Gamera Raises $1.6 Million To Protect The Open Web’s Media Quality (January 20) – AdExchanger