Ads coming to Google’s AI Mode

LLMs & CHATBOTS

Ads coming to Google’s AI Mode

A new ad format for AI Mode may be nearing launch at Google.

According to Ad Age and Search Engine Land, a Google internal document explained that, in Google Search’s AI Mode, the company “will target ads based not just on a user’s query, but on the entire context of the AI conversation, marking a departure from traditional keyword-based targeting.”

“How Google is pitching new AI Mode search ads to marketers” in Ad Age. (August 4 – subscription)

From tipsheet: Context matters even more in an AI world… and that makes sense. AI should be able to more accurately understand context beyond the use of a single keyword or keyword phrase as signal. The implications for search engine marketing, or answer engine marketing, are everything should get smarter: lengthy keyword lists should disappear; and it will be about the prompt.

BRANDS

Taking the AI worries out of an AI ad

AI is coming to digital political ad campaigns if Denver-based startup Battleground AI has anything to say about it.

Industry trade “Campaigns & Elections,” covers the two founders — Maya Hutchinson and Henry Cyranka — who are rolling out a solution to progressive campaigns “that can instantly generate platform-compliance programmatic ads with just a few clicks.”

“A growing number of political consultants have moved to integrate AI into their work in recent years. But even some of the most devoted political technologists have warned that many existing AI platforms aren’t yet user-friendly enough for industry professionals to take full advantage of.

At the same time, there are lingering concerns over AI’s ability to produce and disseminate misinformation – something that could have major legal and reputational repercussions in the political world.

According to Hutchinson, BattlegroundAI’s tool — dubbed Programmagic — is intended to address those concerns.

BRANDS

My company is all about AI

A new survey of marketers by Adweek says, “78% of respondents indicated their company was serious about embracing the technology, while around one in five said their organization was not.”

However, 39% expressed apprehension about integrating AI into their marketing plans.

AGENCIES

Adapting AI to the agency

Independent agency Butler/Till is using innovation to win in a competitive services environment. “Be it programmatic investment or media mix modeling, be it current analytics to even AI adaptation to their needs, the gap between holdco tools and indie tools has narrowed,” according to a profile in Digiday. Read more. (August 4)

More: How AI Helps Butler/Till Curate High-Performing PMPs – AdExchanger (April 9)

AGENCIES

CEO Mark Penn gives Stagwell AI update

“As many legacy holding companies face structural and operational pressures, Stagwell continues to position itself as a disruptive, tech-forward player, lean enough to adapt, but large enough to compete globally. ‘This is an incredible time of opportunity for Stagwell,’ [CEO Mark] Penn said. ‘In an industry of behemoths having trouble with their scale, we are just the right size to adapt to the coming revolution of AI.’”

As rivals cut thousands, Stagwell hires top talent and doubles down on AI, says CEO Mark Penn (August 4) – Storyboard 18

SELL-SIDE

Perplexity accused by Cloudflare of stealth

Content delivery network (CDN) Cloudflare publicly shamed answer engine Perplexity and its crawling capabilities in a blog post yesterday.

A group of engineers and a security researcher from Cloudflare collectively wrote:

“Although Perplexity initially crawls from their declared user agent, when they are presented with a network block, they appear to obscure their crawling identity in an attempt to circumvent the website’s preferences (…).

Based on Perplexity’s observed behavior, which is incompatible with those preferences (‘built on trust’), we have de-listed them as a verified bot and added heuristics to our managed rules that block this stealth crawling.”

Shortly thereafter, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince brought down the proverbial hammer on Perplexity saying on X: “Some supposedly ‘reputable’ AI companies act more like North Korean hackers. Time to name, shame, and hard block them.”

OpenAI gets kudos

Later on the same X thread, Mr. Prince responded to a comment by suggesting there are two sides to crawling, “There are other bad actors. And we’ll call them out too. But others, like OpenAI, are actually being extremely responsible. You don’t have to be a bad actor to be a good AI company.”

Read the thread on X. (August 4)

It was only a month ago that Cloudflare jumped in front of the LLM crawling issue with a pledge to help publishers extract value from LLMs which had been crawling publisher sites without providing compensation. Bot blocking and (eventually) a marketplace are part of Cloudflare’s solution set for publishers.

Will other CDNs follow suit and take Cloudflare’s lead on Perplexity?

Regardless, there should be some aggressive damage control over the next day or two by Perplexity which would appear (Apple wants to buy?) to have a lot to lose.

More: Cloudflare: Perplexity AI Acts Like North Korean Hackers, Ignores Scraping Blocks (August 4) – PC Mag

SELL-SIDE

More prominence in the chatbot

In an op-ed on AdExchanger, Consultant Joshua Koran proposed a three-pronged approach to an acceptable value exchange between publishers and Large Language Model (LLM) companies who want to ingest publisher content in order to inform AIs.

One idea – “Prominent navigation: Answer engines must provide clear, interactive links for consumers to discover, explore and interact with publisher-controlled environments, not just buried source citations.” Read the other two. (August 4)

Related: Also yesterday, IAB CEO David Cohen teed up his op-ed in Ad Age saying to publishers on LinkedIn: “What got you here, won’t get you there. Some thoughts on the reinvention of the commercial web and what it means for publishers.”

“The four strategies publishers need to survive the next era” (August 4) – David Cohen in Ad Age

TECH

Another lawsuit for Google

Google will may be betting embroiled in another antitrust lawsuit as the company was sued yesterday by ad exchange, OpenX.

Adweek reported:

“In the lawsuit, filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, OpenX claims that Google has used self-preferencing practices that make it difficult for other ad exchanges and ad servers like OpenX to compete on a level playing field. (…)

The adtech company alleges that Google disallowed publishers from setting price floors that would incentivize the use of rival ad exchanges—even when publishers wanted to.”

TECH

Duking it out in the editorial page

AI’s Overlooked $97 Billion Contribution to the Economy – The Wall Street Journal (August 3)
The AI Boom’s Hidden Risk to the Economy – The Wall Street Journal (August 2)
Netscape’s Lessons for AI Mania – The Wall Street Journal (August 3)

HR

You’re hired

I’ve started a new position as Senior Vice President of Partnerships at Dstillery (August 4) – David Danziger on LinkedIn

PROMPT

How will editorial pages change in 5 years due to AI?

Response from Perplexity AI:

(…) 4. Enhanced Creativity Through AI Partnerships AI will act as a creative partner: offering outlines, suggesting angles, or analyzing social and cultural trends to spark new ideas. Editorial teams can easily repurpose articles, create multimedia content, and adapt for multiple platforms using AI-driven frameworks. (…)

Ads coming to Google’s AI Mode

LLMs & CHATBOTS