In a podcast episode of “Conversations with Tyler,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is asked about OpenAI advertising plans by host Tyler Cowen, a well-known economist at George Mason University.
As before, Altman is still keeping the cards to himself when it comes to advertising strategy for his company and its answer engine, ChatGPT.
TYLER COWEN: “How important a revenue source will ads be for OpenAI?”
SAM ALTMAN: “Again, there’s a kind of ad that I think would be really bad, like the one we talked about. There are kinds of ads that I think would be very good or pretty good to do. I expect it’s something we’ll try at some point.”
“I do not think it is our biggest revenue opportunity.”
Earlier in the podcast, Mr. Altman outlined the “bad” ad experience and again revealed his interest in affiliate marketing relationships with merchants:
SAM ALTMAN: “[People have] a deep and pretty trusting relationship with ChatGPT. (Let’s say) You asked ChatGPT for the best hotel (…). If ChatGPT were accepting payment to put a worse hotel above a better hotel, that’s probably catastrophic for your relationship with ChatGPT.”
“On the other hand, if ChatGPT shows you it’s guessed the best hotel, whatever that is, and then if you book it with one click, [and] takes the same cut that it would take from any other hotel, and there’s nothing that influenced it, but there’s some sort of transaction fee, I think that’s probably okay.”
“And with our recent commerce thing, that’s the spirit of what we’re trying to do. We’ll do that for travel at some point.”
Hear more on the Apple Podcasts app. (November 5)
From tipsheet: Though he has warmed slightly over the past year (see tipsheet overview from August), Altman appears to remain reticent on ads.
And he is now deferring ad product strategy to Fidji Simo, the CEO of Applications – at least publicly.
LLMS & CHATBOTS
Developments
- Why the best companies will use AI to multiply, not just cut (November 5) – Fidji Simo, CEO of Applications, OpenAI on Substack
- Snap and Perplexity Partner to Bring Conversational AI Search to Snapchat (November 5) – Snap
- Apple Nears Deal to Pay Google Roughly $1 Billion a Year for Siri AI Model (November 5) – Bloomberg (subscription)
AGENCIES
WPP CTO on AI growth opportunity
WPP Chief Technology Officer Stephan Pretorius, one of the masterminds of his holding company’s AI marketing platform, WPP Open, spoke to The Wall Street Journal yesterday.
He addressed his company’s recent challenges with a glass half-full outlook:
“There’s more than enough evidence to show that [AI] is a net growth opportunity for WPP, and that’s just in our core business. We are now even going into new markets, attacking the mid-market and smaller brands [segment] with our Open Pro product, which is a self-service product.”
Read more in The WSJ. (November 5)
From tipsheet: The irony of an agency offering self-serve products is, well, rich. But in order to compete on price with other agencies, ad tech companies, or marketers’ in-house teams, WPP has to take its shots.
TECH
Viant going direct to the marketer
CEO Tim Vanderhook of publicly-traded ad tech firm, Viant (valued at ~$570 million), announced a client win yesterday on LinkedIn:
“Today we announced that Viant was selected as the ad platform for Molson Coors Beverage Company starting in 2026 and it’s a multi-year partnership.
You already know why, but I will repeat it: Viant AI, our Household ID and transparent identity infrastructure are redefining how brands activate first party data and measure real business outcomes.
The future is autonomous advertising and the world’s biggest brands are taking notice.”
Read more on LinkedIn. (November 5)
From tipsheet: A little over a year ago, Viant re-tooled the company’s platform product around AI and automation.
Viant is expected to report its Q3 2025 earnings on Monday, November 10.
TECH
Opinion: Undermining advertising with AI
CNBC published an op-ed yesterday provocatively titled, “The fuel for the AI boom driving the markets is advertising. It is also an existential risk,” by Human Ventures co-founder Joe Marchese, who sold video ad platform TrueX to Fox in 2014 and spent four years at the broadcaster.
Marchese is concerned about AI undermining the largest public companies in the world:
“…if AI does disrupt, or even break, the current advertising model, the shock to the economy and markets would be far greater than most could imagine. Google, Meta and Amazon are still best positioned to create new business models, and as mentioned, have been using AI for far longer to support their advertising business models with great success.
However, fundamentally changing the way people interface with search, commerce and content online will require just that, entirely new revenue models, maybe, hopefully, some that are aligned, that are not advertising based…”
Read more on CNBC. (November 5)
Related: “AI may fatally wound web’s ad model, warns Tim Berners-Lee” (November 5) – Financial Times (subscription)
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Tim Berners-Lee: “A lot of the web relies on advertising. Advertising relies on people actually reading web pages . . . if they all assume that a human being is reading the webpage, but the LLM is reading it and the human is not, then we have a problem.”
From tipsheet: Arguably, Mr. Marchese (and Mr. Berners-Lee) is channeling Mark Zuckerberg.
The Meta CEO was recently lambasted by Wall Street for a seemingly open-ended strategy for investing in AI’s “super intelligence” future and the unidentified opportunities it will afford.
But the unspoken part of Zuckerberg’s strategy may read like this: “We need to prepare for a world with a lot less need for advertising.” And he can’t say that out loud today without tanking his company’s stock price.
LLMs & CHATBOTS
Hot take: Amazon-Perplexity battle
In reaction to yesterday’s news that Amazon had sent a cease-and-desist letter to answer engine Perplexity in regards to unauthorized use of Amazon’s website with AI shopping agents, the IAB’s VP of AI & Marketing Innovation, Caroline Giegerich said on LinkedIn that she empathized with Amazon.
But, under the headlines, she saw two worlds colliding:
“The business tension is real: AI shopping agents pose a direct threat to Amazon’s lucrative retail media advertising business, which depends on selling prominent placement in search results. If bots make purchasing decisions, that prime digital real estate loses value.
We’re watching two models emerge here:
1) Closed gardens like Amazon, defending retail media moats and customer experience integrity.
2) Open collaborators like Walmart and Instacart, testing what controlled agentic access might look like with consent.”
Read Ms. Giegerich’s entire post on LinkedIn. (November 4)
From tipsheet: This post, better than most coverage, succinctly breaks down the Perplexity-Amazon tussle in the context of AI’s evolution in commerce and advertising.
BRANDS
Don’t disintermediate my brand
The Information’s Catherine Perloff previewed her latest article, “OpenAI’s Commerce and Apps Efforts Divide Consumer Firms” (November 5), on LinkedIn.
According to her sources, some brands are reluctant to have their products sold through ChatGPT’s coming Instant Checkout feature. She explained:
“OpenAI wants to be the place people shop, book travel and order meals. To do that, it has to partner with the existing ecosystem of consumer firms –which it has with retailers like Walmart and Etsy and consumer apps like Uber and Instacart. But some are more skeptical — brands like Everlane and Brooklinen don’t want to be disintermediated from their customers and say ChatGPT lacks some critical commerce features.”
Read Perloff’s preview on LinkedIn. (November 5)
From tipsheet: The “D” word — this could be a good sign for the open web. Brands don’t want to be disintermediated from their customers so a thriving ecosystem outside the answer engine is essential. Re-enter, the open web.
SELL-SIDE
Ads in a Taboola chatbot
Ad Age technology reporter Asa Hiken reviewed a partnership between Gannett’s USA Today brand and ad platform company Taboola for Taboola’s AI chatbot product known as “Deeper Dive.”
The product was first announced in June by Taboola (USA Today was a launch partner) and allows publishers to have a chatbot of their own with advertising that Taboola sells.
Hiken began:
“Major publishers are worried that AI will take away their traffic and ad revenue, so they are trying to beat AI at its own game by installing chat assistants on their websites. And they are turning on the ad spigots inside these chats with the help of some familiar ad tech companies, including Taboola.”
Taboola CEO Adam Singolda remarked about the Age Age article on LinkedIn yesterday, “Thanks Asa Hiken for a good chat on this, and the opportunity we’re providing 15k-20k advertisers to tap into high-intent LLM supply for the first time, and to publishers, enabling users to ‘ask anything’. building a deeper relationship.”
Read more in Ad Age. (November 5 – subscription)
More: “Is the Future of Publishing a Bunch of AI Answer Engines?” (September 3) – Adweek
PLATFORMS
MNTN targets SMB budget with AI
Ad tech firm MNTN was touting the launch of its QuickFrame AI video ad creation platform on its earnings call yesterday, according to AdExchanger’s Victoria McNally. She added that MNTN acquired a marketplace back in 2022 which provided the seeds of today’s revamped product.
Reporting the results of MNTN’s Q3 2025 earnings, McNally said, “Looking to Q4, the company expects to earn between $85.5 and $86.5 million, representing a projected 34% rate of YOY growth.”
Read more in AdExchanger. (November 5)
MNTN beat analyst expectations for Q3. But the stock price has dipped nearly 50% since its IPO in May with a market capitalization of just under $1 billion today.
More: MNTN Bets on AI to Power TV Growth with CEO Mark Douglas (November 5) – Bloomberg
From tipsheet: MNTN’s QuickFrame AI is yet another platform that is using AI to give SMBs the power to easily create video (and CTV) advertising. Everybody is targeting SMB budget thanks to AI’s enablement of the creation process.
TECH
Explaining Ad Context Protocol
NBC Universal ad product executive Trey Titone has compiled another detailed explainer on Marketecture’s “Ad Tech Explained” site regarding the possibilities of agentic AI media buying and the recently launched — as well as oft-discussed — Ad Context Protocol (AdCP).
Overall, he’s open to agentic media buying and enthusiastic about the discovery process ahead. But Mr. Titone isn’t sure that it will replace programmatic buying as some have suggested. He wrote:
“For now, I view agentic media buying as an experimental alternative to traditional direct buying paths. Something that could eat some direct or minimal programmatic budgets for testing purposes. If it’s easy to set up an MVP for both buyers and sellers, why not open an additional demand channel? But the level of difficulty to test is still an open question.”
Read: “Making the Case for Agentic AI Media Buying” – Ad Tech Explained (November 5)
FINANCIALS
Earnings reported yesterday
Applovin reported earnings of “$2.45 a share on sales of $1.41 billion in the September quarter. Analysts polled by FactSet had expected earnings of $2.38 a share on sales of $1.34 billion. On a year-over-year basis, AppLovin earnings jumped 96% while sales increased 68%” (November 5) – Investors Business Daily
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AppLovin Announces Third Quarter 2025 Financial Results – AppLovin
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Stock up 6% after market hours yesterday
Magnite reported “revenues of $166.78 million for the quarter ended September 2025, surpassing the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 2.33%. This compares to year-ago revenues of $149.43 million.” (November 5) – Yahoo! Finance
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Magnite Announces Third Quarter 2025 Financial Results – Magnite
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Stock was flat after market hours yesterday
From tipsheet: The Trade Desk’s earnings will be reported today after market close.
SELL-SIDE
The NYT’s AI licensing bump
The New York Times reported robust profitability in Q3 of 2025 yesterday. See earnings release.
The NYT’s Chief Advertising Officer Joy Robins shared the high-level results on LinkedIn:
Executives said that the company is integrating AI in everything from workflow to subscriber personalization.
On the Amazon AI partnership with the NY Times — which is listed as “affiliate, licensing” in the earnings report and resulted in a 7.7% year-over-year increase for a total of $73.9 million in Q3 — The NYT’s CFO William Bardeen was careful to explain that this quarter isn’t necessarily all Amazon licensing fees:
“…it’s just always important to remember that that revenue line has a lot of different items that can both create some variability quarter-to-quarter as well as make it difficult to isolate the contribution of any one particular item. As I’ve said in the past, it’s obviously not just affiliate. And licensing, it’s multiple licensing deals there. It’s booked TV film, it’s commercial printing. So a lot of different dynamics…”
Read: “The New York Times Company (NYT) Q3 2025 Earnings Call Transcript” (November 5) – Seeking Alpha
The report also cited “$4.6 million of Generative AI Litigation Costs” as the news publishing giant battles OpenAI and Microsoft over alleged unlawful use of New York Times content.
Related: Who’s suing AI and who’s signing (November 4) – PressGazette
MORE
- Driving Performance for App and Gaming Advertisers through Improved AI Optimization (November 3) – Meta
- Agentic Commerce Is Here: Meet 6 Chatbots Ready to Help You Shop (November 4) – Adweek
- Google’s Network business is vestigial (part 2) (November 4) – Mobile Dev Memo analyst Eric Seufert on LinkedIn