eMarketer’s chief content officer Vladimir Hanzlik dug into Sensor Tower data for apps and provided an insight (see graphic below) that I hadn’t seen before on ChatGPT usage.
He shared on LinkedIn:
“Did you know that for every person who uses ChatGPT on the web, there’s another who only uses the mobile app? I’ve always thought of ChatGPT as a work tool — something for research, writing, or analysis. But it’s also a massive consumer app. That means the total audience is much larger than web traffic suggests — the mobile-only crowd more than doubles the number of users.
A good reminder that generative AI isn’t just about productivity. It’s becoming part of people’s everyday lives.”
Read more from Mr. Hanzlik on LinkedIn. (October 29)
More: State of AI Apps Report 2025: Why Apps Across Verticals are Becoming AI-Powered (July 2025) – Sensor Tower
From tipsheet: As always, there is an impact on ad formats depending on the platform. OpenAI will need to adapt its advertising accordingly when it eventually rolls out ads.
INFRASTRUCTURE
Developments
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Introducing Cursor 2.0 and Composer (October 29) – Cursor
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Palantir and NVIDIA Team Up to Operationalize AI — Turning Enterprise Data Into Dynamic Decision Intelligence (October 28) – Nvidia
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Project Rainer: AWS, Anthropic Complete Massive AI Supercomputing Cluster (October 29) – Data Center Knowledge
FINANCIALS
Earnings reported yesterday
Alphabet reports YouTube’s Q3 ad revenue rose 15% YoY to $10.26B, vs. $10.01B est., and Google’s advertising revenue reached $74.18B, up from $65.85B a year ago – Alphabet
- YouTube Advertising Hits $10.3 Billion As It Takes Growing Share of TV Market – The Hollywood Reporter
- Stock up 5% after market hours yesterday
Meta reports Q3 revenue up 26% YoY to $51.2B vs. $49.4B est., net income down 83% to $2.7B due to a $15.9B one-time income tax charge – Meta
- Meta posts record revenue but misses on earnings – Sherwood News
- Stock down 6% after hours yesterday
Microsoft reports Fiscal Q1 revenue up 18% YoY to $77.7B, vs. $75.3B est., net income up 12% to $27.7B, and Azure and other cloud services revenue up 40% – Microsoft (stoc
- Microsoft tops Q1 earnings estimates, boosted by cloud revenue – Yahoo! Finance
- Stock down 1% after hours yesterday
Criteo reports strong Q3 2025 results – Criteo
- Criteo Q3 2025 Earnings: Beats, Prepping Move To U.S. For Capital, Addresses Client Loss And Slow U.S. Business – Karsten Weide, W Media Research
- Stock up 6% yesterday.
RESEARCH
Survey: Martech’s AI agent adoption
A new report by research company Gartner said that vendors’ agentic AI solutions aren’t working well for today’s marketing technology executives. But, it’s not all bad news. In fact, martech execs appear to have bought into the fact that AI agents are their future.
Key findings include:
“Eighty-one percent of marketing technology leaders are either piloting AI agents, or have already implemented AI agent initiatives across their organizations.”
“Among leaders who are piloting or implementing AI agents, 89% expect their AI agent initiatives to deliver significant business performance benefits for their enterprise.”
“Half of leaders say their organizations lack the technical and data stack readiness required for AI agent deployment.”
More: Gartner Survey Finds 45% of Martech Leaders Say Existing Vendor-Offered AI Agents Fail to Meet Their Expectations of Promised Business Performance (October 29) – press release
Related: New Report From Hightouch Shows Majority of Marketing Tool Pain Stems from Data Accessibility, a Key Blocker to Effective AI Adoption (October 29) – press release
TECH
On Amazon DSP favoring Amazon properties
Responding to a narrative that AI-enabled Amazon DSP was prioritizing its Amazon owned & operated inventory, Vlad Chubakov of performance marketing agency Delve Deeper took an appropriately deeper look and shared his findings on LinkedIn yesterday.
tl;dr: Amazon DSP is not prioritizing Amazon owned & operated properties today based on Chubakav’s data from real campaigns.
Noting the black box of AI as a potential gateway for O&O favoritism, Mr. Chubakov explained on LinkedIn:
“I looked at Amazon Performance+ display campaigns, since this is Amazon’s AI-based campaign type where, in theory, such behavior could happen.
Here’s what the data shows:
1. In terms of SSPs, Amazon Publisher Services makes up to 28% of total spend. That’s a pretty big share, but it’s worth mentioning that you’re buying non-Amazon domains through APS, not Amazon O&O.
2. What’s interesting is that for advertisers who had Amazon[dot]com inventory targeting turned on (yes, this isn’t a black box – you can actually choose whether or not to target Amazon[dot]com, IMDb, etc.), the spend share was under 5%. The algorithm was prioritizing other SSPs and domains because it saw ‘performance’ opportunities there…”
Read more findings on LinkedIn. (October 29)
From tipsheet: In the comments of the post, there’s a clear bias against using Amazon’s Twitch gaming ad inventory – it’s an under-performer say the commenters. Whether this bears any connection to the announced reduction-in-force in Amazon’s gaming division (gaming ads are underperforming at Amazon?), is hard to say.
TECH
RTB Fabric and Amazon strategy
With the launch of RTB Fabric last week by Amazon Web Services, Colin Lewis of Internet Retailing reviews the news and sees a larger strategy in play.
“This is something we have seen before: Amazon is still in the eCommerce business while offering Amazon AWS to other eCommerce businesses.
Perhaps their advertising business is merely the ‘gateway drug’ to managing the infrastructure of advertising: after all, industry analyst Karsten Weide says “AWS is absolutely central to Amazon’s advertising play. They are already making a lot of money, but they are also controlling more and more of the infrastructure that powers how digital ads are bought, sold, and measured. That translates into long-term strategic strength…”
Read: “The ultimate prize: why Amazon is selling the shovel to the adtech gold rush” (October 29) – Internet Retailing
PLATFORMS
Algos vs. Agents debate
An AdTech AdTalk podcast video clip of sell-side consultant Gareth Glaser discussing agentic media caught some attention yesterday. Mr. Glaser said that “agents are fast, automated bundle traders. Agents are not in a world where they’re auctioning things really, really fast.”
Joe Root, CEO of data collaboration platform Permutive, joined the discussion in the comments on LinkedIn:
“100% the case they’re not doing real-time decisioning in OpenRTB. This shouldn’t be Algos vs Agents. They solve different problems. Algos drive outcomes. Agents enable direct to be bought more effectively (better, native inventory and a wealth of supply-side signals). The combination of more direct buying via Agents, coupled with Algos running in publisher environments is where we should be heading.”
See the thread on LinkedIn. (October 29)
Related: Permutive’s CEO Breaks Down The Programmatic Market Dynamics Driving Curation (December 2024) – AdExchanger
From tipsheet: This thread speaks to some of the recent reaction to the launch of Ad Context Protocol.
TECH
YouTube optimizing with AI
YouTube is offering creators AI-powered video upscaling that aimed at making creator content suitable for high-end displays such as 4K monitors.
On his LinkedIn profile, YouTube product director Kurt Wilms began:
“We’re changing the game for YouTube thumbnails by increasing the upload file limit to 50MB and producing new 4K-resolution thumbnails.
This is just one of 5 new features we’re launching to help creators shine on YouTube on TV. It’s our fastest-growing surface, and it’s fueling creator success: the number of YouTube channels earning six figures or more from TV screens is up by over 45% in the last year.”
Read all five on LinkedIn. (October 29)
Also: 5 new features to help creators shine on TV screens (October 29) – YouTube Official Blog
On the YouTube blog, a “coming soon” feature labeled “From Couch to Cart” could be the first steps of the auto-tagging feature noted by YouTube CEO Neal Mohan in a September interview with Stratechery’s Ben Thompson.
From Mr. Wilms on the YouTube blog:
“Soon, on tagged shopping videos, viewers will be able to scan a shopping QR code to instantly open the product page on their phone. To make this experience even more powerful, we’re also starting to test the ability to feature products at specific, timed moments within video.”
From tipsheet: Using AI, YouTube is adding shoppable context to creator videos and appears to be targeting the broader retail-media opportunity.
Related: YouTube announces AI reorg and voluntary layoffs (October 29) – Alex Heath on Sources
SELL-SIDE
The over-labeling conundrum
Digiday looked at the role of the IAB in helping to define for the industry what makes an image an AI image —or a video an AI video. At the center of the storm is the IAB’s VP of AI Caroline Giegerich, who is trying to help marketers navigate the potential for reputational risk.
Ms. Giegerich said on Linkedin about the article:
“I spoke with Digiday about the challenges marketers face navigating incredible GenAI tools, protecting their brand identities, and building consumer trust. All in a day’s work ye marketing brethren! At IAB, we’ve been consulting with working group members across policy, platforms, agencies, and brands to develop a plan for meaningful AI transparency which avoids over-labeling.”
Read Ms. Giegerich on LinkedIn. (October 29)
And read the article in Digiday. (October 29 – subscription)
MORE
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The Financial Times’ AI paywall drove conversions up 290%. Now it’s learning who stays (October 29) – Digiday (subscription)
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Apple’s reliance on advertising (October 28) – Eric Seufert on Mobile Dev Memo (subscription)
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PR Newswire’s 2025 Global Report: 57% of Comms Professionals Use AI to Craft Press Releases (October 29) – PR Newswire
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Opinion: Why Gen Z creatives don’t need to fear AI – Ad Age (subscription)
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LUMA Partners and SLR Digital Finance Form Financing Partnership (October 28) – Terence Kawaja, LUMA Partners, on LinkedIn