ChatGPT’s chatbot conversation is no longer the only media surface owned by OpenAI.
OpenAI CEO of AGI Deployment (was “CEO of Applications”) Fidji Simo announced yesterday the acquisition of video podcast TBPN (Technology Business Programming Network):
“This acquisition brings a team with strong editorial instincts, deep audience understanding, and a proven ability to convene influential voices across tech, business, and culture.
TBPN has built something pretty special. It’s one of the places where the conversation about AI and builders is actually happening day to day. A lot of you already watch it, and rely on it to stay close to what’s going on.
As I’ve been thinking about the future of how we communicate at OpenAI, one thing that’s become clear is that the standard communications playbook just doesn’t apply to us. We’re not a typical company. We’re driving a really big technological shift. And with the mission of bringing AGI to the world comes a responsibility to help create a space for a real, constructive conversation about the changes AI creates—with builders and people using the technology at the center. That’s exactly what TBPN has built…”
A note at the bottom of a TBPN post about the acquisition said, “TBPN will retain full editorial control, supported by contractual protections, or what we’re calling the ‘Editorial Independence Covenant’, designed to preserve its independence and limit OpenAI’s influence.”
Read:
TBPN hosts Jordi Hays and John Coogan have always been consistent supporters of an OpenAI ad strategy — re-visit this TBPN interview with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in October.
From tipsheet #1: OpenAI wants to facilitate conversation, not just a chatbot.
OpenAI’s second most important conversation is in Silicon Valley. At a minimum, OpenAI hopes TBPN connects it to Silicon Valley and creates an ongoing conversation with the largest concentration of tech leaders (tastemakers), companies (potential partners) and talent (recruiting) in the world.
The most important conversation for OpenAI is in Washington D.C. as it navigates its way with the world’s most powerful government. TBPN is not that solution. At least not yet.
Both conversations are existential.
From tipsheet #2: BHAG for TBPN will be to get Anthropic on the show.
LLMs & CHATBOTS
Developments
- Microsoft’s new ‘superintelligence’ game plan is all about business (April 2) – The Verge
- Gemma 4: Byte for byte, the most capable open models (April 2) – Google’s The Keyword
- Emotion concepts and their function in a large language model (April 2) – Anthropic
Smartly’s conversation ads for ChatGPT
AI advertising technology company Smartly announced a partnership with OpenAI for ChatGPT advertising.
Business Insider Lucia Moses broke the news and revealed a twist to Smartly’s plan:
“Smartly’s ultimate goal is to help OpenAI build interactive ad formats that let brands mimic ChatGPT’s conversational interface.
[Smartly CEO Laura Desmond] cited Smartly’s conversational ads for the UK retailer Boots, which run on Meta platforms like Instagram, as an example of the type of ad format OpenAI could eventually adopt. In that case, a chatbot pops up in a new window when the user clicks it and serves gift recommendations in response to a series of questions. Smartly said the ad format was nearly five times as effective at driving sales as Meta’s basic ads.’
‘The opportunity with conversational advertising is you can do more follow-ups, and you can ask again,’ Desmond said. ‘The experience for people will get way more relevant, way more personal, and hopefully be seen as a much better value exchange. All of the research indicates people want to be known. Don’t serve me shoes I bought three weeks ago. Don’t serve me ads that aren’t relevant.’”
The company joins Criteo as one of two ad tech firms publicly working on delivering ChatGPT ad campaigns for clients.
In the same article, BI also covers a bearish view from a Wall Street investment research firm:
“OpenAI has a big opportunity with ads, but it’ll be hard to replicate the success of giants Google and Meta, MoffettNathanson wrote in a note distributed Tuesday. Digital advertising is concentrated among a few players. ChatGPT also has limited real estate for ad placements because, to maintain trust, it doesn’t embed ads directly in its results.”
MoffettNathanson is the same firm that was promoting the end of retail media advertising and a move to product-feeds-only last year.
Read: OpenAI’s new partner wants to build ads that can chat with you (April 2) – Business Insider
From tipsheet #1: Recommendation and the AI shopping assistant are moving into the ad space. Arguably, every ad is a recommendation. But the format Ms. Desmond describes moves recommendation into collaboration + conversation with the consumer — or shopping assistance.
A few thoughts:
- Shopping assistants are becoming the new ad format for conversational advertising.
- Ad tech firm Criteo’s foray into agentic commerce recommendation is more signal on the trend. Criteo is a ChatGPT ads partner, too.
- The facilitation of conversation is a requirement driven by OpenAI for its ad tech partners. (It’s reminiscent of the themes OpenAI’s Fidji Simo mentioned regarding yesterday’s TBPN acquisition.)
- Put another way, recommendations, not ham-fisted ads, allow ad tech players into the conversation in ChatGPT.
From tipsheet #2: The Smartly-ChatGPT ads news comes on the heels of Smartly’s acquisition announcement, and letter of intent, for incrementality attribution platform, Incrmntal. Understanding the cross-channel effects of conversational advertising, i.e. ads in ChatGPT, would appear to be a perfect fit for the creative-automation-focused ad tech platform.
SELL-SIDE
Fox’s AI SWAT team
Large publishers are racing to stay ahead of the AI wave and keep up with the competition from walled gardens.
John Fiedler, Fox’s EVP of Product & Engineering, announced a new initiative which will create a “SWAT team” of sorts to help move AI transformation at the media company.
Fiedler explained: “We are launching FOX Forward Deployed — a 12-month, hands-on program for a small group of AI-native builders ready to make real impact from day one. (…) You’ll be embedded directly into teams building products used by millions — working across AI, product, engineering, and design.”
Read more on LinkedIn. (April 2)
Visit: “You build it. America sees it.” – Fox Deployed
From tipsheet: The incentives will need to be attractive to pull talented AI-native builders into a traditional media firm for a short-term contract. A separate LinkedIn post by Fox Corporation emphasizes the search for those who are “early career.”
Related: “Really Good news for news publishers. News is the number 1 category of delivered impressions for 2 quarters in a row. We went from a little over 1 in 4 impressions to 1 of 3 impressions delivered now on News Publisher inventory…” (April 2) – Mario Diez, CEO, Peer39 on LinkedIn
AGENCIES
The Margin battle royale
Stories continue to swirl in the trades in the wake of ad agency holding company Publicis’ break up with demand-side-platform The Trade Desk two weeks ago.
Ad Age took up the baton yesterday with a “primer” on the battle, as the publication’s chief tech reporter Garret Sloane previewed it on LinkedIn: “…Will brands even follow Publicis, of course some clients will listen to their ad firm here, but brands do have direct deals that they manage. In fact, it’s often recommended brands get their own deals with DSPs. Brands should know the contracts, the fees, and what’s expected in the relationship…” Read more on LinkedIn. (April 2)
More: “Publicis and The Trade Desk—a primer on ad tech’s biggest fight” (April 2) – Ad Age
From tipsheet: AI is driving transparency on costs. The battle to serve the client is pitting tech platforms with a formidable service layer against service firms that often use multiple platforms (and principal media tactics) in order to preserve optionality and as leverage in negotiation on price.
Who wins? It depends on the marketer.
DATA
Unity gets identity for AI ad platform
Unity SVP of Sales & Partnerships Christopher Feo said his company’s gaming business will add an identity layer with LiveRamp’s help.
Mr. Feo said on LinkedIn yesterday:
Excited to announce Unity‘s expanded partnership with LiveRamp, RampID is now live across our footprint across the US. With over 256M MAU’s playing games across almost every demographic, this partnership helps the ecosystem take one (big) step to unlocking the full potential of gaming. Stay tuned for what’s to follow in the coming weeks…
Read LinkedIn. (April 2)
More: “LiveRamp Unlocks Identity-Driven Marketing with Unity to Power Better Returns in Gaming” (April 2) – press release
From tipsheet #1: LiveRamp’s RampID becomes a new identity input into Unity’s Vector AI decisioning engine, improving how it predicts user value and bids on ad impressions. Those decisions are executed through Unity Exchange which tightens the loop between identity, optimization, and delivery.
From tipsheet #2: For comparison’s sake, AppLovin’s Axon platform is powered by a closed-loop dataset built from its own app network, while Unity is closing the loop with LiveRamp into its Vector AI models. So, two competing approaches to the same goal — one integrated, the other modular.
PROTOCOLS
Amazon DSP executive on AdCP, AAMP
Spinning out of his appearance at Jounce Media’s SPO Summit this past week, Amazon DSP VP Neal Richter, broadcast his concerns on LinkedIn regarding current protocol development in digital advertising today and Ad Context Protocol (AdCP), in particular.
He stated:
“Simple Qs.
- Given an off the shelf LLM would you allow it to do the math itself to solve the orbital mechanics problem currently happening with the astronauts on Artemis II heading for the Moon?
- would you allow that same LLM, unaided, to solve a mechanical engineering statics problem at the sophomore level if you were designing a product that needed an accurate solution?
- would you allow that same LLM, unaided, to solve an engineering rigid body dynamics problem where you needed an accurate solution for a mechanical product?
- would you allow that same LLM, unaided, to invest your personal $$$ in a dynamic commodities or securities market?
If the answer to these questions is No, or ‘not without a provably correct toolset’, then what standard or benchmark will AdCP adhere to such that a publisher or advertiser will trust the unvetted seller and buyer agents with real ad budgets?
Let’s be real, rigorous and create a benchmark to evaluate correctness of agentic behavior. Or else this is just people saying ‘agentic’ in adtech marketing decks to sell their idea.”
Read it on LinkedIn. (April 1)
Richter, who is chair of IAB Tech Lab, expressed support on LinkedIn yesterday for the Tech Lab’s Agentic initiative which is now AAMP or Agentic Advertising Management Protocols. Read that one. (April 2)
From tipsheet: Richter’s argument echoes a similar-but-different argument from analyst Eric Seufert on “agentic commerce is a mirage.” Autonomy has limits appears to be a shared theme.
PROTOCOLS
AdCP governance takes shape
On Wednesday, the governance organization for AdCP — Agentic Advertising Organization (AAO) — summarized Monday’s “Town Hall” meeting (YouTube) with AAO members and interested parties.
From AAO on LinkedIn: “The Agentic Advertising Organization (AAO) Town Hall wasn’t just a meeting; it was a declaration that the era of manual “authorship” in marketing is evolving into an era of Agentic Orchestration. Let’s break down what we covered:”
- “Our purpose at the AAO: To pioneer a more intelligent, human-centric advertising future through Agentic AI”
- “Key Insights from our 60-page capstone report on the Cre(ai)tive Economy: ‘Building the Future of Marketing’”
- “Details behind AdCP 3.0 and a sneak peek at what we’re building (…)”
- “The importance of Governance by Embedded Human Judgment.”
Read more on LinkedIn. (April 1)
More: Building the Future of Marketing with the Agentic Advertising Organization (March 30) – Matthew Egol and Randall Rothenberg on AAO’s blog
Scope3’s O’Kelley opines
Scope3 CEO Brian O’Kelley, a member of the founding consortium for AdCP, teased some new thinking earlier this week on LinkedIn: “We are still talking about advertising supply chains 10 years after my initial blog post about Supply Path Optimization (SPO).”
O’Kelley touted an AdExchanger op-ed by TVIQ’s Sarah Sinclair and then pointed to his new AAO blog post.
Read: “Why adagents.json is more expressive than ads.txt – A better way to represent modern publisher authorization” (March 29) – AAO blog
Related: Swivel and Olyzon Launch Agent-to-Agent CTV Activation via AdCP (April 2) – press release
SELL-SIDE
Time taps Mobian for GEO product
“We are proud to highlight our partner Mobian, whose technology powers this analysis. By cross-referencing brand ads and sentiment against AI prompts, Mobian provides the data-driven insights necessary to track and score how closely AI platforms match a brand’s true positioning.”
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Read more from Time COO Mark Howard on LinkedIn. (April 1)
More: Time pitches GEO insights into a new brand offering (March 31) – Digiday
PEOPLE MOVES
Now hiring
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Former Google, Turn and Twilio executive Lauren Nemeth joins Shopify as VP, Global Enterprise – “I couldn’t be more excited to join! Shopify’s team, product, AI strategy and global enterprise opportunity are timely. I look forward to building meaningful opportunity for enterprise customers globally.” (April 2) – LinkedIn
MORE
- Local Publishers Hit By AI Traffic Drops Collaborate For Revenue Relief (April 2) – AdExchanger
- AI Platforms Started Acting Like Media Companies in Q1 2026 – Debra Aho Williamson, analyst, Sonata Insights on Substack
- Basis Releases Agentic AI Solution for Faster Omnichannel Media Strategy, Planning and Activation (April 2) – press release
- Publishers debate the value of AI licensing and GEO (April 2) – Digiday (subscription)
- Whitepaper: How Amazon Ads delivers performance through transparent advertising technology (January 26) – Amazon Ads