Perplexity not ‘taking any new advertisers’

Perplexity struggling

Adweek’s Trishla Ostwal said it all in one sentence:

“At Advertising Week in New York City, Jessica Chan, head of publisher partnerships at Perplexity, said that the company is not ‘taking any new advertisers,’ and that ads aren’t currently on the roadmap for Perplexity’s AI browser, Comet.”

Read: “Perplexity Pauses New Advertising Deals to Reassess Ambitions” (October 9) – Adweek

From tipsheet: Ouch. On the bright side, Perplexity can only ascend from here after launching a publisher program that appears to have gone nowhere and an alleged attempt at acquiring Google’s Chrome browser, which The WSJ willingly obliged.

What’s next? Funding and a longer runway for the executive team to figure out a proper product roadmap ahead.

LLMS & CHATBOTS

Developments

• Gemini Enterprise: The new front door for Google AI in your workplace (October 9) – Google Cloud blog
• A small number of samples can poison LLMs of any size (October 9) – Anthropic
• OpenAI’s Sora hit 1 million downloads in less than five days (October 9) – CNBC

SELL-SIDE

Contextual is back, thanks to AI

The sell-side wants to be AI-enabled, too.

To that end, Fox Advertising said that it will integrate contextual ad verification firm Mobian into Fox’s new Converged Media Platform, which was originally announced in May. The Mobian AI-enabled contextual elements to be added to the platform include cross-format audience insights, optimization and measurement.

Fox ad sales chief strategy officer, Stephano Kim, framed the new partnership in terms of what Fox sees as the state of ad verification technology today:

“Unfortunately, traditional technology is flawed and oftentimes mistakenly flags content that is completely brand safe. (…) Particularly in news, this unnecessarily prevents advertisers from reaching important consumers while jeopardizing publishers from receiving funding to create content that provides audiences a vital connection to the world around them.”

Of particular interest to Fox is Mobian’s ability to break down website visitors into personas by using context. This aligns with the buy-side’s interests in personas, too.

Read the press release. (October 9)

Mobian co-founder Jonah Goodhart was founder of digital ad measurement platform Moat along with his brother Noah Goodhart, which sold to Oracle in 2017.

Related: Why advertisers are quietly returning to news-driven media channels (October 9) – Digiday

PLATFORMS

Adding agents to the marketing platform

At its Advertising Week event in NYC yesterday, Zeta Global announced “Athena,” a chatbot which is integrated within the AI-enabled Zeta Marketing Platform. The company positions Athena as a “superintelligent agent” which is powered by “Zeta Answers,” an intelligence framework across “proprietary data sets, identity graphs, and marketing intelligence capabilities.” Finally, its new Zeta Agentic App suite speaks to overall automation of the buying process including workflow and advisory services.

Read more about it the press release. (October 9)

Zeta Global CEO David Steinberg told Adweek that his company plans to quadruple client revenue with the new product releases —part of a $100 investment made the by the tech firm this year. Read Adweek. (October 9)

MEASUREMENT

Answer Engine Optimization tips

Brand visibility platform, Yext, which is run by former Right Media CEO Michael Walrath, released new research focused on Large Language Models (LLMs) and how brand visibility varies across the various answer engines.

As one might guess, the Yext study —authored by its chief data officer, Christian Ward, among others— shows that geographic context should be the foundation of brand visibility strategy,” which speaks to Yext’s own product suite.

Nevertheless, the findings are compelling. Such as:

• “OpenAI’s Heavy Reliance on Directories for Subjective Queries. When a query becomes subjective (e.g., “What is the best…?”), OpenAI’s citation behavior shifts dramatically. For both branded and unbranded subjective queries, third-party directories become a primary source, peaking at 46.3% for Branded Subjective questions. This means that for opinion-based questions on OpenAI, a brand’s presence in directories is paramount.

• The Focus on Industry-Specific Directories for Perplexity. Perplexity consistently shows a strong preference for industry-specific directories, especially for subjective queries where expertise is a factor. For Unbranded Subjective queries, these specialized directories account for 24% of its citations, the highest of any model. This indicates that for Perplexity, optimizing for niche, industry-relevant platforms is a key strategic lever.”

Read the report on Yext’s website. (October 9)

Read a summary of the report on Search Engine Land. (October 9)

EVENTS

Agentic urgency in ad tech

Next week’s virtual event focused on creating agentic ad standards in advertising is picking up speed. According to the sign up page, there are over 1,000 signups for the event titled, “Agentic Advertising Standards & Community Launch” next Wednesday.

Data collaboration platform, Optable, and Scope3 CEO Brian O’Kelley are spearheading the effort, which is also drawing the interest of a well-known investment banker:

“Given the breadth, depth and severity of AI’s impact on advertising, this is a critical initiative. We simply can’t remake the mistakes of programmatic’s past that resulted in the fragmented, opaque, inefficient, murky supply chain we have today. (…)I will be speaking at the AdCP event on Wednesday, October 15th…”“

Read more from LUMA Partners’ Terence Kawaja on LinkedIn yesterday. (October 9)

From tipsheet: The uncertainty of what the future holds for ad tech players continues to build given the AI ‘tidal wave’ washing over the advertising industry.

TECH

Antother AI-enabled SMB offering

Director of Advanced Advertising, Rhys McLachlan, of UK-based television network ITV, discussed his company’s latest product targeting SMBs on LinkedIn yesterday.

“Several months back I sat in on one of the best ad-tech sales pitches I’ve ever had the privilege of attending. No pitch deck, no slides, just an innate (and well founded) confidence that the product demo would win the room. In the space of less than 5 minutes Jonathan Moffie created, sourced from on the fly prompts in the room, four good-enough-for-tv ads in the streamr[dot]ai platform.”

Mr. McLachlan hopes the new platform can make it easier for SMBs to spend on his network by using AI to help create TV ads. Read more on LinkedIn. (October 9)

Sell-side platform Magnite acquired streamr[dot]ai one month ago.

More: ITV and Magnite enable AI ad creation in ‘under 30 seconds’ (October 9) – TVB Europe

From tipsheet: A big theme this year under the “AI and ads” umbrella is enabling SMBs to make better creative -or any creative (such as TV). Creative is a critical lever for building brands and making ads work.

Also, in aggregate, SMB ad budget is huge. But at the same time, every nickel counts.

TECH

Google & Model Context Protocol

Search Engine Land covered the release of the open-source Google Ads API Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server which it said “makes it easier for developers to connect AI models (like Google Gemini) directly to Google Ads data, unlocking new possibilities for campaign analysis, reporting, and automation.”

Read more on Search Engine Land. (October 9)

Also: Open Source Google Ads API MCP Server (October 7) – Google Ads Developer blog

“The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is the open standard that allows Large Language Models (LLMs), like Google Gemini, to connect with and act upon external data sources and applications. By releasing an MCP Server specifically for the Google Ads API, we are making it possible for any MCP-compatible AI application to understand and analyze advertising campaigns through natural language…”

Finally: google-ads-mcp (October 7) – Git Hub

From tipsheet: A walled garden, in the age of AI (while navigating antitrust trials), says it wants compatibility with everyone else via MCP.

TECH

Ads are coming to the chatbot

After OpenAI announced on Monday the beginning of an app store and inclusion of well-known apps such as Zillow and Booking[dot]com, Mobile Dev Memo analyst Eric Seufert reviewed the details and saw ads inevitably on the horizon.

“And as is my suspicion with Instant Checkout, ChatGPT’s introduction of an ‘app store’ renders the possibility of ads in ChatGPT all the more likely. Once ChatGPT’s app store scales beyond a handful of design partners, developers will need a means of promoting their products.”

Read more. (October 7 – subscription)

MORE

• The AI Playbook Helping Intuit’s CMO Revolutionize its Marketing (October 8) – Adweek
• LiveRamp Partners with Dappier to Unlock New Revenue for Publishers with Personalized Ads embedded in AI Answers (October 9) – press release
• Op-ed: Stop Debating And Start Acting: A Unified Front Against AI Is Publishers’ Only Hope (October 9) – Scott Messer, Messer Media, on AdExchanger
• The Trade Desk Brings Onsite Retail Media Inventory to Advertisers Through Integration with Koddi; Gopuff Serves as First Retail Partner (October 9) – press release
• mParticle and Interclick co-founder Michael Katz steps back from ad/martech, for now – Michael Katz on LinkedIn (October 8)