Agencies navigate AI video rights

“OpenAI’s new AI video app, Sora 2, is causing concern for agencies as they navigate potential copyright violations for their clients, according to Digiday’s Sam Bradley. Bradley wrote:

“Sora 2 initially shipped with an ‘opt-out’ policy for IP rights holders. If an artist or advertiser didn’t want their work to be used in the tool’s model, they would need to get in touch. It wasn’t a popular move. ‘Early returns from rightsholders have suggested that they are not opting in,’ said Glenn Pudelka, a copyright and privacy attorney at Troutman Pepper Locke…”

LLMS & CHATBOTS

Developments

“1) Google targets Gemini 3 for December, weighs putting more capability into the free tier, and is quietly working on an integration with Apple devices. 2) Perplexity just hit $200 million in ARR ahead of plan” (October 17) – Alex Heath on LinkedIn
Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic are paying millions to train teachers on AI, in a push to bring chatbots into classrooms (October 17) – AP
Oracle Isn’t Answering the Hardest Questions About Its AI Plans (October 17) – The Wall Street Journal

SELL-SIDE

Cloudflare CEO on Google’s legal team

Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince spoke with Ars Technica last week about his company’s recent effort “to force Google to change how it crawls them to fuel its AI products and initiatives.” The catalyst for the interview is publishers losing traffic to AI answer engines and content delivery network Cloudflare’s “Cloudflare Signal Policy” which was announced in late September. Mr. Prince sees an internal war happening between Google’s legal team and every Googler not in legal. Furthermore, he is convinced Google is coming to a proverbial fork in the road with the new policy, which hinges on Google crawlers listening to robots.txt instructions.

Prince said: “Make no mistake, the legal team at Google is looking at this saying, ‘Huh, that’s now something that we have to actively choose to ignore across a significant portion of the web.’” Read more. (October 16)

RESEARCH

eMarketer: AI is not going to replace Search

Having joined eMarketer in August, new AI analyst Nate Elliott hits the ground running with a “hot take” and an eMarketer graphic on search share (see below).

Mr. Elliott wrote on LinkedIn:

“Today I published my first EMARKETER report: AI Will Dominate Search—Just Not in 2026.

You’ve no doubt heard the claims that AI has already replaced search. But it hasn’t, and it’s not going to. Today, AI tools account for just 3.3% of US online discovery time. And before that number reaches critical mass, AI discovery will simply merge into search…”

BRANDS

From the Advantage+ front lines

Commenting Meta’s AI-enabled Advantage + ad platform on Friday, performance marketer and podcaster Andrew Faris shared on LinkedIn:

“Had a Meta rep pull audience overlap between my Highest Value (tROAS) and Highest Volume (Bid Cap) campaigns for a client yesterday.

Exact same ads.

.5%.

If you’re not running Highest Value, you’re missing out.”

Read the thread on X. (October 17)

More:

“About 70% of the money I spend on Meta Ads for my clients is on Target ROAS campaigns.” (March 6) – Andrew Faris on LinkedIn
Meta withdraws from MRC audit and loses brand safety accreditation (October 16) – Performance Marketing World
Why Meta sees incrementality as the future of measurement (October 16) – Meta sponsored post on Digiday

From tipsheet: Meta’s AI-enabled platform Advantage+ is finding more audience for marketers.

TECH

AdCP outcome? AI may threaten RTB

Diaz Nesemoney of AI-powered commerce marketing platform Jivox is enthusiastic about the new AdCP protocol announced last week and sees —in part— an opportunity for the elimination of manual workflows.

In addition, Mr. Nesemoney said on LinkedIn:

“AdCP seems designed for direct media buys which on one hand could eliminate the layers and fees but could also means a lot of the automated bidding models may not be available as it is being positioned as a parallel system to the widely used RTB (real-time bidding) protocol. I can’t help wonder what advertising in general will look in a few years as it gets re-invented by AI. Two things that came to my mind…

1) I hope adtech platforms don’t just layer this on top of their existing complex tech making it even more complex. AI-native platforms built from the ground up to automate using AI will be more valuable, layering AI on existing legacy tech will only make it slower and more expensive…”

EVENTS

Brian Lesser presents at ANA event

ANA Masters of Marketing takes place this week in Orlando, Florida. The annual event aims to bring together the world’s biggest and brightest marketers with an emphasis on brand versus performance marketing. This year, AI runs throughout the agenda – is the emphasis on performance and outcomes far behind?

On Thursday, WPP Media CEO Brian Lesser will enter the brand marketer “arena” with a presentation from his media agency group. This is one of the first public appearances by Mr. Lesser since he re-joined WPP last year —and since new CEO Cindy Rose took the helm on September 1 at the agency holding company.

The presentation:

“Architecting Growth In the AI-Powered Economy”

“For senior marketing leaders, the future is bright: intelligent growth is within reach. This session, led by WPP Media CEO Brian Lesser, asserts that the future of brand value creation lies at the nexus of ubiquitous media and transformative AI. Lesser will demonstrate why media is a primary driver of creative commerce, demanding a complete strategic re-evaluation. Discover the critical shift from tactical campaigns to strategic ‘worldbuilding’ – creating evergreen brand ecosystems that foster deep engagement and deliver measurable business outcomes. Learn how the power of data and AI enables unparalleled relevance at scale, optimizing every touchpoint for maximum impact. This session delivers the strategic blueprint to leverage advanced intelligence, optimize your innovation pipeline and gain a competitive edge that will redefine creative and commercial success.”

Thursday, October 23, 11:55 am ET