New OpenAI video monetization, revenue share

John Ebbert

Monetizing OpenAI

OPENAI & MONETIZATION

‘Make money’ with AI video

OpenAI took another step closer to advertising within its product line on Friday.

Reuters reported that “OpenAI will soon introduce controls allowing the owners of content rights to dictate how their characters are used in its AI video-generating tool Sora and plans to share revenue with those who permit such use.” Read more. (October 3)

On the rev share, Reuters cited a blog post from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman which read in part:

“…we are going to have to somehow make money for video generation. People are generating much more than we expected per user, and a lot of videos are being generated for very small audiences. We are going to try sharing some of this revenue with rightsholders who want their characters generated by users. The exact model will take some trial and error to figure out, but we plan to start very soon. Our hope is that the new kind of engagement is even more valuable than the revenue share, but of course we want both to be valuable…”

Read the post, “Sora Update #1” on Sam Altman’s blog. (October 3)

From tipsheet: Let the Sora video app flywheel spin. This monetization news incentivizes content creators to make better content.

BROWSER WARS

Perplexity opens up Comet browser

Dmitry Shevelenko, chief business officer of AI answer engine Perplexity, announced that in addition to making its browser — Comet, which it calls an “AI assistant” — free for all users, Perplexity is adding commerce and publisher partners.

Mr. Shevelenko explained on LinkedIn:

“We’ve partnered with leading brands like Expedia, 1Password, Chess[dot]com, Lowes, Squarespace, Slice, Rumble, Poshmark, Discord, Vividseats, and others to offer Comet users exclusive deals across news, travel, gaming, and more.

Today, we’re also announcing the initial launch partners for Comet Plus, our new business model ensuring publishers benefit from the AI age. Because a better internet includes the expertise and perspective of top journalists and publishers.

We’re honored to partner with CNN, Condé Nast, Fortune, Le Figaro, Le Monde, The Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post to bring premium stories to Comet Plus users.”

Read more on LinkedIn. (October 3)

From tipsheet: Is the next step an ad-supported browser in spite of Perplexity losing its ad chief in August?

Shevelenko’s post included an unusual screenshot of Google’s stock price turning lower in reaction to the Perplexity Comet news. As analyst Eric Seufert pointed out in the comments, Google’s stock was actually on the rise at the time.

THE NOT-SO-SLEEPING GIANT

AppLovin’s Axon

On Seeking Alpha, $230 billion AppLovin and its AI-enabled ad platform known as Axon were a focus of stock analyst Kennedy Djagi. Mr. Djagi noted that AppLovin’s new self-service ad platform is expected to be an important catalyst going forward, too. Read more. (October 4)

Also of note: AppLovin CFO Matt Stumpf discussed his company’s building blocks for growth during an appearance at last month’s Goldman Sachs Technology Conference:

“I think what’s really important to understand is, first of all, before the 20% to 30% kind of goal that we’ve put out into the public market in terms of long-term growth, is to first understand that we sit on top of a large amount of gaming supply. We’ve talked about MAX mediation platform that we own, and implied historically in earnings calls that, that mediation platform that, that supplies is growing double digits on an annual basis. That’s coming from a combination of both impression growth as well as dollars per impression….”

Read the transcript from the Goldman Sachs Tech Conference. (September 14)

From tipsheet: If you don’t know anything about AppLovin, read the Goldman Sachs transcript. With the largest market cap in ad tech beyond the walled gardens, they are a magnet for digital advertising dollars.

PEOPLE MOVES

Agency’s Chief AI Officer leaves

IPG’s Momentum Worldwide lost its chief AI officer, Jason Alan Snyder, to an AI-enabled healthcare data startup called SuperTruth.

Adweek’s Trishla Ostwal reported:

“Snyder joined Momentum in 2013 as global chief technology officer. He was named chief AI officer earlier this year. His last day was Sept. 30. He framed his departure as an evolution, rather than a break from the industry. ‘I’m not walking away from advertising and media. I’m extending what I learned at IPG,’ he told ADWEEK. ‘I worked on how brands engage with people. Now I’m focused on how data engages with society.’”

Read more in Adweek.

More: On his LinkedIn profile, SuperTruth co-founder and CEO Bobby Hill explained his company’s purpose: “…we transform data into a powerful asset for healthcare, wellness, and enterprise innovation. We optimize data for AI to deliver precise, impactful outcomes.”

From tipsheet: Outcomes are everywhere.

COMMERCE FIRST, THEN ADS

Reaction: OpenAI’s Instant Checkout

On Friday, Investor Business Daily (IBD) collected reaction from a group of Wall Street analysts in regards to OpenAI’s Instant Checkout announcement last week.

D.A. Davidson analyst Gil Luria’s reaction typified Wall Street’s view:

“The move could be a step toward ‘flipping the internet upside down…. We see this as an important milestone in changing the commercial structure of the internet away from human-targeted websites found through search, into chat-discoverable websites.’”

Read more on IBD. (October 3)

More: “‘It’s like Google all over again’: What OpenAI’s Instant Checkout signals about conversational commerce” (October 3) – Digiday

SELL-SIDE

AI helping pharma ad compliance

In an interview with the Pharmacy Times, legal expert Edgar Asebey, Esq., discussed how AI is providing a new efficiency to pharmaceutical advertising and compliance to Food & Drug Administration (FDA) guidelines.

“The point is that AI can help detect noncompliance in advertising because advertising today isn’t just in journals or on TV. It’s on social media and across all modern communication platforms. That has made oversight a real challenge for the FDA. There are countless ads running on paid social media, influencer campaigns, and other digital channels, and it’s impossible to keep up using traditional review methods.

AI provides a tool to analyze these ads without requiring a human to manually review each one. It can flag certain statements or claims that may be noncompliant and bring them to the FDA’s attention.

I think it’s a powerful tool for enforcement and for detecting potential noncompliance with the Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act.”

Read more in Pharmacy Times. (October 2)

From tipsheet: Mr. Asebey’s argument for AI and compliance echoes the brand safety or brand suitability pitches of ad verification firms which have been using machine learning-powered AI for years.

AI brings personalization. And AI brings compliance — a form of country-by-country personalization.

TECH

The Trade Desk wants transparency

In “The open internet 2025, part 2: Buyer innovations to change the ad market for good,” The Trade Desk CEO Jeff Green announced on Friday that his company would fork a popular bidding standard known as Prebid in an effort to secure what his company believes is better supply path transparency.

Writing in his company’s The Current publication, Mr. Green explained:

“To start, we’ve branched Prebid and created an upgraded auction (or more accurately an auction container, aka wrapper) that reflects the mechanics and standards of Prebid prior to the TID change. Going forward, we’ll maintain this branch of Prebid and we will consider merging future changes from the main or other Prebid branches. Of course, the founders of Prebid prepared for a moment like this by open sourcing the code. We’re grateful for all the work and vision of so many who have contributed to Prebid over the years. This strategic option wouldn’t be possible without their work and foresight.

On top of this Prebid foundation, we’re building an entirely new product.

This product is designed to have the most fair and transparent auction the industry has ever seen. Our only aim is a fair auction.

This product will be known as OpenAds.”

Read more in The Current -including details about PubDesk, a publisher feedback mechanism for what The Trade Desk sees when looking at the sell-side. (October 3)

Mr. Green will appear at the Prebid Summit on October 14 to discuss the opportunity ahead given the advances of AI. No doubt this latest strategy will be central to his appearance. See agenda.

The event suddenly sold-out late last week.

A nice summary: “For those wondering about the recent Prebid changes & The Trade Desk subsequent response, here’s my understanding (feel free to comment or disagree)…” (October 3) – Paul Silver, Flexitive

From tipsheet: The push-pull of transparency is heightened by AI these days. On the one hand, AI represents a “black box” – it’s hard to really know why AI makes a decision. On the other hand, AI wants pure, unfiltered data more than ever to feed the precision of its output.

The diversity of data and technology across the open web’s sell-side would appear to make complete transparency challenging for a company like The Trade Desk which is trying to aggregate opportunity for its AI-enabled ad platform, Kokai. At the same time, the open web’s sell-side wants to be paid for offering its piece of the transparency “pie,” i.e. a fair slice of The Trade Desk’s margins.

COMMUNICATING AI

Messaging and storytelling

On Friday, former Meta and Instacart comms executive, Brittany Darwell, announced her arrival at OpenAI which she described as “Messaging and Storytelling at OpenAI.”

She said on LinkedIn, “This week I started a new role at OpenAI focused on messaging and storytelling, including finding and amplifying ChatGPT stories and leading the OpenAI Podcast. I got excited about AI during my time at Instacart, and when I left, I was able to hand off all these new tools I built…” Read more from Ms. Darwell on LinkedIn. (October 3)

Read: “AI, Alchemy, and Legacy: How Building Tools at Instacart Led Me to OpenAI” (October 3) – Brittany Darwell, OpenAI, on LinkedIn

SLOP NARRATIVE

Slop – the start of something bigger

“Critics have accused both companies (OpenAI and Meta) of contributing to a deluge of so-called AI slop swamping the internet and blurring lines between real and fake. They are concerned that the new tools could facilitate abuses of users’ likeness, despite built-in protections, and that videos could spread misinformation…

But if the early results—and my own scrolling habits—are anything to go by, it’s about to get a lot sloppier.”

Meghan Bobrowsky, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal

Read: “AI Slop Is Everywhere. What Happens Next?” (October 5) – WSJ Technology Newsletter

From tipsheet: This well-earned title of “slop” represents the very beginning of compelling, prompt-based content.

SELL-SIDE STRATEGY

Publisher prepping for/with AI

The Economist and its subscription model are taking an aggressive approach to publishing with advancements in AI.

In addition to taking a “hard line” against licensing deals with AI firms looking to ingest its content as well as using “harder to copy” audio and video formats, Luke Bradley-Jones, The Economist’s president told Digiday.

“What The Economist is and how we turn up for our customers, both our kind of existing core customer base, but also the next generation of customers, is changing quickly … it’s partly about making ourselves as differentiated from the AI kind of generated content out there as possible.”

It’s not all about defending the citadel at the 182-year-old publication. The Economist has created an AI Lab to improve reader engagement which has included the use of AI chatbots on its site.

Read more in Digiday. (October 3)

REACTION: META’S AI CHATBOT

Opinions on Meta and AI

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