The news: Google announced an expanded use of AI to combat invalid ad traffic in a bid to help advertisers preserve budgets and maintain trust, per a recent blog post. Though Google has previously used AI to prevent invalid traffic (IVT), the company has updated its “industry-leading defenses powered by large language models,” with the goal of better analyzing ad placements, suspicious user interactions, and app and web content. Our take: By taking concrete steps to reduce IVT and address transparency concerns, Google may begin to rebuild trust with advertisers.
The news: OpenAI’s GPT-5 could be the start of ChatGPT becoming a transaction-driven super app that monetizes user intent, not attention. GPT-5’s router—which analyzes queries and decides how hard to “think” based on complexity—lets OpenAI invest more resources during high-intent moments like “compare hiking boots under $200” or “best smart TVs for co-op gaming.” Prioritizing queries with high commercial value could help OpenAI monetize users not through ads but via affiliate or take-rate revenues, per SemiAnalysis. Partnerships with Shopify and others suggest that monetization stack is already on the way. Our take: A full-service ChatGPT that’s intuitive enough to guide full shopping journeys inside a chatbot while keeping backend costs minimal could rewrite the AI platform’s business model. Brands should be working to optimize for AI-native commerce and integrate with agentic tools.
The news: Despite consumers’ rising use of AI agents for search, shopping, and discovery, brands are falling behind on generative engine optimization (GEO) strategies. 47% of brands have no deliberate GEO strategy or have no idea if they appear at all in AI agent responses, per a new report from Cordial. Another 47% have only just begun optimizing content for AI discovery. Our take: To boost visibility, brands should optimize for conversational context and create structured, machine-readable content that AI can index, like clear website FAQs, TL;DR summaries, and detailed product specs. Expanding presence across social platforms that feed AI training models, such as Reddit, Quora, and YouTube, can also improve chances of surfacing in AI-generated responses.
Data privacy and security are the top concerns of 73% of C-level executives worldwide regarding AI implementation, according to an April BearingPoint survey.
The news: GenAI models can easily be influenced to perpetuate false health facts when they’re fed made-up medical terms and information, per a new Mount Sinai research published in Nature last week. Our take: As more consumers rely on open GPT models for health answers, misinformation and intentional disinformation pose growing risks to both personal and public health. There’s an opportunity for healthcare and pharma marketers to step up science-based AI marketing and communications, such as Pfizer’s custom genAI medical query tool Health Answers that sources answers from medical journals and peer-reviewed research.
The news: Nvidia is facing a new obstacle in its ability to sell chips to China—Chinese authorities are urging ByteDance, Alibaba, Tencent, and others to halt purchases of Nvidia hardware. This follows an agreement between President Donald Trump, Nvidia, and AMD that requires the two companies give the US government a 15% cut of Chinese chip revenues in exchange for permission to sell hardware there, per Bloomberg. Our take: ability to develop and deploy AI models for things like algorithm recommendations, content moderation, and generative AI (genAI) features. Marketers should diversify their AI-powered marketing tools to stay ahead if TikTok’s ad products and UX features develop more slowly.
For advertisers, the increasing fragmentation within the search landscape can be quite frustrating and challenging. “But for consumers it feels like ease and convenience," said our analyst Sarah Marzano on a recent episode of "Behind the Numbers." "We're able to conduct product searches wherever we're spending time and go on a journey that's tailored to the mindset we're in."
Elon Musk plans to sell paid placements within Grok’s AI-generated answers, marking his first major advertiser pitch since Linda Yaccarino’s departure. Grok, X’s in-house AI assistant built by xAI, will integrate ads directly into responses, offering brands high-intent, context-driven targeting. The move comes as X’s global ad revenues, projected at $2.26 billion in 2025, remain roughly half of pre-Musk levels. Musk says Grok will eventually automate the full ad-buying process, from creative grading to personalization, aiming to improve efficiency and performance. With user growth declining in every major region, the strategy hinges on whether brands trust Musk’s AI-led vision enough to re-engage.
The news: The release of OpenAI’s long-awaited GPT-5—a frontier model the company originally expected to launch in summer 2024—hit turbulence almost immediately. Despite high expectations, early users reported the model felt sluggish and less capable than GPT-4o, labeling it “kinda mid.” It’s a surprising letdown for what was billed as a major leap forward. Our take: Marketing and communications remain stubbornly human domains for now. If AI could fully replace them, OpenAI’s own product announcements would run like clockwork. Instead, the debut of one of the world’s most advanced AI models was labeled an avoidable public relations headache, showing that even cutting-edge technology may be remembered less for what it can do and more for how it was introduced.
The news: Meta’s strategy of hiring its competitors’ top AI engineers reflects the industry’s urgency to ramp up capabilities and get to artificial general intelligence (AGI) first—CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated that was the company’s objective in “delivering personal superintelligence for everyone,” per ZDNET. Our take: Meta is betting big—on people, not just products. This strategy offers speed, proprietary insight, and technical capacity. But it also raises scrutiny from investors and customers expecting it to pay off. Marketers should track Meta’s progress and watch how it integrates newly acquired AI knowledge. If successful, this shift could reinvent ad targeting, creative automation, and user modeling at scale.
The news: Content demands are growing faster than budgets, pushing marketers toward AI as a way to keep up. Even as automation increases, ad agencies remain crucial partners for executing and scaling campaigns. Two-thirds (67%) of global employees working in marketing and communications use AI for content creation frequently or all the time, per 10Fold’s AI-First, Buyer-Ready report. That surge in AI adoption is accompanied by ambitious output goals: 91% plan to increase their content output this year, and nearly half (45%) expect to produce three to five times more than before. Our take: The future of content marketing isn’t AI versus agencies—it’s a combination of both. Hybrid models that combine in-house human and AI-powered creation with agencies’ expertise in strategy, distribution, and optimization can help maximize budgets, maintain brand voice, and keep up output as demand rises.
On today’s podcast episode, we discuss if Google is actually fending off the AI search competition, what its AI Overviews are doing to search behavior, and why growing AI search usage might not necessarily translate into a booming ad business. Join our conversation with Senior Director of Podcasts and host, Marcus Johnson, Senior Director of Briefings, Jeremy Goldman, and Principal Analyst, Yory Wurmser. Listen everywhere you find podcasts and watch on YouTube and Spotify.
The news: We recently covered Wells Fargo’s early entrance into the agentic AI realm. And we recommended that other financial institutions (FIs) explore how they could implement it, too—regardless of size. Now a smaller FI, Michigan-based Family Financial Credit Union, has announced its partnership with fintech start-up Algebrik AI to implement a new digital lending suite, per a press release. Why this matters: Family Financial Credit Union will be one of the first smaller FIs to go public with its agentic AI offering. If it proves successful and customers like the experience—which could in turn draw more business to its loan products—it could inspire other institutions to pursue similar partnerships and offerings. We expect many more FIs of all sizes to announce agentic AI pilots in the near future.
Pinterest reported a breakout Q2 2025 with $998 million in revenue, up 17% YoY—beating guidance and analyst expectations. Monthly active users hit an all-time high of 578 million, with profitability improving and ARPU rising globally. Gains were driven by GenAI tools like auto-collages, stronger commerce integration via Instacart, and a lean ad tech approach powered by Magnite. Pinterest’s ad business continues to grow steadily, with advertiser spending up and margins expanding to 25%. While still underweight in media plans, Pinterest is proving itself as a differentiated, performance-ready platform with rising traction among Gen Z and global users.
The news: Apple Intelligence could integrate OpenAI’s GPT-5, its latest model that combines traditional ChatGPT capabilities with deepo3-series reasoning, as early as next month, per 9to5Mac. Updates for a more personalized and intelligent Siri, originally expected in the iOS 18.4 update, were delayed in March until sometime “in the coming year.” GPT-5 could accelerate that timeline and give Apple a more robust foundation for a truly conversational, autonomous assistant Our take: Marketers and publishers should prepare for reduced visibility through traditional search if assistants like Siri can effectively answer user queries directly. Focus on generative engine optimization (GEO) for conversational AI discovery—think FAQs on websites and succinct answers that large language models (LLM) can easily surface.
53% of marketers in North America cite data analysis and insights as the top bottleneck slowing down marketing cycles, according to an April GrowthLoop and Ascend2 survey.
The news: Wells Fargo is partnering with Google Cloud to equip the bank’s 215,000 employees with advanced generative and agentic AI tools, per American Banker. The phased implementation will span the next few months. Why this matters: If Wells Fargo sees greater efficiency, a better customer experience, and savings from the wide AI rollout, it could set an industry trend. Competitors should at least begin exploring how they can implement agentic AI in their own operations. And Google Cloud’s involvement serves as a reminder that these solutions don’t need to be developed internally. Third-party partnerships may be especially valuable for smaller financial institutions that want to catch up on AI innovation.
The news: Google claimed that its AI summaries do not impact referral traffic from search after a Pew Research report showed that AI Overviews cut the number of users who clicked on links from overall search results by nearly half. Our take: Despite Google’s objections, AI Overviews inevitably harm sites that rely on search results and SEO for visibility. But with AI summaries showing no signs of going away, what matters is how brands adapt. Traditional keyword strategies are no longer sufficient in the age of AI.
The news: Startup ElevenLabs launched Eleven Music, a platform that gives brands and creators copyright-safe tools to generate custom music and audio. Users can enter prompts in plain English—such as “make me an upbeat disco track with background vocals”—and get a track within minutes, per The Wall Street Journal. Our take: Services like ElevenLabs can democratize music creation for video campaigns and empower smaller brands to create original campaign content with minimal effort. But with growing concern over AI’s role in creative industries, brands should remain transparent about AI use, keep human creatives on staff as backstops, and use AI when it can complement rather than replace human work.
The news: Cohere wants to ease enterprise concerns around AI adoption with the launch of North, its new flagship platform. North is a privately deployable agentic platform that lets companies create, manage, and deploy AI agents entirely behind their own firewall. Our take: With the frenetic pace of AI model launches and the pressure for quick enterprise adoption, data governance and security can’t be an afterthought. Platforms like North give enterprises a path to adopt powerful AI tools without giving up control over sensitive information.