OpenAI faces rising pressure from Google’s Gemini 3 because of its improved performance and multimodal functionality in text, sound, vision, video, and coding tasks. Meanwhile, new data shows that ChatGPT drives far less traffic to publishers than expected. Gemini 3’s leap forward and ChatGPT’s diminishing user clicks force brands to rethink how they show up in a world where answers live inside the model, not on the open web. Optimizing for generative engines now and focusing on answer-ready content will drive traffic, monetization, and attribution later as more engagement happens inside AI rather than after clicks.
Amazon blocked several OpenAI-affiliated crawlers from accessing its site, a move first reported by ecommerce analyst Juozas Kaziukėnas. That marks the retailer’s latest attempt to keep third-party agents from encroaching on its turf and endangering ad revenues. Amazon’s insistence on keeping AI agents at bay is the right move for the company for the time being. Adoption is minimal for now, hampered by trust issues, clunky UX, and minimal merchant participation. However, the gates will have to open at some point—and the longer Amazon waits, the more ground it cedes to rivals like Walmart.
The IAB’s 2025 Creator Economy report shows creator marketing has become a full-fledged media channel—one projected to reach $37.1 billion in spend next year, growing 26% YoY and outpacing the broader ad market by a factor of four. Nearly half of advertisers now call creators a must-buy, yet workflows remain fragmented across budgets, discovery tools, and measurement systems. With AI accelerating both production and complexity, the report lays out the emerging mandate: treat creator marketing as its own discipline with centralized budgets, standardized vetting, unified measurement, and formal AI governance. For marketers, real performance now requires real structure.
Walmart and Target closed their recent earnings calls on sharply different footings, but with a surprisingly shared vision for the immediate future.
Google is innovating its AI image generation capabilities for advertisers with the release of “Nano Banana Pro.” The tool enables advanced creative capabilities for ads, enhancing brands’ ability to generate and edit images using AI in Google Ads. AI is set to deliver increasing value to advertisers as creative capabilities evolve and consumers generally grow more comfortable with its role in marketing.
Advertising industry, public relations, and related services employment decreased by 800 jobs in September, per delayed data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The decline underscores mounting pressures across the ad sector. As industry employment declines, ad professionals need to focus on skill development, adaptability, and networking.
Chubb has introduced AI-driven analytics and product matching features within its Chubb Studio platform, which lets partners embed Chubb insurance in their digital experiences. It’s another move that reinforces the incumbent insurer’s position as a key player in the space. Traditional sales channels will inevitably decline as Gen Zers and young millennials become a larger share of insurance buyers. Insurers need to rethink their distribution strategy and technology infrastructure or risk losing access to digitally native customers who expect seamless, integrated purchasing experiences.
Digital health tech funding continues to rebound in 2025, bolstered by AI deals. Funding reached $3.9 billion in Q3, already surpassing last year’s total, per PitchBook. AI is driving a new wave of digital health investment, and both healthcare systems and providers will feel pressure to adopt AI-assisted tool, not just experiment with them.
On today’s podcast episode, we discuss the three big questions surrounding Amazon in Q3 and beyond: What Amazon's corporate layoffs tell us about how AI is actually affecting the broader job market. Is Amazon’s new “Help Me Decide” feature a significant stepping stone toward agentic AI? And could Amazon’s AI smart glasses for delivery workers be a Trojan horse for broader smart-glasses adoption? Join Senior Director of Podcasts and host Marcus Johnson, along with Analyst Rachel Wolff. Listen everywhere, and watch on YouTube and Spotify.
OpenAI is rolling out a group chat option for ChatGPT to all logged-in Free, Go, Plus, and Pro users globally. The company said in a blog post that the feature is intended to help users collaborate with one another in the same conversation—such as working with friends, family, or coworkers on plans, decisions, and brainstorming. To capitalize on this new engagement tool, marketing leaders should start experimenting with group-based AI workflows and prepare for new discovery channels.
28% of B2B buyers worldwide have AI review boards or steering committees review AI products during evaluation, making it the least common internal review method, according to a July 2025 Responsive survey.
CVS Health’s Aetna is adding conversational generative AI (genAI) to its insurance website and mobile app. Aetna’s move highlights how insurers can use genAI to become more attractive to employer benefit packages.
The European Commission (EC) plans to propose scaled-back digital regulations to make it easier for companies to access users’ personal data and allow AI companies to legally use personal information for model training. The changes include simplifying cookie consent and letting users accept with a single click and save preferences centrally. Access to richer data sets could improve consumer segmentation, predictive modeling, and personalization offerings. Brands that clearly communicate how they use data, what protections exist, and the benefits of personalization will be more likely to maintain loyalty.
On today’s podcast episode, we discuss whether Coca-Cola’s AI holiday ad is a bold move forward or a soulless shortcut—and, when everything can be generated, whether authenticity becomes the new premium. Listen to the discussion with Vice President of Content and host Suzy Davidkhanian, Principal Analyst Sky Canaves, and Analyst Arielle Feger.
In earnings calls from retail leaders, one of the biggest shared signals is that AI shopping assistants are becoming the new front door of the customer journey. Whether the retailer is in grocery, fashion, or general merchandise, conversational search is now the organizing principle for discovery.
A federal judge handed Meta one of its biggest legal wins in years, ruling that its Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions do not violate US antitrust law. The decision leaned heavily on how TikTok and YouTube now compete for the same user attention Meta once dominated—proof, the court said, that the company cannot be considered a monopoly. The ruling arrives just as Reels accelerates across Instagram and platforms converge on short-form video and AI-driven discovery. For marketers, the outcome underscores a simple reality: user attention sits across the big three video platforms, and planning must follow that distribution.
Intuit signed a multiyear strategic partnership with OpenAI with over US $100 million per year to embed OpenAI’s models into Intuit’s software. The models will enable AI agents for Turbotax, QuickBooks, Credit Karma, and Mailchimp. Intuit’s OpenAI deal foreshadows a seismic transformation in how users experience applications— where generative interactions become the norm, AI agents handle tasks on users’ behalf, and copilots integrate seamlessly into daily workflows. In financial services, it introduces the capacity to quickly interact with complex data and take action.
Three major AI releases—Microsoft’s Agent 365, Google’s Gemini 3 Pro, and xAI’s Grok 4.1—could point the way to how businesses will deploy and govern AI. Following OpenA’s GPT 5.1, each new product update approaches intelligence from a different angle: Microsoft is offering operational control, Gemini is touting multimodal reasoning and search, and xAI is demonstrating emotional fluency. The brands that map these tools to specific workflows—governance with Microsoft, discovery and search with Google, and engagement with xAI—could see faster execution, sharper insights, more resilient customer experiences, and tangible ROI.
Perplexity is relaunching its agentic shopping product for all users next week, just in time for Black Friday, with PayPal as its key partner. The upgraded tool improves shopping intent detection and personalization using users’ past search data, while PayPal merchants will handle transactions and customer service directly. The move intensifies competition with OpenAI, Amazon, and Google, all racing to dominate AI-powered shopping ahead of the holidays. While sales from these tools are expected to remain modest, they offer brands a valuable testing ground for future ecommerce growth driven by generative AI.