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Sam’s Club Connect launched Predictive Precision Targeting, using membership data and 400-plus intent signals to forecast purchases.
Sep 18OpenAI is testing Sponsored Agents, which let users click into a conversation with a business-sponsored agent after seeing an ad in ChatGPT.
Sep 17Criteo VP Tim Conley says the company became ChatGPT Ads’ first partner using a dataset of 4 billion globally mapped product SKUs and over $1 trillion in annual online transaction data.
Sep 17Thrad opened a self-serve platform letting marketers build and launch ad campaigns inside large language model conversations without a managed-service deal.
Sep 17Profound raised $180 million in a Series D co-led by Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins, valuing the AI marketing startup at $1.8 billion and bringing its total funding past $335 million since 2024.
Sep 17Avail’s new creatorAPI lets creators set guidelines for how brands use their likeness and voice, then generate multiple ad variations within those limits. It launches with Night Media and creator Emily Higgins after closed beta testing with direct-to-consumer brands.
Sep 17Stratechery reports that ads inside ChatGPT are proving effective, addressing OpenAI’s monetization question. The piece ties this to Amazon placing ads in ChatGPT, framing it as a fix for Amazon’s exposure to chatbot-driven shopping bypassing its retail site.
Sep 17EMarketer’s analysis frames OpenAI’s sponsored agents inside ChatGPT as an early test case for how advertising will work inside AI assistants. The piece treats the feature as a signal of where agentic commerce and sponsorship models are headed industry-wide.
Sep 17Google unveiled agentic commerce updates at Rethink ROI, including an “AI Performance Insights” dashboard and an open-standard “Universal Cart” letting shoppers buy across Search, YouTube and Gmail.
Sep 17Former “Hard Fork” hosts Kevin Roose and Casey Newton are partnering with NPR for distribution and ad sales of “Machine Gods,” a twice-weekly, video-first show on AI’s consumer, enterprise and policy implications launching in October.
Sep 16New research shows more than half of shoppers believe ads placed inside an AI tool make a brand more likely to be recommended by it.
Sep 15Google, Meta and Amazon captured 56% of U.S. ad revenue in 2025, up from 53% in 2024, as AI-directed spending grew from 2% in 2023 to roughly 12% today, per Madison & Wall estimates.
Sep 15Marketers now fight over whether AI chatbots mention them at all, not how they rank, but citation patterns vary wildly by platform.
Sep 15Anthropic’s Dario Amodei called for slower AI development after a swarm of agents ran unauthorized cyberattacks in August, warning a future incident could cause hundreds of billions in damage.
Sep 15State Farm, Mercedes and Hoka marketers say AI search behavior is a factor in budget debates, arguing brand spend protects consideration as tools like ChatGPT and AI Overviews reshape research.
Sep 15Google is scaling a Search Console-based program paying publishers only when content “significantly” contributes to Gemini, AI Overviews and AI mode answers, with payouts opaque and skewed toward small and mid-sized sites.
Sep 15Google is quietly scaling a Search Console-based “AI contribution pilot” that pays publishers only when their content “significantly” contributes to Gemini and AI Overviews responses.
Sep 15EMARKETER’s Behind the Numbers podcast examines why major travel brands are largely invisible when consumers ask AI chatbots like ChatGPT for travel recommendations. Smaller or niche sites often surface instead, even when searchers name a specific well-known brand.
Sep 15IAS and Neuro-Insight measured brain activity across 137 viewers watching CTV ads matched or mismatched to show tone and context, and repeated up to four times, to gauge frequency’s effect on brand impact.
Sep 15OpenAI is piloting a new ad unit that turns a ChatGPT ad click into a branded chat with an AI agent instead of a site visit. Wayfair confirmed it’s testing the format, called Sponsored Agent, at limited scale.
Sep 15OpenAI is now presenting sponsor of NFL on CBS sideline report segments, its ChatGPT logo appearing during the Jets-Titans broadcast. Hours later, CBS’s 60 Minutes season premiere closed with a segment warning about AI escaping human control.
Sep 15Mark Bambury, formerly senior brand partnerships director at Roblox and a Twitter/X veteran, becomes Head of OpenAI EMEA, Ads. He will build ChatGPT’s advertising team across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, reporting to global ads chief Dave Dugan.
Sep 15Google avoided forced divestiture of Chrome and its ad exchange in two DOJ losses, with judges opting for behavioral remedies instead. Observers now say regulators should scrutinize Google’s AI Max and AI Commerce expansion.
Sep 15Brand Keys’ 18th annual loyalty ranking places ChatGPT at No. 5, behind Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Apple, after adding a new AI-prerequisite benchmark that cut the list from 100 brands to just 42.
Sep 15