September 26th-October 2nd // Estimated Reading Time: 11 minutes

Meta greenlights Facebook, Instagram ads based on your AI chats
Source: Jonathan Vanian, CNBC
October 1st, 2025

Summary: Meta will use conversations with Meta AI—its digital assistant across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger—to target ads and recommend content starting December 16. Meta AI now has over 1B monthly active users, providing a significant data source. Don't be surprised if asking Meta AI about vacation planning results in a wave of Reels in your feed about travel destinations and ads for hotels. Voice interactions with Meta AI through Ray-Ban Meta glasses will also feed the recommendation engine. Users cannot opt out, but the update won't apply to those who don't use Meta AI. WhatsApp interactions remain separate unless users link accounts across Meta apps.

Opinion: Remember, at Facebook, YOU are the product.

It was inevitable that Meta would try to connect its massive AI investments to its advertising business. With over 1B users chatting with Meta AI, feeding it endless interest and intent data, Meta is developing targeting signal that goes well beyond clicks and likes. And unlike AI chat platforms such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude (and even Gemini for search), Meta can easily monetize that signal through ads on IG and Facebook without disrupting the AI chat user experience. This ability to monetize AI through ads more effectively than the other AI companies is a HUGE advantage for Meta.

You can now buy things through ChatGPT with new "Checkout" tool
Source: Megan Cerullo, CNBC
September 29th, 2025

Summary: Instant Checkout lets US ChatGPT users purchase products directly within chat conversations without navigating to a retailer’s website. Currently available for US Etsy sellers, the feature will expand to over 1M Shopify merchants including Glossier, SKIMS, Steve Madden, and Spanx. Built with Stripe, the system lets ChatGPT act as a shopping agent between buyers and sellers while merchants handle payments and fulfillment. Merchants pay small transaction fees to OpenAI, but the service remains free for users without affecting prices. Product recommendations stay organic and unsponsored, ranked purely by relevance. The feature currently only supports single-item purchases.

Opinion: OMG imagine the possibilities! This moves ChatGPT from information tool to transaction platform, which they could easily parlay into an ad platform. With 700M weekly users, OpenAI is challenging Amazon and Google's shopping dominance by inserting itself into the purchase decision at the exact moment of intent. For brands, this creates urgency around AI search optimization and product data quality, since purchase decisions now happen without ever leaving the AI interface. Recommended products (AKA ads) have to be coming soon, right?

OpenAI launches ChatGPT Pulse to proactively write you morning briefs 
Source: Maxwell Zeff, TechCrunch
September 25, 2025

Summary: Pulse generates 5-10 personalized reports overnight for users to read each morning. At launch, it's only available to ChatGPT's $200/month Pro subscribers, but will eventually be available to all. Pulse proactively creates everything from news roundups on specific topics to personalized briefs based on user context—like toddler-friendly travel itineraries for parents or group Halloween costume ideas. It even integrates with Google Calendar and Gmail through ChatGPT Connectors in order to surface important emails and generate agendas for upcoming events. 

Opinion: OpenAI is repositioning ChatGPT from reactive chatbot to proactive assistant, directly competing with Apple News, newsletters, podcasts, and more. For publishers and content creators, this is yet another concerning AI development. While ChatGPT synthesizes and summarizes content and cites sources with links, the consumption happens inside ChatGPT, not on publisher sites, potentially depressing traffic even more.

OpenAI Releases Social App for Sharing AI Videos From Sora🔒
Source: Rachel Metz, Bloomberg 
September 30th, 2025

Summary: The new standalone Sora app is powered by Sora 2, its upgraded AI video generator (more on that below). Available by invitation on iOS (Android coming later), the free app generates short clips from text prompts and includes a TikTok-style feed for discovering AI-generated videos from other users. Its "cameos" feature lets users create realistic AI avatars and voices of themselves through one-time recordings; they can then insert these avatars into videos made by themselves or friends with permission. Videos are watermarked and include metadata to indicate they are made with AI, and screen recording is disabled to control sharing.

Opinion: AI-generated TikTok is here! This puts OpenAI in direct competition with TikTok, Reels, Snap, X, and frankly any audio-visual social feed-based app. Cameos are cool, and a potential game-changer for social media content. But they also raise copyright and deepfake concerns—an OpenAI employee's most-liked video showed Sam Altman robbing a Target (lol). If Sora captures even a fraction of ChatGPT's 700 million weekly users, brands may need AI video strategies for fully AI-generated social feeds. Why work super hard to create the perfect TikTok when AI can just do it for you?

Meta wants to bring its Business AI chat tools to third-party websites
Source: Jonathan Vanian, CNBC
October 2nd, 2025

Summary: Companies can use Business AI, Meta's new digital assistant, across Facebook, Instagram, and their own Shopify-powered websites to offer personalized product recommendations and chat-based purchasing. The tool is free when incorporated into Meta ads but requires payment for use on company websites. The assistant will roll out on WhatsApp and Messenger this month in Mexico and the Philippines, with more markets following. Meta also debuted AI Business Assistant, a separate assistant for advertisers within Ads Manager and Business Support Home🔒to troubleshoot account problems, make campaign suggestions, and track performance. 

Opinion: This is yet another play to deliver AI tools that move beyond Meta's advertising walled garden. This tool makes Meta more like infrastructure for conversational commerce rather than just an ad platform. The Shopify partnership gives Meta immediate distribution to millions of merchants. This could create tension as Meta monetizes data flowing through these business chats (remember, with Meta, consumers ARE the product) while businesses want to own their customer relationships.

Sora 2 is here

What It Does: Sora 2 is OpenAI's upgraded AI video generation model that creates photorealistic videos up to 10 seconds long from text prompts. It offers synchronized audio, speech, and sound effects. The model better obeys the laws of physics; if a basketball player misses a shot, the ball rebounds off the backboard rather than teleporting to the hoop as in earlier models. It also handles complex visuals like backflips on paddleboards with proper fluid dynamics and buoyancy, and automatically generates and sequences individual scenes without manual editing. The system creates background soundscapes and lip-syncs dialogue across multiple languages.

Quick Take: Sora 2 is a game changer for video creative. The physics improvements are significant—earlier AI video generators struggled with basic motion and object permanence. But the copyright implications are explosive, and some worry these kinds of tools make it even harder for the average person to tell that content is AI-generated. Regardless, making great video ads just got MUCH easier and cheaper.

Claude Sonnet 4.5 

What It Does: Anthropic says its latest AI model has gotten better at writing code, cybersecurity, finance, and building complex AI agents. Compared to previous models, Sonnet 4.5 scored higher on tests that show how well it can use computers, and it can stay focused on complicated tasks for over 30 hours straight. In comparison, Claude Opus 4 could only handle seven hours of autonomous work. Other upgrades include checkpoints that let you save your work and go back to earlier versions and the ability to create files like spreadsheets, slides, and documents in the chat.

Quick Take: Is Claude becoming the go-to model for serious software development and AI agents, not just chatting? The ability to work autonomously for 30+ hours is remarkable. Go try it out!

The Trade Desk Announces Major Overhaul of Digital Advertising Data Marketplace

What It Does: Audience Unlimited uses AI to score and rank data segments from hundreds of third-party data providers. It also simplifies and streamlines data fees vs. TTD’s current a la carte data pricing model, resulting in lower data costs. The Trade Desk also launched Koa Adaptive Trading Modes, which let buyers use full AI-driven optimization (called Performance Mode) or more manual oversight (called Control Mode, where buyers can manage their own bids, allocation, and optimization). Both features will roll out to select agencies later in 2025, before a wider launch in early 2026. 

Quick Take: Today, data can account for nearly 20% of media costs. This tool could help reshape data costs if The Trade Desk's AI can accurately score data relevance and bundle it affordably. Performance Mode is interesting because it gives The Trade Desk an AI-powered tool similar to Google’s Performance Max and Meta’s Advantage+.

LiveRamp Debuts New AI Capabilities Including Agentic Tools, Segmentation, and Search

What It Does: LiveRamp's new AI tools let marketers connect multiple AI agents to its data network, which includes customer identity information, audience segments, and insights from 900 partners. LiveRamp also added two new features: AI-Powered Segmentation, which lets marketers describe the audience they want in plain English and will instantly create segments, and AI-Powered Search, which makes it easier to find relevant audiences in LiveRamp's Data Marketplace. The company added over 25 new partner connections including Netflix.

Quick Take: As companies build more AI agents, those agents need quality data to be useful. LiveRamp and its massive data network could be a bridge between AI agents and the marketing data they need to actually work.

The Setup: Tatari, a convergent TV ad platform serving 300+ brands, was an early adopter of AI for its products, but more importantly for its internal processes.

The AI Solution: Tatari embedded machine learning across measurement, planning, and operations. AI automates internal processes, optimizes campaigns, and analyzes creative performance. 

The Results: 

• Tatari’s most impactful capability uses AI to assess "billions of performance events" to create media plans "in seconds" that outperform manual counterparts.

• The company doubled revenue over two years while maintaining exactly 280 employees. 

Why This Matters: This demonstrates AI's potential to drive revenue growth without proportional headcount increases. Tatari's success came from embedding AI throughout operations rather than treating it as a feature add-on. 

Your Action: Audit where your team spends time on repetitive, data-intensive tasks. Look for processes that involve analyzing large datasets to make optimization decisions—these are prime candidates for AI automation. Start with one high-volume, high-impact area that is relatively “easy” to automate, rather than trying to automate everything at once.

MAI Raises $25M to Automate Performance Marketing with AI Agents, Driving Revenue for Brands - MAI specializes in AI agents that manage and optimize performance marketing with little to no human intervention, which it says can drive 40% more sales for ecommerce clients. 

How AI is rewriting the rules of search and shopping – by the numbers🔒- In search, 68% of global shoppers have used ChatGPT and other AI tools to shop. Only 20% of marketers are using Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), which makes their content easier for AI bots to crawl and understand. 

Gavin Newsom signs first-in-nation AI safety law - The law would require major AI developers to publicly disclose safety protocols and report significant incidents, creating potential groundwork for national AI safety standards.

Meta AI funnels AI videos from creators into new ‘Vibes’ feed - Similar to the Sora app, Meta AI has launched Vibes, its own feed of AI-generated short-form videos (slop?) that users can remix and cross-post to Instagram or Facebook.

OpenAI Saw More Revenue in Six Months Than All of Last Year - OpenAI generated $4.3B in revenue during the first half of the year, but spent $6.7B in R&D during the same period.

NBA and Amazon Take a Shot on AI Partnership🔒- NBA and AWS have launched "NBA Inside the Game," a platform powered by AWS that will provide AI-driven live stats and analytics during games. 

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