October 31st-November 6th // Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes

Google Is Helping WPP Build Websites That Show Up on All AI Search Engines🔒Source: Adweek
November 6th, 2025

Summary: Google is training WPP-owned agencies to use new tools that can optimize brand visibility across Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and Perplexity. It’s all part of WPP's "Generative UI" initiative with Google to help train WPP employees for an AI-driven search era. WPP will roll out “Generative Store," which creates dynamic web experiences that adapt to visitors' product search queries with custom recommendations and content. Behind the scenes, WPP is also fundamentally rebuilding brand websites so they’re better optimized for AI.

Opinion: What an incredible advertising trojan horse for Google inside WPP! AND they’re getting paid $400M for it!

Coca-Cola Hopes People Like Its New AI Holiday Ad Better Than Last Year's
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
November 3rd, 2025

Summary: Coca-Cola partnered again with LA-based AI studio Secret Level to create another generative AI version of its iconic "Holidays Are Coming" truck ad, one year after its first AI holiday spot sparked intense criticism from creative folks. This version features AI-generated animals watching the Coca-Cola trucks and uses Santa Claus imagery from the company's original 1930s Haddon Sundblom paintings. Apparently the production required about 20 people compared to 50+ for traditional ads of similar complexity. 

Opinion: Coca-Cola is betting that better AI video quality and strategic creative choices will shift sentiment among the creative community. Based on initial reactions, their bet seems misguided. 

Here’s the thing: If the ad didn’t work well with consumers (apparently it did), Coca-Cola would not be doubling down.

More brands will do this…

OpenAI's Sam Altman Raises Possibility Of Ads On ChatGPT
Source: Search Engine Journal
November 6th, 2025

Summary: In an interview with economist Tyler Cowen, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said he's "not totally against" introducing ads but said advertising can hurt user trust. He cited problems with Google's ad revenue model, arguing that its search results underperform because rankings partially depend on generating as much revenue as possible. He has problems with accepting payment to show a bad hotel over a better hotel. Altman acknowledged advertising will likely launch "at some point" on ChatGPT but stressed the need to preserve user confidence.

Opinion: Sam seems to be coming around…

Altman's careful dance around advertising reveals OpenAI's fundamental tension: You can't burn billions indefinitely, you need to do what’s best for shareholders, but you also can't risk destroying the trust that differentiates ChatGPT from say … Google.

Every major digital platform eventually becomes an ad platform. It’s inevitable. OpenAI will either reinvent the traditional ad model or eventually cave to it.

DoubleVerify's New Tools Track AI Bots and Block Low-Quality AI Content

What It Does: The DV AI Verification suite helps advertisers identify which ad impressions are shown to AII chatbots like ChatGPT versus real humans, and block ads from appearing next to low-quality AI-generated content. The tool that blocks ads from appearing next to low-quality AI-generated content is called … SlopStopper.

Quick Take: As AI chatbots and AI-generated content flood the web, advertisers need these tools to protect their investment. Especially the SlopStopper.

MNTN's QuickFrame AI Generates Studio-Quality Video Ads in 12 Minutes

What It Does: The platform can create complete video ads from just a website URL. Brands first select a style. From there, the system scripts, generates visuals, and adds voiceovers automatically, then exports directly to Meta, TikTok, YouTube, or Google Ads Manager.

Quick Take: This democratizes TV advertising creative for the 97% of MNTN's advertisers who had never run TV ads before, eliminating the biggest barrier—expensive video production—by dropping costs to nearly zero and turnaround time to minutes instead of weeks. AI is a massive tailwind for SMB TV advertising.

Snowflake Intelligence Lets Employees Talk to Company Data

What It Does: Snowflake Intelligence is an enterprise AI agent that allows customers to ask complex business questions like, "How are our sales trending?" Over 1,000 Snowflake customers, including Cisco, Toyota, and Fanatics, have deployed these AI agents.

Quick Take: AI agents sitting on top of all your data in the cloud is a major unlock. Soon, a marketer won’t have much use for data analysis and visualization tools that sit downstream from their data cloud.

The Setup: Chime serves millions of customers and receives millions of monthly support calls about payments, paychecks, and account issues. 

The AI Solution: Chime built a generative-AI voice and chat system that handles both voice and chat customer support. The system acts as the first point of contact for straightforward inquiries or as a co-pilot helping human agents with more complex cases. The system was trained to handle questions like "Where's my paycheck?" or "What happened to my money?" while routing cases requiring nuanced problem-solving to human agents.

The Results: 

Why This Matters: Most marketers view customer service as a cost center that competes with acquisition budgets. Chime's AI implementation flips this by dramatically reducing support costs while improving satisfaction—freeing up budget for growth initiatives.

Your Action: Calculate your customer support costs as a percentage of marketing spend. Identify your highest-volume, most repetitive support inquiries that don't require human nuance. Pilot AI chat first to prove ROI, then expand if data supports it. Every dollar saved on routine support is a dollar to spend on customer acquisition or retention campaigns.

Snap inks $400 million Perplexity deal to add AI search to chat🔒 - Perplexity will pay Snap to bring its AI search engine to Snapchat users worldwide. 

​​Amazon Sues to Stop Perplexity From Using AI Tool to Buy Stuff - Amazon doesn’t want Perplexity’s AI browser agent to buy Amazon products on people's behalf.

Shopify says AI traffic is up 7x since January, AI-driven orders are up 11x - While Amazon is trying to avoid appearing in AI results, Shopify is leaning all the way in.

Microsoft's AI Content Marketplace Picks up Gannett + People for licensing deals - Microsoft’s Publisher Content Marketplace pays publishers when their content is used by AI tools like Microsoft's Copilot.  

Palantir, Stagwell partner on marketing platform with AI-powered solutions - The platform enables teams to create and execute large-scale marketing campaigns.

Yahoo to buy Vetted, an AI shopping platform - Vetted joins Yahoo with its mission of "making product discovery effortless through smarter comparisons, recommendations, and insights."

AI Is Accelerating Tech Giants’ Dominance of the Ad Market🔒 - Madison & Wall expects Google, Meta, and Amazon to take 56% of the US ad market this year, up from about 51% in 2023. 

OpenAI signs $38bn cloud computing deal with Amazon - The seven-year agreement gives OpenAI access to hundreds of thousands of Nvidia GPUs, part of the company's $1.4T infrastructure spending spree as it prepares for a potential IPO.

Figma acquires AI-powered media generation company Weavy - Weavy will initially be a standalone business before being integrated into Figma Weave, a new Figma brand.

How Agentic Advertising Platform Aimy Uses Comcast’s Universal Ads API - Brand Networks integrated Comcast's Universal Ads API into its AI-powered platform Aimy, enabling small businesses to buy premium CTV ads across 15+ major publishers reaching 90% of US households.

OpenAI Wants Brands to Allow Their Mascots to Appear in Gen AI Videos🔒 - A company like Nintendo could upload images of Mario to its Sora 2 account and allow people to make AI videos with them. What could go wrong?

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