April 29th-May 5th // Estimated Reading Time: 10 minutes
Below is a roundup of last week’s notable industry news, with summaries and our opinions. ChatGPT ads are evolving FAST…
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Top Stories 👁
OpenAI opens all the advertising floodgates
May 1st-May 5th, 2026
Sources: Multiple
Summary: OpenAI made more ad moves this week, including opening its self-serve ads manager🔒 to all US advertisers. The $50K minimum spend requirement is gone. CPC bidding is live. CPA bidding and third-party measurement are both in the works, though no timeline has been confirmed. For now, ChatGPT ads are limited to a small favicon with text and a controlled set of advertiser categories such as consumer goods, local services, and travel. The company updated its privacy policy🔒 to acknowledge user data sharing between OpenAI and "marketing partners" for ad targeting and measurement.
OpenAI's ad tech partner list is growing for advertisers who want to buy ChatGPT inventory through other platforms. Pacvue and Kargo both announced ChatGPT integrations this week, joining Criteo, StackAdapt, and Smartly. Pacvue's integration lets marketers manage ChatGPT campaigns in its platform alongside other commerce media channels. Kargo is extending its creative capabilities into conversational AI formats on ChatGPT.
Opinion: Rejoice ad tech, OpenAI is letting everyone in! Just make sure to practice your pitch before you walk into Sam’s office…
But … maybe this is all just temporary. OpenAI's ad tech partner blitz feels like a near-term distribution strategy. The real goal could be to fast-track itself to becoming the next, big walled garden by learning through these ad tech integrations.
Kargo, Pacvue, StackAdapt, Criteo, Smartly — these companies bring advertiser relationships, tech infrastructure, and demand that OpenAI doesn't have yet. But, perhaps more importantly, they will provide real-time feedback on what ads will perform, what kind of targeting will be needed, which budgets will be tapped, and what measurement capabilities buyers will need. Every integration will give OpenAI a wealth of signals that it can use to inform its own ads business.
For marketers, the move is simple: test ChatGPT ads now through whatever integration fits your workflow, but don't build deep dependencies on any platform that may have temporary access.
One tiiiiiiiiny little hole to poke in OpenAI’s strategy: It needs 2.75 billion users by 2030 to support a $100B ad business (per its own estimates). It needs scale to justify having a walled garden. But ChatGPT saw a 413% spike in uninstalls year-over-year in March. Claude and Gemini are coming in hot. That’s a problem for OpenAI’s advertising ambitions.
Q1 Earnings!
Alphabet (👍): Revenue was up 22% to $109.9B, beating estimates, and marking the highest growth rate since 2022. Ad revenue was up 15.5% to $77.25B, including search (up 19% to $60.4B) and YouTube (up 11% to $9.88B, missing expectations). Google Cloud was up 63% to $20B. Alphabet will spend $180-190B on AI this year. Shares popped 10%+.
Meta (👎): Revenue was up 33% to $56.31B, beating estimates and marking the highest growth rate since 2021. Ad impressions were up 19%, and average price per ad was up 12%, all thanks to AI. Daily active users missed expectations. Meta will spend $125-145B on AI this year, up from $115-135B. Shares fell almost 10%.
Amazon (👍): Revenue was up 17% to $181.5B, beating estimates. Ad revenue was up 24% to $17.24B, beating expectations. AWS revenue was up 28% to $37.59B, beating estimates and marking its highest growth rate in more than three years, thanks to AI. Q2 guidance topped estimates. Shares rose more than 4%.
Microsoft (🤷): Revenue was up 18% to $82.9B, beating estimates. Azure revenue was up 40%, and Microsoft Cloud revenue was up 29% to $54.5B. Search ad revenue was up 12%. Bing hit 1B monthly active users. Microsoft forecast $190B in capital expenditures for 2026. Q4 revenue and margin guidance missed estimates. Shares fell about 1%.
Reddit (👍): Revenue was up 69% to $663M, beating estimates. Ad revenue was up 74% to $625M, thanks to AI. Daily active users were up 17% to 126.8M, beating estimates. Q2 revenue guidance of $715M–$725M topped estimates. Shares rose 12% in extended trading.
Pinterest (👍): Revenue was up 18% to $1.008B, beating estimates, thanks to AI-driven ad platform improvements. Global monthly active users were up 11% to 631M, an all-time high and marking 10 consecutive quarters of double-digit growth. Q2 revenue guidance topped estimates. Shares rose 15%.
Apple (👍): Revenue was up 17% to $111.2B, beating estimates. iPhone revenue rose 22% but missed estimates due to the global memory shortage. Services revenue, which includes advertising and subscriptions, hit an all-time high, up 16% to $30.98B, beating estimates. Current quarter guidance topped estimates. Shares rose about 3% in extended trading.
Roku (👍): Revenue was up 22% to $1.248B, beating estimates. Platform revenue was up 28% to $1.13B, driven by ads (up 27% to $613M) and subscriptions (up 30% to $519M), which Roku broke out separately for the first time. Streaming hours were up 8%. Q2 guidance topped estimates. Shares rose more than 11% in after-hours trading.
MNTN (🤷): Revenue was up 25% to $73.7M, beating estimates, excluding the divestiture of Maximum Effort. The company touted its QuickFrame AI product and said the number of customers using its CTV ad platform grew by 46%. The stock is trading about 30% lower than its IPO price. Shares fell 6.3% in after-hours trading.
Zeta Global (👍): Revenue was up 50% to $341M, or up 29% excluding the Marigold acquisition. The AI marketing cloud grew its "Super-Scaled Customer" count 19% and ARPU 21%, marking its 19th consecutive "beat-and-raise" quarter. Zeta raised its full-year revenue guidance. Shares rose 7% in after-hours trading.
Stagwell (👎): Organic net revenue growth was 1.6%, with total revenue up 8% to $704M, missing estimates. Digital transformation was the biggest growth driver, up 9%. Media & commerce revenue posted an organic decline of 0.7%, partly due to the loss of H&R Block. Shares fell 9%.
Paramount Skydance (👍): Revenue was up 2% to $7.35B, beating estimates. Streaming revenue was up 11% to $2.4B, led by 17% growth at Paramount+, which added 700K subscribers. TV media revenue fell 6%. The company reaffirmed 2026 guidance. Shares rose 4% in extended trading.
IAC / People🔒 (👎): Revenue was down 12% to $422.9M, missing estimates. People revenue fell 2% to $385.7M, as 8% digital revenue growth was offset by a 16% decline in print. Search revenue fell 76%, driven by Google algorithm changes. IAC cut its 2026 outlook due to the sale of Care.com and restructuring costs. Shares fell 5.3% in after-hours trading.
Opinion: Surprise surprise, a lot of companies are doing well thanks to AI! Of course the walled gardens, like Google, Meta, and Amazon are printing money because of it. But companies like Pinterest, Reddit, Zeta, MNTN, etc. are also riding the AI tailwind. Agencies and publishers? Not so much.
Next week, we’ll see how independent ad tech did, with Q1 earnings reports from The Trade Desk, Magnite, Viant, and others.
Other Notable Headlines
Retailers flock to TikTok Shop to find new shoppers, sales growth🔒 - Ralph Lauren, Olaplex, and Ulta Beauty have all opened storefronts on TikTok Shop recently, and other retailers are actively exploring it. The platform is growing quickly, generating $4.9B in US sales in Q1, nearly doubling year over year. TikTok Shop is drawing brands in by removing friction between discovery and purchase, letting shoppers buy without leaving the app. Older demographics are among the fastest-growing spender segments, broadening TikTok Shop's appeal beyond its core audience. On the advertising side, TikTok is extending its reach into the physical world through a partnership🔒 with Vistar Media (owned by T-Mobile), which reformats TikTok app ads for digital-out-of-home screens..
The Trade Desk is now selling onsite retail media ads for Dollar General🔒 - The partnership with Dollar General and retail media tech firm Kevel lets advertisers manage offsite and onsite campaigns directly through The Trade Desk's DSP, using Dollar General shopper data for targeting, measurement, and optimization. Previously, brands had to cobble together their offsite and onsite campaigns across separate platforms. This is The Trade Desk's second onsite retail media deal, following a deal with Gopuff last fall. It puts The Trade Desk in more direct competition with Criteo, which has long dominated the onsite retail media space. The inventory is currently only available through managed service, with self-serve to follow after a testing period.
Google Ads launches new tools for mapping incrementality - The tools aim to help marketers move beyond backward-looking reporting and toward real-time decision-making as signal loss and rising costs make it harder to prove what's working. They include a Map View in Data Manager, which gives marketers a visual snapshot of how their first-party data sources connect and where gaps or errors exist. Google is also releasing GeoX, an open-source incrementality tool that compares performance across geographic regions. Rounding out the rollout is Meridian Studio, an enterprise version of its media mix modeling (MMM) platform built on Google Cloud for teams managing large-scale data sets. Google’s got the media. Google’s got the measurement!
Other Notable Headlines
(that you should know about too) 🤓
DAZN acquires ViewLift for $100M to deepen US sports streaming presence🔒 - London-based sports streaming service DAZN (pronounced “da-zone”) sees the struggling regional sports market as a growth opportunity. ViewLift provides streaming tech for 15 US pro sports teams and five regional sports networks.
TelevisaUnivision swaps ad sales chiefs weeks before upfronts🔒 - Tim Natividad is out after less than a year in the role, and John Kozack, a 20+ year company veteran, is in as president of US advertising sales.
Roku’s $3 streaming service, Howdy, reaches 1M subs - Launched in August 2025, Howdy offers 10K hours of ad-free content and is already outpacing the average six-month retention rate for premium streaming services.
5 themes that defined Possible 2026🔒 - Adweek breaks down the biggest trends coming out of last week's industry conference. Key themes included outcomes-based pricing, blurring lines between DSPs and SSPs, and the rise of AI optimization.
That’s It For This Week 👋
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