Understanding where a brand appears, and why, has become essential as AI and agentic services reshape search. Brand and company citations have become increasingly important in ChatGPT and Google AI
Overviews.
OpenAI, Microsoft and others recently introduced ads in their chatbots that create incentives to identify conversations and track user behavior for ad targeting and conversion measurement, but what
happens to user privacy when companies begin tracking and analyzing these conversations?
Nearly two-thirds of Americans now distrust AI, and yet, usage keeps climbing.
Skyrocketing AI shakes up the playing field, as a record four brands now top the $1 trillion mark.
As AI follows digital advertising's playbook by optimizing for engagement, constant validation may also reinforce harmful beliefs.
People who linger longer with chatbots reported higher loneliness, less interaction with actual humans and more signs of emotional dependence.
About 38% of Americans say they have already completed a purchase directly inside ChatGPT.
Meta has invited Moltbook's cofounders to join its AI research division with the goal of devising "new ways for AI agents to work for people and businesses," a Meta spokesperson told Axios.
Google's AI Overviews and OpenAI's ChatGPT have very different ways to evaluate, characterize and criticize brands in query results, especially as consumers near point of purchase.
Google DeepMind began giving users access to "Project Genie" Thursday for Google AI Ultra U.S. subscribers ages 18 and up. The experimental research prototype allows users to create, explore and remix
their own interactive worlds.
A study conducted by Ipsos found a large majority of Americans believe screens are a problem - especially how they are used and the attention and money people give them. The data suggests this ties
into differences in optimism among youth in terms of views on the U.S. and the American dream.
AI search summaries and chatbots mean the “end of the traffic era,” publishers fear, according to a new study by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Media bosses
foresee that web referrals will plunge and that journalists should emulate content creators, The Guardian reports.
Nearly two-thirds of teens ages 13 to 17 say they use an AI chatbot, with more than a quarter reporting daily use.
Almost half of all AI answers had at least one significant issue, according to new research from the European Broadcasting Union and the BBC.
Tasks include help with copy revisions, campaign ideation, email tone and even internal reporting.
OpenAI is testing political bias in ChatGPT and its models' ability to remain objective by mirroring real-world uses. About 500 prompts spanning 100 topics and various political slants were used to
determine whether bias exists, under what conditions it emerges and what it looks like.
BrightEdge's data gives the industry a reality check. Here's why AI search owns the research phase of the purchase process, and why traditional search still owns the conversions.
WPP Media's updated Advertising in 2030 report highlights trends as well as the future of media, technology and commerce as viewed by industry experts. Much of it revolves around biometrics and GAI.
Recent data compares the cosmic Big Bang to events in advertising such as the AI chatbot explosion that is reshaping the ways humans interact with technology.
The more data SparkToro founder Rand Fishkin gathers, the more he believes the " 'AI vs. Search' narrative is largely made up by media and influencers seeking attention, rather than an accurate
reflection of reality."
When a user asks about the best CRM for startups, a brand page typically responds with "Schedule a demo," while Reddit has a thread comparing options. This is why Reddit gets cited in ChatGPT. Here
are more examples.
Data, analysis, and analytics are a major part of safeguards. A research paper describes multistep reasoning and how Claude thinks before it gives a response.
Google, Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI, among others, want to own AI search, agents, commerce and related markets - igniting all-out competition to attract ad experts, while throwing millions and even
billions behind projects to acquire engineering talent.
AI-driven search is changing the way users find and use online information, and experts are monitoring these shifts to assess the effects on engagement.
"Grok for Government" aims to shape xAI's commercial products such as Grok 4 and Deep Search for government use, including custom AI models for national security and research customers.
The more an AI model thinks, the more carbon it emits, a research study finds, and reasoning models can produce 50 times more emissions than concise ones. Large language models use tokens - words or
parts of words - to convert them into a string of numbers processed by the LLM to come up with an answer.
Apple hosts its Worldwide Developers Conference next week. For advertisers this means gaining a better understanding of how desktop and mobile referrals are split and what this means for their
media-buying strategies. For publishers it means that while AI search referrals are growing, mobile - the dominant traffic source - remains untapped. Mobile product share belongs to Apple, but Google
dominates mobile web search.
OpenAI's latest ChatGPT model disobeyed human instructions to shut down during a test by researchers, and I wondered "what if" AI refused to alter ad campaigns based on data the models believed could
produce better results.
BrightEdge identifies patterns marketers should consider when developing content strategies and ad campaigns, and key factors that impact brand presence in AI prompts and commerce.
Analysis from Aimclear reveals "a new cohort of crawlers associated with large language model (LLM) based applications - representing "services such as Google's own AI features, Anthropic's Claude,
Microsoft's Copilot integrated with Bing, and Perplexity AI, among others," Aimclear founder Marty Weintraub wrote.