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.
A study of Google searches for the Gen AI-powered app offers a sign of its popularity.
A research lab in China has released an open-source AI model that could disrupt plans by Meta, Google, Microsoft and others - mainly because it has found a way to train its models at a lower cost.
Traditional search engines from Google and Microsoft have skyrocketed, but newcomers are now taking significant market share, which will change the dynamics in 2025. Search advertising also will
change from informational to actionable, especially as more consumers adopt AI agents that can perform tasks.
There's a contradiction of events happeneing at OpenAI. The company's AGI Readiness lead is leaving, and members are being distributed to other teams as the company pledges a role to national security
- a new development in its approach as it moves from supporting consumers, brands and ad agencies to government entities.
Apple Intelligence is not available to the public, but a new report claims some at the company believe its AI lags at least two years behind industry leaders. Internal studies at Apple show just how
much ground Apple Intelligence needs to make up to reach ChatGPT's level, according to Mark Gurman, Bloomberg columnist.
New Street Research found Google continues to lead in use for search but lags in AI use, and more males than females ask AI chatbots for help when trying to determine what to purchase.
Google reportedly paid $2.7 billion to bring back an AI genius as it and competitors continue to build out services built on AI.
SOCi analyzed how generative AI tools answers and serves information about local queries. The test of complex searches included follow-up questions for platforms including Google AI Overview, Google
Gemini, ChatGPT, Bing Copilot, Perplexity and Meta AI.
OpenAI has been said to be working on a search engine, but now we have further evidence that the rumor might be true.
Some say generative AI will never replace traditional search engines, but the change could come sooner than expected - especially if consumers show a willingness to take the leap.
The biggest challenge for search is to summarize the world's information - not just organize it, says Jason Hartley, PMG privacy lead and head of search & shopping.
Anthropic today debuted Claude 3, a chatbot and suite of AI models that it calls its fastest and most powerful yet. Google will make the models available in its Vertex AI Model Garden during the
coming weeks. In addition to Google, the company's backers include Salesforce and Amazon.
OpenAI has announced Sora, a new text-to-video model that is able to generate movie-like, brief 1080p videos from typed prompt responses.
One Super Bowl ad used AI to poke fun of the concept with fake creatures and humans. BodyArmor, the Coca-Cola-owned sports drink, used AI-related lines such as "artificial flavor optimized for victory
times" and "BodyArmor knows there should be nothing artificial, because there's no substitute for real."
OpenAI changed the fine print in its use policy that eliminates text related to the tech for military and war, as a report links Baidu's AI tech to China's military research.
Surveys are shorter than they were, accommodating the increased use of mobile.