I, Robot Claudius
Ideally, by the time the press gets their hands on a new product or service, all the kinks have already been worked out.
Not so for “Claudius,” an AI-operated vending machine that Anthropic lent to The Wall Street Journal for testing in November.
The end results were hilariously disastrous. Claudius was supposed to order inventory, set prices and respond to customer requests. Instead it bought a Playstation 5 and a live betta fish, gave away items in what it referred to as an “Ultra-Capitalist Free-For-All” and spent more than twice its allotted budget.
Anthropic, for its part, considers the experiment a success, or so its reps told the Journal. These kinds of stress tests, after all, give them insight into what needs fixing.
But the question remains: Why test it with journalists, of all people?
Sure, highlighting the WSJ’s red team efforts would’ve been fun a few years ago, back when the internet was still giggling over DALL-E memes. But now that so many companies are actively trying to capitalize on this technology – and encountering similar, albeit less absurd performance issues – all publicity might not be good publicity anymore.
Put more simply, if AI agents can’t reliably buy snacks yet, then what hope do marketers have in making them work right now?
Ads vs. AIs
Personalized advertising allows tons of content to be free and accessible while enriching companies up and down the supply chain. The downside is that everybody hates it.
For example, Meta is correct to keep its focus relentlessly on improvements to its digital advertising flywheel, writes Eric Seufert at Mobile Dev Memo. His hot take is in response to a New York Times story about tensions between Meta’s AI lab team and Facebook-era leaders.
The flip side of the coin is OpenAI, which, as The Information reports, has an awkward “ChatGPT problem.” Its cutting-edge AI research team is frustrated, too, because new stakeholders within OpenAI are pushing for more monetization. The latest updates to OpenAI’s core models prioritize capability gains over monetization metrics like user retention and subscriptions.
Seufert writes that this imbalance favors Meta and Google. Their large ad businesses grow as the companies add users and improve the proficiency of their ad systems. OpenAI’s API revenues go up when its models improve – but not nearly enough to meet its revenue projections.
That shortfall must be made up by advertising revenue at some point.
All Fun And Games
Will in-game advertising ever really happen? The idea remains tantalizing yet illusive.
No online platform has a better shot at it, though, than Roblox, as Digiday reports.
The rationale for in-game ads is pretty straightforward. Engagement is through the roof. Roblox has 151 million daily active users who spend close to three hours per day on average in the app.
And Roblox wouldn’t have to saturate players with ads to see a healthy return. Snapchat’s average revenue per user, for instance, is in the $12 to $15 per year range. Less than half of that would mean an instant multibillion-dollar business line for Roblox.
On the other hand, Roblox’s user base is young – like tweens and younger. This complicates the picture, because there are extra rules governing how data can be used for targeting, which shrinks the pool of possible advertisers.
So while the potential is massive, Roblox’s path to ad billions still feels more like a pipe dream than a pay day.
But Wait! There’s More
TikTok (finally!) signs a deal to sell its U.S. unit. [Axios]
Apple opens up its iOS to alternative app stores in Japan. [TechCrunch]
Do you want to see how AI would act if it were on drugs? Well, now you can. [Wired]
2025 was the beginning of the end of the TV brightness war. (Improvements to display technology are pushing the limits of what TVs are capable of.) [The Verge]
Trump Media, which owns Truth Social, is inexplicably merging with a nuclear energy company in a $6 billion deal. [Business Insider]
So YouTube is actually a serious threat to Netflix after all? [Digiday] Maybe so, because people watched 700 million hours of YouTube podcasts on TV in October. [Bloomberg]
You’re Hired!
Michael Kassan takes on a new role as the VP of Mediaocean’s board of directors. [Adweek]
Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here.
