Could Hear A Pin Slop
Pinterest is being overrun with low-effort generative AI slop – and the creators are raking in ad bucks, Futurism reports.
AI-generated content is increasingly appearing in the top results for common Pinterest search topics, such as cooking, fashion and home decorating tips. These results often link to AI content farms that feature heavy ad loads and AI-generated author profiles. Pinterest typically does not label the AI content.
The creators making bank aren’t exactly trying to hide it. One such creator, Jesse Cunningham, posted a YouTube tutorial claiming viewers can earn $10K a month by monetizing AI posts on Pinterest.
Pinterest users are noticing the platform’s “descent into slopdom,” as Futurism’s Maggie Harrison Dupré refers to it. Multiple recent posts on Reddit call out the profusion of AI results in Pinterest searches. Pinners question if the platform they used to turn to for advice from real people is being killed by bots.
Asked by Futurism for comment, Pinterest denied that AI content is taking over its platform and defended its recent embrace of AI tools for marketers. But it did promise to be more proactive about labeling AI-generated posts.
Stagwell’s Stage
While the massive agency holdco WPP forecasted its revenue would inch downward over the next year, the much smaller (but also public) Stagwell reported 14% growth in overall revenue last year and forecasts 8% growth for 2025.
Take that, WPP.
Stagwell cites the agency’s political advertising business for drawing in new clients last year in addition to – you guessed it – AI.
Revenue related to political advocacy spiked 72% last year compared to 2023, which also amounts to an 18% increase since the last presidential election. Although political ad spend usually drops off in post-election periods – Stagwell expects revenue from political advocacy spend to drop 30% this year – the agency is still building ad products that cater to both sides of the political spectrum to ensure long-term growth, Ad Age reports.
As for the latest marketing buzzword, Stagwell is investing more in AI to court more brand clients throughout the year. For example, the agency invested $23 million in its AI-based Stagwell Marketing Cloud last quarter alone. Stagwell also plans to launch a new product for content personalization called “The Machine.” (How inventive.)
Will AI and political advertising help Stagwell overtake the giant agency holdcos?
Everyone’s Two Cents
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), the UK’s antitrust watchdog, published comments it has received as part of an investigation of Google’s search engine and advertising dominance.
The responses come from a range of sources, including publishers, networks, TV manufacturers and retailers.
Samsung, for one, is urging the CMA to “consider the adverse consequences any intervention which significantly hinders OEMs’ ability to generate service revenues from Google may have.” In other words, Samsung doesn’t want Google’s data and ad licensing dollars to go away.
But the Premier League, BBC and Sky, which have hit TV shows in prime linear spots, decried Google’s inability to prevent piracy. “Rights owners do not have the ability, absent regulation, to compel Google to deliver controls that would be more effective,” according to their joint response.
Google has a response, too, asking the CMA “to move quickly to focus this investigation and give us a clear and predictable path forward for the coming months.”
But Wait! There’s More
What it takes to get paid by YouTube, TikTok and other social platforms. [Digiday]
Firefox walks back promises to never sell user data – because, it says, some jurisdictions define “sale” of data in a very broad way. [Ars Technica]
More than 75,000 users canceled their subscriptions to The Washington Post following owner Jeff Bezos’ overhaul of the opinions section last week. [NPR]
Why a Reels app makes sense. [The Information]
NBCUniversal is launching a video-based news subscription service on mobile later this year. [Adweek]
