Ads in Prompt Land
OpenAI’s push into advertising exposes a familiar tension in advertising, when demand outstrips the reality of supply.
While the company is racing toward a $2.5 billion revenue target, early signals from the ChatGPT ad pilot show a channel that works, but doesn’t yet deliver at meaningful scale, Ad Age reports.
Agencies involved in the ChatGPT ads beta note that there is strong engagement and quality signals for that chatbot traffic, sometimes even rivaling brand search, per some buyers. But the pitfall is that advertisers struggle to spend against a small pool of inventory.
For instance, while some advertisers committed $200,000, they’ve barely spent $2,000 due to limited inventory.
ChatGPT is going to need a little bit more time before revenue scales up to billions of dollars per year, observed one unnamed agency executive.
Of course, this is just the pilot period. And just because ChatGPT doesn’t have the scale buyers are looking for right now doesn’t mean the platform won’t in the future.
But if ChatGPT wants advertisers to return to the well, they simply need more water. Advertisers are not known as a patient lot. And agencies can’t abide large client budget commitments that won’t spend.
Jack Of All Trade Orgs
Where is the programmatic CMO?
The ins and outs of ad tech are often obscure to a chief marketer. What DSP they use is, like, the province of an agency, probably. They’ve never seen a log file, nor even recognize the term.
“I don’t think you can just be a brand guy,” ANA CEO Bob Liodice tells Adweek of his own successor search. He’s stepping down from leading the largest US marketer trade org at the end of this year, after a three-decade-long stint in the role.
The ANA, which must avoid stodginess and irrelevance as a large trade org, mirrors the challenges going on for its membership. For example, it is, first and foremost, “a content company,” Liodice says.
Even without getting into the whole other kettle of fish that is marketer AI skills and knowledge-upgrading, whoever takes the helm next at the ANA must have an expansive base of knowledge to represent the organization’s membership.
“If my successor is going to be able to navigate this extraordinarily complex terrain, brand [experience] is limiting unto itself,” Liodice says. “What about media expertise? What about technology? This person needs to have exposure to these things.”
Private Parties
People looking to spend less time on social media have a new option for IRL meetups: Social mixers where attendees learn how to protect their data from Big Tech.
It’s all part of a trend where cybersecurity advocates combine privacy education with a fun night out on the town, The Guardian reports.
One NYC-based group, Cypurr Collective, stages regular “Break Up With Google” events, which host Imani Thompson calls “cybersecurity disguised as a party.” Events include wine mixers at friends’ houses and meetups at a local lesbian bar. Attendees learn how to purge their personal data from online platforms, activate their devices’ privacy settings and write privacy-protecting code. The group also promotes open-source software that gives users more autonomy over their data.
The trend speaks to growing concerns about surveillance advertising, which have sharpened amid reports of government agencies, including DHS and ICE, working with ad tech providers to surveil communities.
One Seattle-based group, Resist Tech Monopolies, says it had to pause onboarding new members due to a recent surge in interest spurred by local political and grassroots movements.
The point is to push back against unaccountable corporations and creeping authoritarianism. Or, as Thompson puts it, “I just want people to feel empowered in general in their relationships to technology.”
But Wait! There’s More!
AI’s new training data: old Slack and email messages. [Forbes]
Meta plans to lay off 10% of its workforce, about 8,000 employees, on May 20, with further cuts expected later this year. [Reuters]
The video podcast revolution has not been kind to people who actually listen to podcasts. [WSJ]
Bath & Body Works started selling products on Amazon as part of a turnaround effort. [Business Insider]
A blog called National Today that was caught apparently using generative AI to plagiarize several websites has ties to a prominent PR firm. [Futurism]
Magnite announces that Chief Product Officer Adam Soroca left his role and will serve as an advisor to the company through May 15. [release]; Magnite CMO David Hertog is also leaving on May 15. [post]
Lead VC invests in digital comics platform GlobalComix and hypes its dynamic product placement tech for inserting “brand placements directly into comic panels.” [blog]
