Generative Enough to Eat
Coca-Cola, Svedka, Chips Ahoy! – it sure does feel like all the brands embracing AI-generated video come from the food and beverage sector.
According to Business Insider, pro-AI CPG brands are primarily excited about their ability to produce a greater volume of assets at a faster pace.
However, quality and consumer response still pose a challenge.
Ignoring the backlash that major AI-assisted ads consistently get – like last year’s Coca-Cola holiday spot, for example – food-related imagery can be tricky to generate. After all, everybody knows what a cookie is supposed to look like and can tell when it falls into the uncanny valley.
What the article does not go into, on the other hand, is the cost to produce all this content.
Coca-Cola claims that its 2025 holiday ad took over 70,000 video clips to develop, all of which require tokens – a currency used to denote the cost needed to fulfill prompts.
Not only is token pricing inconsistent across different AI models, but it’s also subject to fluctuation and may begin to rise with increasing RAM costs. Not to mention that many AI companies start their customers out with low token prices that won’t last, as Axios recently pointed out.
At a certain point, maybe just taking a photograph of a cookie will be cheaper again.
The Personalized Post
Subscribers to the Washington Post have been receiving notifications that their subscription rates are going up, The Washingtonian reports. In the fine print, though, comes the disclosure: “This price was set by an algorithm using your personal data.”
The tactic goes by many names: To combine some of its monikers, one might say algorithmic, dynamic, customized, personalized, surveillance pricing.
“Surveillance pricing” was the FTC comms team’s preference in 2024, when then-FTC Chair Lina Khan promised to make the issue a target for the next (Democratic) administration. But that whole program was canceled when President Trump began his second term.
Personalized pricing has since become the more commonplace term. And with its popularity, there is also legislation, including a law passed in New York, to compel transparency when prices are determined in real time by algorithmic models.
Public opinion is a compelling factor, too. Instacart loudly announced in December that it had stopped a test for algorithmic pricing (what it termed “item price tests”) after being called out by Consumer Reports, which had multiple consumers order the same bag of groceries for surprisingly disparate prices.
For WaPo, the new fine print is a mark of its desperation, as the one-time paper of record resets its cost base as a mundane regional paper. And as subscribers reset accordingly, too.
New Media, Same Old Mistakes
WaPo isn’t the only onetime publishing darling that’s struggling in the current media environment.
BuzzFeed is on the verge of bankruptcy after previously being valued at $1.7 billion, CEO Jonah Peretti revealed during the company’s Q4 earnings call last week. And its decline since it went public in 2021 proves publishing’s new media model – and its ad-supported structure – was never really sound, MarketWatch reports.
BuzzFeed’s downfall started a decade ago, when it was flush with VC cash and hiring a new staffer daily to keep up with advertising demand, according to MarketWatch.
“Their problems are less about their business now and more about the overhang of a whole era in which investors and executives imagined a totally different cost structure for media that never materialized,” says Ben Smith, the former head of BuzzFeed News.
Peretti seems to agree. “The last few years have been bumpy dealing with legacy commitments from a previous era of media,” he tells MarketWatch.
BuzzFeed has attempted to right the ship by embracing AI content generation. But that strategy isn’t working too well for BuzzFeed’s peers in the new media revolution, Vox Media and Business Insider, who made large cuts to their workforces last year while also striking generative AI partnerships.
But Wait! There’s More!
Yahoo CEO Jim Lanzone shares how the company became profitable despite its “original sin” of partnering with Google and its ill-fated stint under Verizon’s ownership. [The Verge]
A journalist says Polymarket gamblers trying to win a bet are threatening to kill him if he doesn’t rewrite a story about an Iranian missile strike. [Times of Israel]
Are AI systems incompatible with data privacy? [Tech Policy Press]
An effective method for changing public opinion – and breaking through ad clutter – is to combine unrelated attention-grabbing imagery, like footage of a carpet being power-washed, with a persuasive voice-over, according to political marketing consultancy Tavern Research. [blog]
Why mass-producing content at scale to boost your SEO never works the way you want. [Search Engine Journal]
You’re Hired!
Contextual intelligence platform Sightly hires Seedtag alum Dave Otis as SVP of sales. [release]
