Consulting The Oracle
Stop us if this sounds familiar: Oracle is trying to keep TikTok from getting banned in the US.
Bloomberg reports that Oracle, which first attempted a joint purchase of the social video platform with Walmart way back in 2020 during Trump’s first presidency, is now working out a deal with the second Trump administration to run TikTok’s US operations.
Sources familiar with the proposed deal say that Oracle would take a minor stake in the US TikTok business, while working with US buyers to secure user data and deny the Chinese government backdoor access.
If this arrangement sounds a lot Project Texas, the plan that TikTok and Oracle proposed to address US national security concerns in 2023, that’s because … it’s kind of the same thing?
Regardless, this newish deal likely won’t satisfy the US law that bans TikTok and other “foreign adversary controlled applications” from app stores, because ByteDance would retain ownership of the underlying algorithm.
Then again, it wouldn’t be the first time a Trump-negotiated “deal” involved reframing things that were already happening and ignoring the actual legal statutes involved. All of this has happened before, all of this will happen again, etc., etc.
Head In The Clouds
Amazon earned $56 billion in ad revenue last year. Seems like a lot, right? But even the biggest companies are always enviously looking up.
So it’s no surprise that Amazon has big plans to grow its ad business to a size that rivals or surpasses Google – which made a cool $350 billion in 2024.
For years, Amazon slow-rolled its ads biz out of concern that it might complicate the core retail marketplace, The Information reports. Marketing and ad sales execs were discouraged from using words like “data” or “platform” with clients or in collateral, because they didn’t want to spark conversations about Amazon tracking its customers.
Amazon has a potential market-making opportunity if and when Google exits the open internet. US courts might force Google to sell off its third-party ad tech and ad network, or it’s possible that Google will do so of its own volition. (Google’s network has been on the decline for some time.)
But Amazon will have its own antitrust scrutiny to contend with. For example, its ad business is reportedly offering AWS credits to entice customers.
For both Google and Amazon, their ability to cross leverage their advertising and cloud businesses – and the potential lock-in of advertising customers to their respective cloud tech offerings – is like a homing beacon for regulators.
Rethinking Links
Generative AI search is boosting site visits for retailers while negatively impacting news publishers.
A recent study by Adobe examined 1 trillion visits to US retail sites, The Verge reports. The study found that, during the 2024 holiday shopping season, AI search referrals to retail sites jumped 1,300% year over year. Cyber Monday saw a 1,950% increase.
Plus, these visitors were more engaged than those coming from traditional search. They stayed on the site 8% longer, were 23% less likely to bounce and continued to browse across multiple site pages at a 12% higher rate.
Unfortunately, news publishers have less to be excited about.
A study by the Columbia Journalism Review found that generative AI search misidentifies the original source of news stories at alarming rates, Ars Technica reports.
Columbia researchers fed 1,600 excerpts from news articles into eight generative AI search platforms to determine if they could identify the original publications. Perplexity failed to do so 37% of the time, while ChatGPT had a 67% error rate and Grok had a whopping 94% error rate.
Even when the correct original source was identified, AI search often directed users to syndicated versions of the articles rather than the original stories. And more than half of the time, Google Gemini and Grok surfaced broken links.
But Wait! There’s More
Please, advertisers, stop making Sean Evans explain the appeal of “Hot Ones” to you. [Business Insider]
Shareholders officially approve Omnicom’s proposal to acquire IPG. [Adweek]
Concern over Elon Musk’s DOGE team accessing the personal data of US citizens is prompting lawmakers to consider modernizing the 1974 Privacy Act. [WaPo]
Roku is testing autoplay ads that play before the home screen loads, and users aren’t happy. [Ars Technica]
Rather than sending this data to the cloud, Amazon is removing a privacy setting that allowed Alexa to handle some voice commands on the device. Here’s how users can get around the new settings. [WaPo]
Google buys cybersecurity firm Wiz for $32 billion, marking its largest ever acquisition. [Axios]
You’re Hired
OpenX promotes Jeanne Leasure to chief people officer. [release]
Ali Reed joins Brainlabs EMEA as chief growth officer. [release]
Converge appoints Dentsu’s John Lyons as chief performance officer. [release]
New Engen makes Conor Skea VP of growth. [release]
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