generative AI search

From headline to punchline, AdExchanger’s weekly comics distill ad tech industry news into something our readers can laugh about. These are our faves of the year.

Enjoy this weekly comic strip from AdExchanger.com that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem … 

AI shopping agents are breaking the traditional attribution loop. Marketers must ensure that AI is aware of their brand and track how that awareness influences ecommerce outcomes.

Publisher comment sections remain an untapped source of intent-based data, according to Kelly Andresen, who recently left USA Today to head up comment monetization platform OpenWeb’s direct sales efforts.

Newsweek launches an AI-powered homepage to offset traffic losses from AI search; OpenAI pulls an emergency pivot back to focusing on ChatGPT; and copycats dilute the impact of Spotify Wrapped.

You can’t buy your way to the top of a large-language model. At least not yet. But there are things that brands can do to influence how – and if – they get mentioned, says Tracy Morrissey, SVP of media and performance at full-service agency Innocean USA.

Adobe acquires SEO tech business Semrush; brands want to know what AI search engines think of them; and the LGBTQ community is an under-targeted audience.

There’s no magic bullet for AI search optimization; how kids’ media monetizes outside of YouTube; and hey, whatever happened to the TikTok ban?

Traffic-starved publishers are hopeful that their long-undervalued audience data will fuel advertising’s automated future – if only they can finally wrest control of the industry narrative away from ad tech middlemen.

While Reddit had plenty to crow about on the advertising front, it was less sanguine about the rise of generative AI search, which CEO Steve Huffman said is “not a traffic driver today.”