In partnership with
Let’s start this week with some great news on media sales. Somewhere in your media plan, there is a line that did not exist a year ago. It is about to get a sales rep.
On Monday, OpenAI told Reuters that ChatGPT Ads has reached a $1 billion annualized run rate. From that day on, advertisers across India, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa can buy directly through OpenAI's Ads Manager, already live in the US.
Nate Elliott at eMarketer called the announcement "incredibly impressive and terribly disappointing." A billion in run rate leaves OpenAI well short of its own $2.5 billion advertising target for 2026, and the company has confidentially filed for an IPO, so that gap is not a rounding error.
A console open in your market, a billion in run rate, and a number it is failing to hit. That is the exact moment a channel gets cheap, keen, and slightly desperate. The rep who calls you this quarter has a target too.
Today’s sponsor:
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TALK ON THE MARKET
Neil Patel, co-founder of NP Digital, posted on Saturday:
He describes one-line ads replacing "Thinking", paid at half a dollar per thousand five-second views, and gives it no chance of lasting because "they did a whole Super Bowl commercial on not being sellouts."
Patel saw this on X and did not audit it, so treat the mechanics as his account. The instinct is sound. Ads are arriving in AI interfaces like water in a basement. One company sells them officially. Somebody else is already selling them through the cracks.
NUMBERS MATTER
45%. Every marketer uses AI, all of them, and 45% say incomplete data feeding the models is their top technical problem.
Another 39% cannot keep the output inside brand guidelines. Adoption is finished. The plumbing is not.
Today’s partner highlight:
DAILY PROMPT
You are an expert audience strategist helping me build high-performing ad audiences. I need you to analyze my product/service and create detailed audience segments for paid advertising campaigns.
## Product/Service Details
- Product/Service Name: [INSERT NAME]
- Industry: [INSERT INDUSTRY]
- Price Point: [INSERT PRICE OR RANGE]
- Key Features: [LIST 3-5 KEY FEATURES]
- Primary Value Proposition: [DESCRIBE MAIN BENEFIT]
## Current Performance Data (if available)
- Best Performing Audience: [DESCRIBE OR SAY "UNKNOWN"]
- Current CAC: [INSERT OR SAY "UNKNOWN"]
- Conversion Rate: [INSERT OR SAY "UNKNOWN"]
- Geographic Focus: [LIST REGIONS/COUNTRIES]
## Campaign Goals
- Primary Objective: [AWARENESS/CONSIDERATION/CONVERSION]
- Campaign Budget: [MONTHLY BUDGET]
- Timeline: [CAMPAIGN DURATION]
- Platform(s): [FACEBOOK/GOOGLE/LINKEDIN/TIKTOK/OTHER]
## Task
Create 4-5 distinct audience segments for my [PLATFORM] campaigns. For each segment, provide:
1. **Segment Name** - A clear, actionable name
2. **Demographics** - Age, gender, income, education level, location
3. **Psychographics** - Values, interests, lifestyle, pain points
4. **Behaviors** - Online habits, purchase patterns, content consumption
5. **Platform Targeting** - Specific interests, keywords, lookalike suggestions
6. **Messaging Angle** - How to position the product for this segment
7. **Expected Performance** - Estimated CTR, conversion rate, and CAC relative to baseline
8. **Creative Recommendations** - Format, tone, and content type suggestions
Rank segments by expected ROI and explain your reasoning. Identify any overlap between segments and recommend bid strategies.Use this the week a new channel opens, before the rep sends a starter budget. Nobody has a benchmark yet, so the first tests set the price for everyone after.
CMO CORNER
Stop answering questions your team should solve.
The AI wizard inside every ad platform exists to answer questions for you, and its first answer is always the same: spend more here. Your team will learn to ask it before they ask you, then before they ask themselves. The cure is dull.
Decide, in writing, which decisions belong to a person, and make the person write down why before the console does. A team that can explain a media choice without the panel is the only kind that can tell when the panel is wrong.
We provide consulting services for CMOs on AI strategy for marketing teams through our Teamless offering.
TOOL UPGRADE
Where the next ad dollar goes, and who spends it for you:
Blaze — best for teams running fifty campaigns a month without a human refreshing a dashboard. Try Blaze here →
Ellavator AI — best for B2B teams who would rather rank the accounts worth chasing than buy another list. Try Ellavator AI here →
Accelerated Growth Studio — best for D2C brands that want one agency across paid social, search, and lifecycle. Try Accelerated Growth Studio here →
→ We have 300+ curated, filtered, and categorized AI tools in our directory. Browse to find the best ones that help your marketing team.
LEARN THIS
Before you put money into a channel with no benchmarks, decide what a good number would look like: AI Marketing Performance Benchmarking Framework.
Built for exactly this: a new surface, no history, a vendor keen to define success for you. For the leader who wants a target the platform did not set.
→ We publish workshops, courses, guides, manuals, and more on AI marketing for free. Browse our learning resources for free.
BRAND SLOP
The Toronto Blue Jays posted a cartoon this week. Adult-animation style, a tie-in with Nestlé's Nestea.
Fans found the garbled text on the trading-card boxes and the rookie poster where the player has three arms. A Community Note said so. A fan wrote that Rogers, the team's owner, could not afford real animation, and the official account replied: "Corny comment. This was made by a real animator."
Futurism collected the rest. "You ain't fooling anybody." "I fear you got fleeced paying whoever made this."
The clip was survivable. Arguing with a Community Note, in your own voice, in front of the people who buy the jerseys, is the part nobody will forget. Somewhere, a social lead is explaining to a sponsor why the reply is still up.
Watch on demand: Tabs + PwC break down how finance teams are operationalizing usage-based pricing — without the manual overhead.