Month: November 2023

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Trial And Error Here’s a mouthful: The Google Chrome team has announced a “deprecation trial” so some third-party vendors can retain legacy services that depend on third-party cookies when cookie deprecation happens next year. What does that mean in layman’s terms? Vendors can continue […]

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Influencer agency Billion Dollar Boy last week created a new division, called Muse, to incorporate generative AI and other emerging technologies into its offerings to clients.

This comes as influencer marketing agencies continue to experiment with AI tools for everything from creator search and discovery to content generation. Billion Dollar Boy, which recently expanded to New York and New Orleans from its U.K. headquarters, has been developing its own creator management platform using AI to improve matching influencers to the right brands and campaigns.

Muse will be headed by Becky Owen, former head of creator innovations at Meta and currently the agency’s chief marketing and innovation officer. The company said this unit will be supported by a “growing” department consisting of the business and creative leads. Before heading the unit, Owen also oversaw independent research that surveyed 6,000 creators, consumers and marketers in the U.S. and U.K. focusing on generative AI in the creator economy.

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This year hasn’t been easy for agencies. Ghosting — when agencies are in talks for a project or even a potential agency-of-record assignment but never hear back — hasn’t helped. And some agency executives say they’ve dealt with or heard about a higher level of ghosting this year, attributing the normalization of the practice to overwhelmed marketers who are so focused on short-term wins that any longer-term planning goes out the window.

“It seems like clients are struggling to know what they need,” explained one agency exec, who spoke under the condition of anonymity. “Clients are like, ‘I’m not sure what I need so throw everyone in the mix and I’ll figure it out along the way.’ [Once they figure it out,] there’s also a sense of, ‘I need what I need and need to move on, so I didn’t get a chance to get back to you.’”

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The podcasting advertising industry looks a lot different today than it did even two years ago thanks to programmatic audio ads. 

While the bread and butter host-read ad format still packs a punch when it comes to driving listener engagement and conversions, those ads aren’t scalable, said Lizzie Widhelm, svp and head of ad innovation and B2B marketing at SiriusXM Media. And in 2023’s slow ad market, the ability to target large swaths of audiences based on their demographics and interests rather than a specific show is what helped SXM Media maintain positive revenue momentum in 2023. 

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OpenAI’s current mercurial state is prompting plenty of questions about what the fallout might mean for the future of generative AI.

It’s been a chaotic few days in the AI world. On Friday, OpenAI’s board unexpectedly ousted cofounder and CEO Sam Altman and removed both Altman and Greg Brockman — OpenAI’s cofounder and president — from the startup’s board. On Monday, OpenAI named former Twitch CEO Emmett Shear as OpenAI’s interim CEO after initially naming CTO Mira Murati as the interim CEO. The same day, Microsoft hired Altman and Brockman to lead a new “advanced AI research team” while hundreds of OpenAI employees threatened to quit unless Altman was reinstated.

There’s been plenty of speculation about what led to Altman’s ouster. Meanwhile, some of OpenAI’s partners have been left in the dark about internal updates — something investors and even Microsoft have also reportedly experienced. However, some tech experts say it’s maybe a good thing the chaos is happening early in AI’s adoption cycle before companies are deeply dependent on OpenAI’s technology. Others say the uncertainty within the AI leader might even give competitors a chance to catch up.

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Last week Sam Altman was sensationally fired from OpenAI, tipping the AI company into chaos. It remains unclear what made the board decide to act.

The board of directors may have blown up the company.

Many young people grew up believing war was passé and peace was normal.

The Senate Judiciary Committee has called the leaders of Discord, Snap, and X to testify on December 6 for their alleged failure to protect children from sexual abuse online.

Nearly all of OpenAI’s 770 employees have now joined a letter threatening to quit in protest over the board’s decision to fire CEO Sam Altman. They’re demanding he be reinstated.