Platforms
EU Forces Google to Open Search and Android AI
- The European Commission has finalised legally binding Digital Markets Act (DMA) measures requiring Google to open Android to rival AI assistants and share Google Search data with competing search engines and AI services.
- On Android, competing AI assistants will eventually receive the same core system access as Gemini, including voice activation, app automation and access to on-screen content, giving users more freedom to choose their preferred AI assistant.
- Google Search will also be required to share anonymised search data and performance metrics with eligible competitors, including AI chatbots treated as search services under the new rules. The EU believes this will help reduce Google's dominance in search.
- Google has strongly opposed the measures, arguing they could weaken privacy, security and protections around proprietary data. The European Commission says the requirements include safeguards and can be refined if privacy risks emerge.
- The rollout will happen in stages, with Google required to begin sharing Search data by January 2027 and deliver deeper Android AI interoperability by July 2027.
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AI in digital
Platforms
Google Merchant Center Reveals AI Shopping Visibility
- Google is rolling out a new AI Performance Insights report in Merchant Center, giving retailers visibility into how their products perform across AI Mode and AI Overviews. It's currently in pilot with selected US accounts and will expand to Australia, Canada, India and New Zealand in the coming months.
- The report introduces new metrics including share of voice, competitor benchmarks, query frequency and query types, helping brands understand how often they appear in AI-powered shopping experiences compared to competitors.
- Insights are focused on conversational shopping searches only, making it easier to identify which product terms, shopping journey stages and search behaviours are driving AI visibility.
- Data can be filtered by product category, time period, country and traffic source, although the report currently only includes organic AI traffic from AI experiences. Paid Ads data is not included.
- One notable omission is click data. The report focuses on impressions and visibility metrics, with no click reporting mentioned in the current pilot documentation.
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AI in digital
Platforms
Microsoft Clarity’s New Tool Reveals AI Content Gaps
- Microsoft has launched Topic Insights in Clarity, a free feature that helps marketers understand how their content influences AI-generated answers, moving beyond simple citation tracking to actionable recommendations.
- The tool analyses topic-level performance, showing your AI visibility, share of authority, influence on AI responses, competitor citations, and prioritised content opportunities to improve your presence in AI search.
- Rather than focusing only on keywords, Topic Insights highlights where competitors are winning AI citations and uncovers content gaps, helping marketers create content around emerging AI-driven demand.
- Reports are generated using user-defined prompts that reflect real AI queries, measuring which domains are cited, how much each source contributes to answers, and patterns across an entire topic. The feature is currently in beta and is intended for directional insights rather than definitive measurement.
- Topic Insights is available free within Microsoft Clarity's AI Visibility dashboard for eligible websites, continuing Microsoft's push to make AI visibility analytics more accessible than many paid alternatives.
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AI in digital
Marketing by numbers
Study Reveals Where AI Agents Break Down
- Researchers tested AI agents across 100 B2B software websites, completing three buyer tasks, finding pricing/features, integrations, and security/compliance, with each task run five times to measure consistency. The study measured whether agents could answer using the vendor's own website, not third-party sources.
- Pricing was by far the weakest point. Agents answered from first-party websites only 79% of the time for pricing, compared with 93% for integrations and 92% for security. Pricing also accounted for 77% of all third-party citations, showing agents frequently leave vendor sites when looking for commercial information.
- Publishing prices isn't enough. Even when vendors displayed public pricing, AI agents still cited third-party sources in 18% of runs. When pricing wasn't disclosed, 45% of runs included at least one third-party citation, highlighting that machine readability matters as much as transparency.
- The study identified three causes of failure: pricing opacity, poor machine readability (such as JavaScript, calculators, PDFs and complex tables), and access friction. While access errors occurred in just 7% of runs, they dramatically increased third-party fallback from 17% to 77%.
- Sites that created friction also made AI agents work much harder. The most difficult websites required 4.4x higher processing cost, 4.7x more tokens and 2x longer completion times than the easiest sites, increasing the likelihood that agents would source answers elsewhere.
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Platforms
Apple Maps Ads Get Closer to Launch
- Apple has published official advertising guidelines for Apple Maps, signalling the platform's ad rollout is getting closer, even though the service has not officially launched yet. The initial rollout is expected in the US and Canada.
- Unlike Google Maps, Apple is restricting ads to businesses with a physical location. Entire categories such as home services, including plumbers, electricians, locksmiths, HVAC, pest control and roofers, will not be eligible to advertise.
- Apple has also banned several other categories from Maps ads, including alcohol, dating services, gambling, cryptocurrency ATMs, medical services, religion, bail bonds, and contests or sweepstakes.
- Advertisers will be able to target campaigns by factors such as location, time and day, with ads appearing during business searches in Apple Maps. Brands can start or stop campaigns at any time without a long-term commitment.
- For marketers, Apple Maps is shaping up as a more tightly controlled local advertising channel than Google Maps, favouring bricks-and-mortar businesses and stricter brand safety policies over broader local services advertising.
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AI in digital
Platforms
Can ChatGPT Ads Really Hit $100 Billion?
- OpenAI's ambition to generate $100 billion in ChatGPT ad revenue by 2030 looks increasingly optimistic, with Emarketer forecasting the entire US standalone chatbot ad market will reach just $5.41 billion by then.
- OpenAI reportedly expects ChatGPT ads to generate $2.5 billion this year, but Emarketer estimates the full US chatbot ad market will be worth less than $1 billion in 2026, highlighting a significant gap between internal targets and external forecasts.
- Emarketer's forecast includes platforms such as ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google AI Mode and Amazon Alexa for Shopping, suggesting OpenAI's revenue goal exceeds the projected size of the entire market it competes in.
- The report suggests OpenAI's projections rely on several big assumptions, including capturing a large share of search advertising budgets, dominating the chatbot ad market and outperforming previous digital ad formats at an unprecedented scale.
- For marketers, the takeaway is that AI chatbot advertising is growing but remains an emerging channel, with the long-term commercial opportunity still far from proven despite the industry's enthusiasm.
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Platforms
Google’s Social Search Play Signals a Bigger Web Shift
- Google is rolling out Platform Properties in Search Console, allowing brands and creators to connect Instagram, TikTok, X and YouTube accounts to track how their social posts perform in Google Search, including clicks, impressions and the search queries driving traffic.
- The update signals Google is preparing for a future where websites are no longer the centre of online discovery. Brands can now measure search performance for social profiles directly, while Google gains richer insight into search intent and verified brand-platform relationships.
- The move reflects changing consumer behaviour, with younger audiences increasingly using social platforms as search engines. Google is responding by expanding social content across Search, Discover and AI Overviews, making social content a more prominent part of the search experience.
- The bigger takeaway for marketers is that discovery is becoming fragmented across search, AI and social, while engagement and transactions are consolidating inside large platform ecosystems. Measurement and attribution across these channels will become increasingly important.
- Our advice: once Platform Properties becomes available in your Search Console account, connect your social profiles early. The data will provide a clearer view of how Google Search drives discovery of your social content and help inform future content strategy.
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AI in digital
Platforms
ChatGPT Ads Roll Out Campaign Updates
- OpenAI has announced a suite of ChatGPT Ads updates, including a new Overview dashboard, Suggested Ad Drafts, refreshed ad formats and expanded availability in Japan and South Korea.
- The new Overview tab gives advertisers a snapshot of account health, recommended optimisation tasks and key performance trends through a larger, more flexible reporting chart.
- Suggested Ad Drafts can now automatically prefill a new ad using existing website metadata, including an image, title and description. OpenAI notes this feature does not generate new copy or creative with AI.
- OpenAI is also rolling out a refreshed static ad card across web and mobile, featuring a more compact layout with larger visual elements designed to improve readability.
- For marketers, the updates signal that ChatGPT Ads is maturing quickly, with more campaign management tools, audience controls and ongoing experimentation with new ad experiences.
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AI in digital
Platforms
AI Overviews Are Reshaping Commercial Search
- Google's AI Overviews are moving well beyond informational searches, with commercial-intent queries triggering them 71% more often over the past six months. At the same time, transactional searches saw a slight 5% decline, suggesting Google is focusing AI on the research phase rather than the purchase stage.
- AI Overviews and Google Ads now appear together around twice as often as they did a year ago, signalling that Google is blending AI-generated answers with paid placements instead of replacing ads altogether.
- Finance recorded the biggest increase in commercial AI Overviews, up 231% in six months, followed by Computers & Electronics and Games. Industries with longer buying journeys appear to be seeing the biggest shift.
- High-value keywords are increasingly attracting AI Overviews. Across most industries, keywords that triggered AI Overviews also had a higher average CPC, meaning brands are now competing for visibility in paid ads, organic rankings and AI citations on the same search results page.
- For marketers, tracking where AI Overviews appear is becoming just as important as monitoring rankings. The opportunity is no longer just to rank first, but to be cited within Google's AI-generated answers while balancing paid search investment.
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AI in digital
Platforms
GPT-Live Makes ChatGPT Voice Feel More Human
- OpenAI has launched GPT-Live, a new generation of voice models that power ChatGPT Voice with full-duplex conversations. That means it can listen and speak at the same time, making interactions feel far more natural and reducing awkward interruptions.
- GPT-Live is OpenAI's smartest voice model yet. When a request needs web search or deeper reasoning, it hands the task to GPT-5.5 in the background while keeping the conversation flowing, instead of making users wait in silence.
- The new experience includes better turn-taking, live translation, improved listening in noisy environments, and the ability to display visual cards for topics like weather, stocks and sport during voice chats.
- GPT-Live is rolling out globally across iOS, Android and ChatGPT.com. Paid users get GPT-Live-1, while Free users receive GPT-Live-1 mini. Video and screen sharing are not yet supported in GPT-Live but are planned for a future update.
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AI in digital
Platforms
Google Adds AI Labels to Improve Ad Transparency
- Google is rolling out a new "How this ad was made" section in My Ad Centre, giving users a clear way to see whether an ad was created or edited using generative AI. The feature will be available globally across Search, YouTube and Discover.
- Ads created with Google's own generative AI tools will be automatically labelled, reducing the workload for advertisers and ensuring consistent AI disclosures.
- Advertisers using third-party AI tools can now manually indicate that generative AI was used. Depending on local regulations, AI labels may also appear directly on the ad itself.
- The update builds on Google's broader AI transparency efforts, including SynthID watermarking for AI-generated content and existing disclosure requirements for synthetic or digitally altered election ads.
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AI in digital
Platforms
Cloudflare’s New AI Bot Rules Could Accidentally Block Googlebot
- Cloudflare has rolled out new AI crawler controls that classify bots by Search, Agent and Training behaviour, giving all customers, including free users, more granular control over AI traffic.
- From 15 September, Cloudflare will apply its "strictest rule" to multi-purpose crawlers. That means if you block Training crawlers, bots like Googlebot, Bingbot and Applebot, which are used for both search indexing and AI training, could also be blocked.
- Website owners using Cloudflare should review their AI crawler settings before the deadline to avoid unintentionally impacting search visibility. Cloudflare says users can opt out of the new defaults through their dashboard.
- The change also ramps up pressure on AI companies to separate crawlers by purpose, allowing publishers to independently decide whether to allow search indexing, AI agents or AI training, rather than treating them as a single category.
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AI in digital
Marketing by numbers
Platforms
ChatGPT Thinking Mode Reshapes Brand Visibility
- ChatGPT's Thinking mode cites a completely different mix of brands and websites compared to its standard mode. Only 25.6% of cited domains overlapped, meaning the same prompt can produce very different sources depending on the reasoning mode used.
- Thinking mode is far more research-intensive, increasing citation rates from 50% to 68%, using 4.5 sources per response on average (up from 2.6), and performing almost five times more web searches before generating an answer.
- The quality of sources also changes. Government, academic and official documentation are cited much more often, while Reddit and user-generated review sites lose prominence, signalling a stronger preference for authoritative content.
- Comparison and evaluation queries see the biggest shift. Thinking mode breaks complex prompts into dozens of smaller searches before responding, making comprehensive product pages, documentation and supporting content more important for AI visibility.
- Visibility in AI is no longer about optimising for a single ChatGPT experience. Marketers need to evaluate how different reasoning and thinking modes across LLMs discover, assess and cite content, as each can surface a different set of brands and sources for the same query.
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AI in digital
Marketing by numbers
Platforms
Google AI Overviews Cut Clicks, Not Click Quality
- A new study found Google's AI Overviews reduce organic clicks by 39.8%, but the traffic that is lost isn't lower quality. Users who clicked through showed no meaningful differences in bounce rates, time on site or returning to search.
- The findings challenge Google's claim that AI Overviews mainly remove "low-value" or "bounce" clicks. The researchers found the additional traffic gained when AI Overviews were removed behaved much the same as existing traffic.
- The biggest impact is on informational searches, where AI Overviews appeared on around 53% of queries. Navigational and transactional searches saw little measurable change.
- Top-ranking organic results benefited the most when AI Overviews were removed, with the number one result seeing almost double the clicks.
- While the research is still a working paper and hasn't been peer reviewed, it suggests publishers and marketers should expect traffic pressure to increase as Google expands AI Overviews across more search queries.
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AI in digital
Platforms
Claude Sonnet 5 Brings Agentic AI to the Masses
- Anthropic has launched Claude Sonnet 5 as its most capable Sonnet model yet, with significantly stronger reasoning, coding, tool use and autonomous task execution. It can plan, browse, use terminals and complete complex multi-step workflows that previously required larger, more expensive models.
- Performance is now approaching Opus 4.8 at a much lower price point, giving developers a more cost-effective option for building AI agents. Anthropic says Sonnet 5 delivers major improvements over Sonnet 4.6 while offering better cost-to-performance across a range of workloads.
- The model is also safer and more reliable. Anthropic reports lower rates of hallucinations, prompt injection success, misuse and other undesirable behaviours, while maintaining lower cybersecurity risk than its flagship Opus models.
- Claude Sonnet 5 is now the default model across Free and Pro plans, with availability for Max, Team and Enterprise users, as well as through the Claude API and Claude Code. Introductory API pricing starts at US$2 per million input tokens and US$10 per million output tokens until 31 August 2026.
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AI in digital
AI Is Shopping Smarter, Not Buying For Us
- AI is becoming a bigger part of the shopping journey, but Australians still want to make the final purchase decision themselves. The latest IAB Australia and Pureprofile research shows consumers are comfortable using AI to research, compare products and narrow down options, but they're not ready to hand over the checkout.
- Trust remains the biggest barrier. Shoppers are far more comfortable with AI acting as an assistant than an autonomous buyer, highlighting the need for brands to prioritise transparency, control and confidence as agentic commerce develops.
- "Consumers are embracing AI as a shopping assistant, but they still want to remain in control of the final purchase decision. For brands, the opportunity is to build trust by using AI to enhance, not replace, the customer experience." – Martin Filz, CEO, Pureprofile.
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Platforms
Google’s Latest Update May Target Black Hat SEO
- SEO communities are reporting significant ranking volatility since June 19, with some sites seeing traffic drops of 25–50%.
- Most third-party tracking tools remain relatively stable, suggesting the impact may be limited to specific site types rather than a broad core update.
- Much of the discussion is coming from black hat SEO forums, leading to speculation that Google may have targeted spammy or manipulative tactics.
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AI in digital
Platforms
Bing Adds Deeper AI Visibility Reporting
- Bing Webmaster Tools has expanded its AI Performance Report with new metrics including Intents, Topics, Citation Share and Compare, giving marketers a more detailed view of AI search visibility.
- Publishers can now see why their content is being cited (e.g. informational, commercial, research queries) and which broader topics are driving AI visibility.
- A new Citation Share metric shows how much of the citation space a site captures for a given query, while Compare helps track changes over time.
- For marketers focused on GEO, the update is another sign that AI search is becoming a measurable channel, with platforms racing to provide better visibility into AI-driven discovery.
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Platforms
LinkedIn Doubles Down on Creator Marketing
- LinkedIn has launched Creator Marketplace, making it easier for brands to find, evaluate and partner with B2B creators directly through Campaign Manager.
- Brands can identify high-performing creator content and amplify it using Thought Leader Ads, helping turn trusted voices into paid media assets.
- LinkedIn also unveiled BrandWorks, a new consultancy-style service offering strategy, creative and campaign support to help marketers improve performance.
- The move reflects growing demand for creator-led marketing, with LinkedIn reporting that buyers increasingly trust expert voices over traditional brand messaging.
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AI in digital
Platforms
Google Launches Open Standard for AI Knowledge
- Google has introduced the Open Knowledge Format (OKF), an open standard designed to make organisational knowledge easier for AI agents to understand, share and reuse.
- OKF packages knowledge as simple markdown files with structured metadata, creating a vendor-neutral format that works across tools, platforms and AI systems.
- The goal is to solve a growing challenge in AI: fragmented business knowledge spread across wikis, documentation, data catalogues and internal systems.
- For marketers and data teams, the move signals growing momentum towards standardised knowledge layers that help AI tools access accurate business context and deliver better outputs.
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AI in digital
Platforms
Google Says LLMS.txt Won’t Boost Rankings
- Google has clarified that LLMS.txt files have no impact on Search rankings or visibility, and are completely ignored by Google Search.
- The company also confirmed that AI-specific files, markdown files and other machine-readable formats are not used to determine visibility in Search or AI-powered search experiences.
- While Google doesn't discourage maintaining LLMS.txt files for other AI systems, it says they're unnecessary for Google Search.
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Platforms
Calling Yourself ‘The Best’ Could Backfire
- SEO expert Lily Ray warns that self-promotional “best of” content may be becoming a liability, with Google appearing to crack down on brands that rank themselves as the top option in their category.
- Research suggests some sites relying heavily on self-ranked listicles saw significant visibility declines, particularly in content sections filled with "best" and comparison-style pages.
- The issue isn't the format itself, but the lack of independent validation, transparency and genuine evaluation behind many of these articles.
- For marketers, the takeaway is simple: focus on building credibility and third-party validation rather than publishing content that simply declares your brand the winner.
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AI in digital
Marketing by numbers
Platforms
68% of Google Searches End Without a Click
- 68.01% of Google searches now end without any click, meaning only 31.99% of searches generate a click anywhere across organic results, ads or Google-owned properties. That's up from 60.45% zero-click searches in 2024, representing the fastest acceleration of the trend in a decade.
- The share of searches that generate a click has fallen by 9.51 percentage points in two years, a 22.9% decline. At the same time, users are increasingly refining searches within Google rather than leaving the platform.
- AI Overviews now appear on more than 20% of Google searches and, when present, reduce click-through rates by nearly 60%. SparkToro identifies AI Overviews as the biggest driver behind the recent surge in zero-click behaviour.
- This isn't a new phenomenon, but it's accelerating rapidly. Zero-click searches have climbed from 49% in 2019 to 68% in 2026, highlighting Google's continued shift from search engine to answer engine.
- For marketers, the implication is clear: success in search can no longer be measured by traffic alone. Visibility within AI-generated answers, branded search demand, local intent and conversion performance are becoming more important than raw organic visits.
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AI in digital
Marketing by numbers
Bots Overtake Humans on the Web
- Cloudflare says bots now account for 57.3% of global webpage requests, marking the first time automated traffic has overtaken human traffic online. The milestone arrived much sooner than CEO Matthew Prince's earlier prediction that it would happen around 2027.
- The surge is being driven largely by AI agents, which browse and gather information very differently from humans. While a person might visit a handful of websites, an AI agent can crawl thousands of pages to complete a single task.
- For marketers, this signals a shift towards an "agentic web" where content increasingly needs to be machine-readable, trustworthy and easy for AI systems to interpret, not just optimised for human visitors.
- The change creates a growing measurement challenge. Websites may see traffic increase due to AI bots, while human engagement, referral visits, ad impressions and conversions remain flat or decline.
- The broader industry question is how publishers, brands and content creators get value from a web where bots are becoming the dominant users. As AI agents consume more content directly, traditional traffic-driven business models are coming under increasing pressure.
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AI in digital
Platforms
Apple’s Siri AI Creates a New Search Layer
- Apple’s new Gemini-powered Siri can now pull live information from the web, generate conversational answers, and is deeply integrated into Spotlight on Mac and iPad. This means users can get answers without ever opening a browser, creating another AI-mediated discovery layer between brands and consumers.
- The biggest unknown for marketers is visibility and attribution. Apple says Siri answers may include source links, but it has not explained when links appear, how citations work, or whether website owners will receive any reporting similar to Google Search Console.
- Siri AI is built using Apple Foundation Models developed in collaboration with Google Gemini, but Apple is positioning the experience as an Apple product rather than a Google-powered assistant. As a result, marketers should avoid assuming that content performing well in Gemini will automatically surface in Siri responses.
- Apple has quietly updated Applebot documentation, confirming that crawled content can be used to generate AI answers. Brands should review their Applebot, Applebot-Extended and nosnippet settings now, as these controls will influence how content can be used in Siri-generated responses.
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AI in digital
Platforms
Google Turns Gemini Into a Small Business Assistant
- Google is rolling out new Gemini features designed specifically for small businesses, with the headline update being direct integration with Google Business Profile. This gives Gemini access to customer reviews, questions and performance data so it can provide business-specific recommendations.
- Once connected, Gemini can analyse real business metrics such as search impressions, calls and direction requests, helping owners quickly understand performance and identify growth opportunities without manually digging through reports.
- The integration also enables practical workflow automation, including drafting personalised responses to customer reviews in the brand's voice and making profile updates such as changing operating hours or publishing seasonal announcements.
- Google is also launching Business notebooks, a dedicated workspace where Gemini can store and reference business information from chats, websites and Google Business Profiles. The goal is to give Gemini persistent context so it can provide more relevant recommendations and content over time.
- Business notebooks will proactively surface alerts, recommend actions and identify opportunities such as unanswered customer questions, local market trends and campaign ideas, pushing Gemini further towards an always-on business advisor rather than a standalone chatbot.
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AI in digital
Platforms
US Government Pulls Plug on Anthropic’s Fable 5
- The US government ordered Anthropic to immediately suspend access to its newest frontier AI models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, citing national security concerns linked to a reported jailbreak technique that could help identify software vulnerabilities.
- Anthropic strongly disagrees with the decision, arguing the reported vulnerability is narrow, non-universal, and comparable to capabilities already available in competing models, including GPT-5.5. The company says extensive red-teaming and safety testing showed Fable 5 had stronger safeguards than previous models.
- Because the export control order applies to all foreign nationals, including those inside the US and even Anthropic employees, the company says it had no practical way to comply other than shutting the models down for everyone globally.
- The move marks one of the strongest government interventions in frontier AI to date and could set a precedent for treating advanced AI models as export-controlled national security assets. Anthropic warns that applying this standard across the industry could significantly slow future AI releases.
- For marketers and businesses investing in AI-powered workflows, the story highlights the growing risk that regulatory action, geopolitics and national security concerns could suddenly impact access to leading AI platforms and capabilities.
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AI in digital
AI in travel
Platforms
Platforms in travel
Google Finally Reveals AI Search Visibility Data
- Google Search Console now includes dedicated reporting for AI search experiences.
- Marketers can track AI-driven impressions across AI Overviews, AI Mode and Discover.
- Data can be segmented by page, country, device and date.
- Click data isn’t included, so traffic impact remains unclear.
- The rollout is limited for now, with wider access expected later.
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Platforms
Platforms in travel
Google Maps Becomes the New Discovery Engine
- Google is increasingly surfacing curated lists in Maps, effectively telling users where to go instead of just showing nearby businesses.
- Early observations suggest these recommendations are being generated from trusted user-generated content, including detailed reviews, photos, videos and list-style content.
- This could create a new local SEO opportunity, with businesses needing to optimise for inclusion in Google's AI-curated lists, not just rankings.
- The shift reflects Google's broader move from search results to recommendations, helping users make decisions faster.
- For marketers, visibility in Google Maps may increasingly depend on generating authentic customer content and reviews that Google can use as recommendation signals.
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AI in digital
Platforms
ChatGPT Ads Get a Performance Marketing Upgrade
- OpenAI has confirmed conversion-optimised campaigns are coming to ChatGPT, moving its ad platform beyond awareness and into performance marketing.
- Advertisers will be able to track and optimise for actions such as leads, sign-ups and purchases using the OpenAI Pixel and Conversions API.
- The update signals OpenAI’s ambition to build a full-funnel advertising ecosystem around ChatGPT, putting it on a more direct collision course with Google and Meta.
- For marketers, now is the time to start testing how brands can influence discovery and conversions within AI-driven customer journeys
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