Newsletter · 2026-09-28 · Ashutosh Agarwal

Meta's Muse Makes AI Agents Versus Ads the Week's Big Question - Weekly Online Ads Podcast Recap - Week of September 20-27, 2026

A recap of what advertising and investing podcasts said for the week of September 20-27, 2026, built around Meta's Muse AI agent turning the AI agents versus ads question into a live one. Amazon blocked Muse to protect a $70 billion ad business while Shopify opened up, Google faced AI Overviews moving into shopping search, AppLovin's CEO sized a $50 billion mobile-game ad market, and retail media and streaming players kept consolidating.

Weekly Online Ads Podcast Recap

Week of September 20-27, 2026: Meta's Muse Makes AI Agents Versus Ads the Week's Big Question

Covers podcasts published September 20–27, 2026.

Executive Summary

Meta's Muse agent was the week's big story, and its real subject was advertising. Muse is Meta's new AI assistant: it books, buys and cancels things for you. Rich Greenfield (LightShed) said on Squawk Pod that Meta "was ignored in AI until three weeks ago." Scott Galloway pointed out Meta added "$150 billion in market cap" after the September 8 launch. Every show asked the same thing: what happens to ads when a bot, not a person, does the shopping?
Amazon blocked Muse to protect a $70 billion ad business. ARK's Nick Grous said Amazon told agents "you cannot do this... We have a $70 billion ad business to protect." ARK's Brett Winton worried more about agents steering shoppers to cheaper Chinese sellers than about the ads.
Meta's growth quality is under the microscope. On The Investor's Podcast, Daniel Mahncke noted US & Canada Q2 ad impressions grew only 9% while prices rose 20%. In Asia, impressions rose 17% and prices just 1%. His reading: Meta is "turning the dial" on US advertisers, not just making ads better.
Google's search problem is now measured in numbers. One eCommerce Podcast guest said AI Overviews will appear on about 25% of e-commerce searches this holiday season, up from about 9% last year. Chit Chat Stocks' Ryan Henderson argued Google holds back on agents because agents "ruin the economics of search."
AppLovin's CEO sized his market. On All-In, Adam Foroughi put ad spend on AppLovin at about $20 billion a year, growing about 60% a year. He put the whole mobile-game ad market at about $50 billion. He also argued chatbot ads mostly steal from Google Search, while "discovery" ads (AppLovin, Meta) create new spending.
Retail media is teaming up. Best Buy will sell Amazon Fire TV ad space on its Insignia TVs using Amazon's ad tech. GoPuff moves its ad business onto Instacart's Carrot Ads, which opens up about 9,000 advertisers.
Streaming is going for price and profit. Disney+ is raising prices 13% to $21.49. Bloomberg's Geetha Ranganathan pointed to Hulu with ads at $12.49 as where price-sensitive viewers will land. On AdExchanger's The Big Story, the question was what DSPs are even for when roughly 80% of viewing sits in about 10 apps.
Tickers in play: $META, $GOOGL, $AMZN, $APP, $CART, $BBY, $UBER, $DIS, $NFLX, $ROKU, $FOX, $PSKY/$WBD, $RDDT, $ADBE, $ZETA, $MGNI, $SHOP, $WPP.

(a) Dominant Themes

1. Meta Muse turns "AI agents vs. ads" into a live question

Meta's Muse launched September 8 and led almost every tech and investing podcast this week. The shared view was that Muse is a real consumer product, the first agent that simply works. That made commentators take seriously how agents might rewire online advertising.

Why Muse works (the bull view). Scott Galloway on Prof G Markets (Sept 21) argued Meta's edge is first-party data, meaning data it collects directly from its own users:

"The largest first-party data miner in history, some people would say a strip miner, is Meta... When you download Muse, you log in using your Instagram or Facebook or WhatsApp. So it immediately knows you."

Galloway said Meta has "4 billion monthly active users," and "since the release of this September the 8th, they've added $150 billion in market cap, and the stock's up more than 10 percent. Well, the S&P is down 2 percent."
Co-host Ed Elson ran a "dinner test": the same restaurant booking request in Muse, Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini. Claude and ChatGPT failed. Gemini finished after several confirmations. Muse booked it "in less than a minute."

Rich Greenfield of LightShed on Squawk Pod (Sept 24), after Meta's Connect event:

"Meta has a true right to win in AI because it's not just about the best model. It's about who can build the software platform, the harness that actually uses those models and actually brings it to consumers to use every single day. And nobody does that better than Meta."

He noted the stock is "up like 30%" since June. He added: "Meta was ignored in AI until three weeks ago, like literally ignored, penalized valuation-wise."
At Connect, Meta showed a "Muse Charm" handheld device, camera-free glasses, and a $1,300 VR headset. Greenfield's advice was to ignore the hardware: "Muse is the centerpiece of our company."

How Muse makes money, and why ads still matter. The hosts of Chip Stock Investor (Sept 25) set out the model:

Subscriptions at $7.99/month (core) and $19.99/month (premium), plus business agents, enterprise tools, and "commerce and performance fees" (a cut of sales Muse drives).
Their revenue scenarios: a bear case of about $3.5 billion a year (under 1% of Meta's 3.6 billion daily users paying) and a base case around 2% adoption. They landed "somewhere between the bear and the base case," meaning "less than $20 billion per year in revenue after a year or two."
The ad angle, from host Nick: "The value of an ad like that would be theoretically much higher because they would be tracking not just your activity, but they'd have a much more solid read on your intent." If Muse knows from your inbox that you're booking a business trip, advertisers will pay more to reach you.
For scale: Meta's family of apps brings in roughly $60 billion a quarter, about $59 billion of it from ads. Non-ad revenue is under $1 billion.

2. The "AI shopping wars": Amazon shuts the door, Shopify opens it

The clearest collision between agents and ad money came from Amazon. On ARK's FYI - For Your Innovation (Sept 24), Nick Grous explained:

"Think about Amazon. I think what they're really protecting is the ad business. That's $70 billion, it's extremely profitable for them. And if it's agents that are crawling your site, then the ads are meaningless, right? There's no point to them."

Amazon blocked Muse after it was "spinning up in the virtual machine for a lot of people over the weekend and probably purchasing different items." Shopify went the other way. It is building Shop Pay into Muse and letting Muse index "Shop Catalog," a product feed built for agents.
Grous thinks Amazon "is bound to have to do an about face." His reason: the biggest retailers "win that bid nine times out of 10" on price, selection and delivery speed. He also expects agents to push US e-commerce past 30% of retail, up from about 21%.
Brett Winton disagreed on why Amazon should worry. He argued a smart agent will notice "this item on Amazon is available in China for much less," which "could really poison their third party... business there where they're taking margin."
Chip Stock Investor called the block "a catalyst for Amazon stock going down." They expect "virtually all large e-commerce platforms" to follow Amazon's lead.

The same worry reached food delivery. On Chit Chat Stocks (Sept 25), Ryan Henderson estimated advertising is "probably something like 20%, 25% of the profits" at Uber. He said Uber Eats' ad economics are "a little bit under threat" if agents send orders straight to restaurants. His caveat: many restaurants buy Uber Eats ads for "brand visibility" in front of "200 million daily active users," not for a return they can measure.

3. Google Search: AI Overviews move into shopping

Several podcasts added concrete numbers to the long-running worry that AI answers are eating Google's search clicks.

On the eCommerce Podcast (Sept 23), guest Dave said: "Last year, uh, Google really left e-commerce alone with those. Um, it was about 9% of e-commerce queries had that AI overview... This year it's going to be about 25. So one in four e-commerce searches are going to have that AI in there." Google rolled Overviews out fastest in "healthcare and insurance" and slowest in shopping, travel and local searches.
On the Shed Geek Podcast (Sept 25), a small-business marketer gave the click math. When an AI Overview appears, it takes "66% of user engagement from the entire page." The number-one organic result, which normally gets 39% of clicks, now gets 39% of the remaining 34%, or roughly 13% of clicks.
OpenAI's ad product came up as a new rival for search budgets. The eCommerce Podcast guest tested it for a golf-accessory brand: "the conversions are... about in line with what you see organically," with costs "more kind of like Bing than it is Google." The host said he'd read that OpenAI had reached "a billion dollars in the ad revenue for that product." That figure came secondhand on the show.

4. AppLovin: "Advertising is like ML 1.0"

The most detailed industry interview of the week was AppLovin CEO Adam Foroughi on All-In (Sept 20).

Market size.

"We disclosed last January, so nearly two years ago, that on our own platform there was $11 billion a year of ad spend. Since then we've grown 60% year over year roughly. And so if you gross that up to a nice round number today you get $20 billion... there's probably about $50 billion of advertising being spent every single year in this mobile gaming ecosystem. It was not very long ago that social was a $50 billion opportunity."

Over a billion adults a day play mobile casual games. They often watch ads to earn in-game rewards, which Foroughi says creates intent he can sell.
The growth story is e-commerce: deep-learning models can "take that adult and give them a shopper behavior experience." Host intro: AppLovin is "quietly outperforming Facebook ads for e-commerce brands" and will "print something like six billion dollars in cash this year."

Where the AI upgrade came from. In April 2023, AppLovin went "from ML 1.0... to ML 2.0. We went from a regression model to a deep learning model" (AXON, its ad engine). That kicked off the recovery.

The drawdown and buyback story. After the 2021 IPO at a $28 billion market cap, the stock fell to about $3.8 billion in 2022, a 92% drawdown, "sub four times" EBITDA, on about $1 billion of EBITDA. AppLovin then bought back "roughly $6 billion of the company's stock," retiring "20 to 25% of the shares outstanding." At the peak, those shares were "worth over $50 billion." The stock went "from nine to $750 a share in a matter of two and a half years," reaching about a $250 billion market cap.

5. Retail media is learning to share

Kiri Masters on Retail Media Breakfast Club (Sept 23) described two deals as retail media moving "from parallel play to collaborative play":

Best Buy x Amazon ($BBY, $AMZN): Fire TV stays the exclusive software on Best Buy's Insignia TVs. Best Buy Ads will now sell Fire TV ad slots (autoplay banners, sponsored tiles, screensavers) across new and existing Insignia sets. From next year, it will run those campaigns on Amazon's programmatic ad tech. What Best Buy adds is data only it has: households "five years into their laptop refresh cycle," or that "brought a device into Geek Squad last month." The catch: "both Best Buy ads and Amazon ads can now both sell against the same household on the same screen... And neither one of them is really going to de-dupe the other one."
Instacart x GoPuff ($CART): GoPuff joins the Instacart marketplace with delivery in as little as 15 minutes. It also moves its ads onto Carrot Ads, Instacart's white-label ad tech. This is GoPuff's third ad-tech setup: Citrus Ad in 2021, in-house in 2024, and now Carrot Ads. Masters: "GoPuff also gains access to 9,000 advertisers that currently buy ads through Instacart platform... The ceiling on an ads business without self-serve is how many brands a sales team can personally reach." She also said the deal answers "the frenemy debate" over retailers running on a competitor's tech.
Her conclusion: "Right now, everyone seems to be getting what they wanted. The tantrums, if they come, will come at renewal."

6. Streaming: price hikes, ad tiers, and fewer, bigger sellers

Disney ($DIS): Geetha Ranganathan of Bloomberg Intelligence on Bloomberg Intelligence (Sept 23) said Disney+ is rising 13% to $21.49. Prices are up about 170% since the 2019 launch, versus about 45% at Netflix over five years. Hulu with ads at $12.49 is the cheaper option. Disney streaming went from a roughly $4 billion loss two years ago to "about $2.5 to $3 billion of profit," an 11–12% operating margin. The industry target is Netflix's 30%.
Netflix ($NFLX): Ranganathan said Netflix "is trying to get to a 40% operating margin" but has "been battling this whole weakness in engagement." Advertising and price increases are its levers, while its content budget rises 10% to $20 billion.
Free, ad-supported TV: She named Roku Channel and Fox's Tubi as winners, "just as things are kind of heating up with Fox and its Roku acquisition." She expects Paramount's David Ellison to revive Pluto TV. She also flagged a new risk for subscriptions: Muse "can basically go and... cut out some of your pricey subscriptions."
Paramount + Warner Bros. Discovery ("WarnerMount"): On AdExchanger's The Big Story (Sept 24), the hosts said the combined company would have about 200 million streaming subscribers across Paramount+ and HBO Max, versus Netflix at about 325 million. It would have two ad-sales operations to merge, Paramount's stack and WBD's "Neo." Big scale makes it "must buy" for advertisers, but may bring "prices... a little bit higher because they've got a little more leveraging power."

7. YouTube: an AI-powered creator machine

On Big Technology Podcast (Sept 23), host Alex Kantrowitz framed YouTube ($GOOGL) as "a $60 billion annual business" versus Netflix at $45 billion. He said it is "growing 13% a year," is "14% of all US streaming," and gets "a billion daily hours of YouTube... watched on TV alone," with "$100 billion" paid to creators in four years. CEO Neal Mohan walked through new AI tools: draft feedback, AI thumbnail suggestions, audience-specific "dynamic thumbnails," and A/B testing of whole videos, all "powered by our investment in AI using Gemini." His framing: "replace that word AI algorithm with audience."

8. Meta's ad machine up close: creators, small businesses, WhatsApp

Partnership ads: On The DTC Podcast (Sept 25), an agency guest said creator "partnership ads" (brand ads run from a creator's account) now make up "typically like 30 to 50%" of ads on their largest accounts, "way more than it was six months ago." They get the best cost per thousand views account-wide ("partnership, you know, video ads have the best sort of CPMs") and reach genuinely new audiences. Micro-creators cost "maybe a hundred, 200, 300 per creator for a few videos."
Small businesses: On Owned and Operated (Sept 24), a podcast for plumbing and HVAC owners, Sam Preston (Service Scalers) said: "Meta is working so well across the board. Again, not for people that suck at speed to lead." Host John Wilson: "there's a company that went from 10 million to 150... on the back of Meta." Wilson called Meta ads "the craziest thing that's come out of 2026."
WhatsApp: On The Investor's Podcast (Sept 24), Daniel Mahncke cited Zuckerberg: Thailand and Vietnam rank "about sixth and seventh among Meta's countries by revenue" despite ranking in the 30s by GDP. About "2% of Thailand's GDP flows through commerce on Meta's messaging apps." Business agents already serve "more than 1 million businesses" a week. Status ads reach about 1.5 billion users, but Mahncke doubts it matters much in Germany.

9. Agencies and AI creative: humans still in the loop

Karen Blackett (former WPP UK President) on Uncensored CMO (Sept 23) described how GroupM was seen when she took over ($WPP). It was known for "beating people up in order to get the best rates for clients from media owner partners," and "some of the margin was starting to plateau and I think that's linked to reputation." Her warning for the industry: "You're never going to get the best work when you're creating a culture of fear. I just worry about our industry becoming vanilla."
Canva: Rory Dolan, Head of Marketing Strategy, on Future Proof (Sept 23): "We don't want to replace people." He said the basics of marketing haven't changed: "strong reach, managing frequency, good, strong, entertaining, creative." Canva reviews Kantar cross-media measurement monthly, up to its founders.
Adobe Firefly ($ADBE): On The Futur (Sept 23), host Chris Do said: "Firefly's weakness is in just raw image generation... I think they are acknowledging that by allowing third-party AI generative engines in there." He called OpenAI's new image model "freaking rock solid," especially for "realism and typography."

(b) Active Debates

Debate 1: Is Meta's recent ad growth real, or is Meta squeezing advertisers?

Bear side: Daniel Mahncke on The Investor's Podcast (Sept 24):

"Worldwide... impressions actually grew 14% and prices grew 12%... However, if you split that up a region, the US and Canada saw only 9% growth in impressions and prices jumped 20%. And then in Asia, impressions were up 17% and prices were up just 1%... that discrepancy suggests that pricing growth in the US is likely not going to be because the ads are actually becoming more effective, but rather that Meta is sort of reducing advertisers' returns."

He argues the "AI makes ads better" story that took Meta to $700 in Q1 "was a bit harder to support in Q2."

Bull side: Co-host Shawn O'Malley called pricing power a feature: "Many companies would love to have a dial like that." On the companion Intrinsic Value Podcast (Sept 27), the hosts explained that higher prices don't hurt advertisers if ads work better. If "the cost per lead goes from $1 to, let's say, $1.10, but the lead spends, on average, 10% more... then nothing actually changes." They credited Meta's ranking systems, "Andromeda, Gym, and Lattice," which "rebuilt Meta's ad targeting after Apple's privacy changes." Time spent on Instagram and Facebook grew about 10% in Q1 and Q2, which is where most impression growth came from.

Debate 2: Is Meta's AI spending worth it, or is it smothering the best ad business in the world?

Skeptics: Shawn O'Malley on The Investor's Podcast:

"You wouldn't need to spend $150 billion on CapEx for simply improving ad algorithms with AI, right? Meta could likely spend 20% of that and remain this incredible cash printing machine with actually improving economics on their advertising business. And then maybe the stock could trade at double today's prices."

Daniel Mahncke on The Intrinsic Value Podcast (Sept 27):

"What I liked about Meta before is that if none of this works out, you are left with the biggest and most profitable advertising business in the world. But looking at all these long-term obligations... I think there's a risk that the business will be dragged down for a very long time."

He is keeping his personal shares but won't push it into their model portfolio. He did flag MuseSpark (Meta's AI model) for ad creation as upside: "There are immediately millions and millions of customers and a lot of margin to make." Chip Stock Investor noted capex of "$89 billion in the last 12 months alone" has "completely eaten up free cash flow," though they still hold the stock.

Believers: Greenfield: "Over the next year, you're going to see a dramatic change in how investors view Meta spending on AI." Galloway: "Anytime Mark Zuckerberg does something, you have to take it seriously."

Debate 3: Do AI agents kill online ads, or make them worth more?

Agents destroy ad value: ARK's Nick Grous: "If it's agents that are crawling your site, then the ads are meaningless." Chit Chat Stocks' Ryan Henderson made the same point about Uber Eats and Amazon. If a bot shops for you, "you're not going to see the advertisements," as co-host Brett Schafer put it.

Agents raise ad value: Chip Stock Investor argued ads inside an agent get more valuable because the agent knows your intent. Foroughi drew a sharper line on All-In. Chatbot ads are "almost going to exclusively compete with the Google Search business," because that shopping "was going to happen anyways." Discovery ads, like AppLovin's and Meta's, create spending that wouldn't otherwise exist:

"When you show a consumer an ad for something that they had no idea existed, they didn't know they needed to buy... you create economic expansion."

Debate 4: Is Google a victim of AI or a winner?

Victim: Ryan Henderson on Chit Chat Stocks:

"The reason why Google hasn't made a push into agentic yet is because if I search on, on an agentic interface to go find me the best running shoes... that directly circumvents the previously the, the Google search... it's going to make the economics of Google's 10 blue links, uh, worse than, than previously."

He estimates search is "still half of the revenues" and "maybe... something like 70% of the profits." Co-host Brett Schafer said he was "just so shocked" Google and Apple haven't shipped a Muse-style product, and "it does not make me bullish" on either.

Winner: The eCommerce Podcast guest: "I think rumors of Google's death are greatly exaggerated... it's still 90% of the search market share." He cited Gemini, the Apple deal to power Siri, and OpenAI's "code red" over Gemini last December.

Debate 5: Should retailers wall off their sites or open up to agents?

Wall off: Amazon's block of Muse. Chip Stock Investor expects "virtually all large e-commerce platforms" to follow.

Open up: Shopify's integration. ARK's Nick Grous: "I think they're making a mistake by doing this." Masters' retail media deals show retailers renting each other's pieces rather than building everything.

Debate 6: Does CTV still need ad-tech middlemen?

On AdExchanger's The Big Story, the host asked: "maybe 80% of the viewing is like the top 10 streaming apps. And do you even need, like, what do you need the DSP for? What is the value of the DSP and CTV when there's really only a handful of apps?" A DSP is the buying software advertisers use, like The Trade Desk. The host added: "spoiler alert for some people it's frequency capping, but there's, I think there's more there." The trend is toward "more direct relationships with publishers" and "more connection points into an ad server versus an SSP." Magnite ($MGNI) is due on their Programmatic I/O stage.

(c) Tickers Mentioned

$APP, AppLovin

Angle: Bull. A $50 billion mobile-game ad market, about $20 billion of spend on its platform growing about 60% a year, and e-commerce expansion powered by the AXON deep-learning engine.
Episode: "Adam Foroughi, Applovin CEO: Surviving a 92% Drawdown, Ads as ML 1.0 & the $50B Game Ad Market," All-In, Sept 20, 2026
Speaker: Adam Foroughi, CEO, AppLovin
Quote: "Advertising is like ML 1.0, but really was the first implementation of all these technologies that now are driving AI today... advertising is a very profitable implementation of a deep learning model."

$META, Meta Platforms (bull, Muse)

Angle: Bull. Muse proves Meta can turn its capex into a consumer product. Meta's distribution plus first-party data equals a "right to win."
Episode: "Meta's 'Right to Win AI' & A Bond Market Rout 9/24/26," Squawk Pod, Sept 24, 2026
Speaker: Rich Greenfield, LightShed Partners
Quote: "Meta was ignored in AI until three weeks ago, like literally ignored, penalized valuation-wise. Now I think you can start to see that all of this spending... actually has a reason and a real consumer product."

$META, Meta Platforms (bull, data moat)

Episode: "How Meta Could Quietly Win The AI Race," Prof G Markets, Sept 21, 2026
Speaker: Scott Galloway, NYU Stern / Prof G Media
Quote: "I just think the guy understands his asset, and that is he sits on first-party data, more first-party data of any organization in the world."

$META, Meta Platforms (bear, ad pricing)

Angle: Bear. US growth is coming from higher prices, not more impressions, which suggests lower returns for advertisers.
Episode: "TIP848: Meta (META): What the Market Misses? w/ Daniel Mahncke & Shawn O'Malley," The Investor's Podcast, Sept 24, 2026
Speaker: Daniel Mahncke, The Investor's Podcast Network
Quote: "I have to assume that Meta's sort of turning the dial in North America to get growth there right now."

$META, Meta Platforms (mixed, capex)

Angle: Mixed. The world's best ad business, weighed down by capex, lawsuits and long-term obligations.
Episode: "TIVP099 (Video): Meta (META): What the Market Misses," The Intrinsic Value Podcast, Sept 27, 2026
Speaker: Daniel Mahncke, The Investor's Podcast Network
Quote: "If none of this works out, you are left with the biggest and most profitable advertising business in the world. But looking at all these long-term obligations... I think there's a risk that the business will be dragged down for a very long time."

$META, Meta Platforms (hold, Muse monetization)

Angle: Hold. Muse subscriptions ($7.99/$19.99), performance fees, and better ad targeting based on intent.
Episode: "Meta Muse: The AI Agent Era Has Arrived!," Chip Stock Investor Podcast, Sept 25, 2026
Speaker: Nick Rossolillo, Chip Stock Investor
Quote: "I think less than $20 billion per year in revenue after a year or two would be a safer assumption. And let's be surprised at the upside if not."

$META, Meta Platforms (advertiser view)

Angle: Bull, from the ad buyer's side. Creator partnership ads are scaling fast and delivering cheaper views.
Episode: "Meta Partnership Ads Now Make Up 30 to 50% of the Ads on Our Biggest Accounts," The DTC Podcast, Sept 25, 2026
Speaker: Agency guest, The DTC Podcast
Quote: "For like the larger accounts... it's typically like 30 to 50%... of the total ads are running under, under partnership... that's way more than it was six months ago."

$AMZN, Amazon

Angle: Mixed. Blocking Muse protects a $70 billion ad business, but may be a strategic mistake. Separately, Best Buy now resells Fire TV ads on Amazon's ad tech.
Episode: "Amazon Just Blocked AI Shopping. Shopify Opened Up | The Brainstorm 150," FYI - For Your Innovation, Sept 24, 2026
Speaker: Nick Grous, ARK Invest
Quote: "Amazon said, no, you cannot do this. We want to own the customer relationship. We have a $70 billion ad business to protect."

$AMZN, Amazon (bear, third-party margin)

Episode: Same (FYI - For Your Innovation, Sept 24, 2026)
Speaker: Brett Winton, ARK Invest
Quote: "This item on Amazon is, is available in China for, you know, much less... And so it could really poison their third party, like kind of business there where they're taking margin."

$SHOP, Shopify

Angle: Bull. It opened up to agents: Shop Pay inside Muse, and Shop Catalog built for agents.
Episode: Same (FYI - For Your Innovation, Sept 24, 2026)
Speaker: Nick Grous, ARK Invest
Quote: "I think they're making a mistake by doing this. I think they should take the approach to Shopify."

$GOOGL / $GOOG, Alphabet (bear, search)

Angle: Bear. Agents go around search, and Google is slow to respond to protect profits.
Episode: "Meta Muse Winners and Losers; Google's Risk; Zeta Global and Adobe," Chit Chat Stocks, Sept 25, 2026
Speaker: Ryan Henderson, Chit Chat Stocks
Quote: "My rebuttal back to that is, well, it kind of ruins the economics of search."

$GOOGL, Alphabet (bull, search share)

Angle: Bull. 90% share, strong Gemini, and AI Overviews expanding into shopping searches.
Episode: "How to Get AI to Recommend Your Brand Instead of Your Competitors," eCommerce Podcast, Sept 23, 2026
Speaker: Dave (guest, AI search consultant)
Quote: "I think rumors of Google's death are greatly exaggerated... It's going to take a long time to kill Google."

$GOOGL, Alphabet / YouTube

Angle: Bull. A $60 billion business growing 13%, a billion hours a day on TV screens, and Gemini-powered creator tools.
Episode: "YouTube CEO Neal Mohan: Why We're Betting On AI And Not Afraid Of It," Big Technology Podcast, Sept 23, 2026
Speaker: Neal Mohan, CEO, YouTube
Quote: "I often say replace that word AI algorithm with audience it's the audience that is choosing that's the difference between YouTube and other platforms."

$UBER, Uber

Angle: Mild bear on Uber Eats advertising, which Henderson estimates at 20–25% of Uber's profits, if agents route orders straight to restaurants. Rides are safe.
Episode: Same (Chit Chat Stocks, Sept 25, 2026)
Speaker: Ryan Henderson, Chit Chat Stocks
Quote: "I'm willing to entertain the idea that the Uber Eats by extension, Uber Eats' advertising economics are a little bit under threat and under question."

$CART, Instacart (Maplebear)

Angle: Bull. GoPuff onto Carrot Ads is a trust signal that answers the "frenemy" objection.
Episode: "Are RMNs Finally Getting The Hang of This Collaboration Thing?," Retail Media Breakfast Club, Sept 23, 2026
Speaker: Kiri Masters, Retail Media Breakfast Club
Quote: "This week, Instacart signed a company that it competes with head on in delivery, which I think is a major signal to the market that they can be trusted or at least that GoPuff trusts them. So this is a major win for Instacart."

$BBY, Best Buy

Angle: Bull for Best Buy Ads. It can now sell Fire TV inventory with its own purchase and repair data layered on top.
Episode: Same (Retail Media Breakfast Club, Sept 23, 2026)
Speaker: Kiri Masters
Quote: "Best Buy gets to sell ad space that up until now only Amazon could sell."

$DIS, Disney

Angle: Mixed. The price increase and streaming profits are positives, but the stock needs a catalyst. Hulu's ad tier is the budget option.
Episode: "Disney+ Price to Jump 13% to $21.49 Per Month," Bloomberg Intelligence, Sept 23, 2026
Speaker: Geetha Ranganathan, Bloomberg Intelligence
Quote: "We really need some kind of catalyst, Paul, some kind of really big catalyst that can move this name."

$NFLX, Netflix

Angle: Cautious. Weaker engagement plus a $20 billion content budget. Ads and price increases are the levers.
Episode: Same (Bloomberg Intelligence, Sept 23, 2026)
Speaker: Geetha Ranganathan
Quote: "They do have a few growth levers in terms of advertising, in terms of price hikes. But again, it's going to be a very, very careful balancing act."

$ROKU / $FOX, Roku, Fox (Tubi)

Angle: Bull on free, ad-supported streaming as prices rise.
Episode: Same (Bloomberg Intelligence, Sept 23, 2026)
Speaker: Geetha Ranganathan
Quote: "We've seen some of these services actually do really well. Roku Channel is a great example. Tubi from Fox is a great example."

$PSKY / $WBD, Paramount Skydance, Warner Bros. Discovery

Angle: Neutral. Combined scale makes it a must-buy for advertisers, with more pricing power but two ad stacks to merge.
Episode: "Buying CTV In The WarnerMount World," The Big Story (AdExchanger), Sept 24, 2026
Speaker: Victoria, AdExchanger reporter
Quote: "There's about 200 million streaming subscribers across both Paramount Plus and HBO, which is way less than Netflix. Netflix, I think, has 325 million global at last count."

$MGNI, Magnite

Angle: Watch item. The CTV ad-tech layer is under pressure as buyers go direct to ad servers.
Episode: Same (The Big Story, Sept 24, 2026)
Speaker: The Big Story host, AdExchanger
Quote: "I think more connection points into an ad server versus an SSP, which has some nuances. I'm going to be talking to Magnite about that on our stage as well."

$RDDT, Reddit

Angle: Bear for the "get cited by AI" marketing use case. Reddit citations in ChatGPT fell 86% almost overnight. Its ads "supposedly have gotten a whole lot better."
Episode: "656: The Reddit AI SEO Playbook Just Stopped Working," The My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast, Sept 21, 2026
Speaker: Steve Chou, My Wife Quit Her Job
Quote: "Basically in one day, it fell to under 1% of mentions. So basically an 86% drop." Also: "they have paid licensing deals with Google and open AI and none with the other two guys... it's almost like it's become pay to play."

$ADBE, Adobe

Angle: Bear. Executive turnover, a new CEO from the enterprise marketing side, and Firefly lagging in raw image generation.
Episode: Same (Chit Chat Stocks, Sept 25, 2026)
Speaker: Ryan Henderson, Chit Chat Stocks (sold at about $280, a roughly 16% loss)
Quote: "The sheer amount of executive turnover at that company now starts to scare me... I think that's a bit of a thesis breaker."

$ZETA, Zeta Global

Angle: Named as a direct competitor to Adobe's enterprise marketing software, the unit Adobe's new CEO comes from.
Episode: Same (Chit Chat Stocks, Sept 25, 2026)
Speaker: Ryan Henderson
Quote: "10% of the business is software for enterprises, similar to something like Zeta that we talked about at the start of the episode. Zeta is actually a direct competitor to Adobe's enterprise software suite."

$WPP, WPP

Angle: Cautionary. GroupM's reputation for squeezing media owners, plateauing margins, and a risk of "vanilla" work in the AI era.
Episode: "Marketing leadership masterclass with ex WPP President, Karen Blackett CBE," Uncensored CMO, Sept 23, 2026
Speaker: Karen Blackett CBE, former WPP UK President / GroupM UK CEO
Quote: "Some of the margin was starting to plateau and I think that's linked to reputation and people you want people to want to work with you not have to work with you there's a huge difference."