Newsletter · · Ashutosh Agarwal

ChatGPT Ad Business Hits 1 Billion Run Rate as Apple Blocks The Trade Desk in Safari - Weekly Online Ads Podcast Recap - Week of October 4, 2026

Weekly Online Ads Podcast Recap for the week of September 27 to October 4, 2026, drawing on 24 ad-industry and investor podcasts. Synthesis on OpenAI's fast-growing but supply-constrained ChatGPT ad business, Apple cutting The Trade Desk's ad-serving domain out of Safari on iOS 27, Amazon blocking AI shopping agents to defend its ad revenue, retail media at 100 billion dollars, and Meta's AI ad payoff versus capex debate.

Weekly Online Ads Podcast Recap

Week of October 4, 2026: ChatGPT Ad Business Hits 1 Billion Run Rate as Apple Blocks The Trade Desk in Safari

Podcasts published September 27 to October 4, 2026. 24 episodes used, from ad-industry shows (Marketecture, AdExchanger's The Big Story, Digiday, Mobile Dev Memo, EMARKETER's Behind the Numbers, AdTechGod Pod, Retail Media Breakfast Club, Rethink Retail, The CPG View, The CPG Guys) and investor shows (The Intrinsic Value Podcast, The Information's TITV).

Executive Summary

  • ChatGPT ads came up most this week. OpenAI's head of ad product told Mobile Dev Memo the business reached $1 billion in annual run-rate revenue in under 200 days. The pushback was about supply, not demand: Digiday reported that agencies with clients spending $10 million a month on Google can't spend more than $100,000 a month on ChatGPT, because there isn't enough ad space to buy.
  • Apple's Safari is blocking $TTD's ad-serving domain on iOS 27. Marketecture and The Big Story both covered it. Trade Desk bids are being dropped on updated Safari, while Google's DoubleClick still loads. About 5–7% of US web traffic is on iOS 27 today, and that share will grow as people update.
  • Walled gardens versus AI shopping agents. Amazon began blocking Meta's new "Muse" shopping agent on September 20, less than two weeks after it launched. One guest tied the decision directly to protecting Amazon's roughly $80 billion ad business, about 65% of which he estimated comes from sponsored listings on Amazon's own site.
  • Retail media is now a $100 billion industry with a credibility problem. Albertsons and Best Buy launched multi-touch attribution tools, which spread credit for a sale across several ads. The Retail Media Breakfast Club host heard little demand for them from brands: "MTA is a dying breed," said one CPG contact.
  • Meta: AI ad payoff or capex sinkhole? Hosts of The Intrinsic Value Podcast set a base-case fair value of $650–$750 per share for $META. They argued that "better algos and more inventory" are enough to justify the AI spending, but flagged near-zero free cash flow through 2028.
  • Google is winning AI ad money but publishers are paying for it. EMARKETER says "Google right now is winning the monetization" of AI. The Information reported that Google's payments to publishers for AI Overviews are, in its reporter's word, "meaningless."
  • Top tickers this week: $TTD, $AAPL, $AMZN, $META, $GOOGL, $WMT, $RAMP, $ROKU, $PINS, $SHOP, $BBY, $MCD.

(a) Dominant Themes

1. OpenAI's ad business is real, fast-growing, and supply-constrained

The biggest story of the week was ChatGPT advertising. Three different podcasts went deep on it.

On the Mobile Dev Memo Podcast (Sept 29), host Eric Seufert interviewed Asad Awan, OpenAI's Head of Monetization Product & Engineering. Awan gave the headline number:

"hitting a billion ARR in less than 200 days since we started, and now expanded globally to more than 40 countries"

ARR means annual recurring revenue, or the current monthly pace multiplied by twelve. Awan said ChatGPT now has "tens of thousands of advertisers" and "more than 1 billion weekly active users." He also laid out the order of priorities OpenAI uses when designing ads:

"user trust is more important than user value. User value is more important than advertiser value. Advertiser value is more important than revenue."

He walked through new products: a conversion pixel (a snippet of code on an advertiser's site that reports back when an ad leads to a sale), integrations with Shopify and HubSpot, dynamic creative, and "sponsored agents." Mobile Dev Memo Podcast

Sponsored agents are the new format everyone was talking about. Instead of a banner or a text link, a brand gets a chatbot inside ChatGPT that a user can choose to talk to. On AdExchanger's The Big Story (Oct 1), the hosts described it as a format "where a brand can, and this is user initiated, have a conversation with somebody to help them and make a purchase decision." The Big Story Krystal Scanlon of Digiday called it "the very first AI native ad format... where they're not kind of taking a copy and paste job what you've seen on any other platform." The Digiday Podcast

The Digiday Podcast ("Can OpenAI build a $1 billion ad empire?", Sept 29) added the targets:

  • OpenAI ads are at a $1 billion annualized run rate and running in 60 markets.
  • The internal goal is reportedly $2.5 billion in actual ad revenue by year-end, "not a run rate, but actual revenue."
  • The longer-term ambition is $100 billion by 2030. eMarketer, by contrast, expects the entire US chatbot ad market to reach only about $5.4 billion by 2030.

The limit isn't demand, it's supply. Tim Peterson of Digiday:

"they have clients actively spending $10 million a month on Google ads, but aren't able to spend more than $100,000 a month on ChatGPT ads... It's not because the clients don't want to spend that money. There just isn't the inventory available to them."

The Digiday Podcast

The ad tech industry is building around it anyway. Eric Franchi on Marketecture noted that "OpenAI and LiveRamp are partnering to bring custom audiences to chat ads," so LiveRamp ($RAMP) customers can now target their own customer lists inside ChatGPT. Marketecture: Get Smart. Fast.

For performance marketers, the opportunity is cheap clicks before prices rise. Mike Mallazzo (Alephic Media, formerly at Honey) told Always Be Testing (Sept 29) that "ChatGPT's cheapest ads right now, I think, are $3 cost per click in their self-service platform." He predicted a window of easy returns:

"given the caliber of the team OpenAI has hired, think that there's going to be a moment here in the next, I don't know, three months, six months, where there is going to be real performance arbitrage on ChatGPT."

He compared it to the mid-2010s, when early Amazon sellers "were basically able to build brands well into the tens of millions of dollars with names that nobody had ever heard of on just paid advertising arbitrage." Always Be Testing

EMARKETER's Behind the Numbers (Sept 28) gave a wider frame: roughly $1 billion of US AI ad spend in 2026, growing to about $30 billion by 2030, which would be about half the size of connected-TV ad spend. Behind the Numbers: an EMARKETER Podcast

2. Apple quietly cuts The Trade Desk out of Safari

The ad-tech story of the week was Apple's iOS 27 update adding The Trade Desk's ad-serving domain to Safari's block list.

Eric Franchi laid it out on Marketecture Episode 193 (Oct 2):

"TTD blocked from serving ads on Safari... It put adserver.org on Safari's block list as the Trade Desk actual ad serving domain. So, TTD bids are getting dropped entirely on updated Safari while Google's double-click.net, same URL for freaking 25 years, calls the same page."

How big is the exposure? Franchi said "5% to 7% of U.S. web traffic is going to iOS 27 today," and that share "will head towards 20-plus percent as adoption climbs." Marketecture: Get Smart. Fast.

AdExchanger's The Big Story ("Apple Takes A Bite Out Of Programmatic", Oct 1) gave this its whole episode. Reporter James Hercher explained that Safari now identifies ad-serving calls and blocks them outright: "They're not able to serve ads whatsoever to Safari users who have iOS 27." The hosts said identity providers such as LiveRamp, ID5 and Permutive are also affected. ID5 CEO Mathieu Roche, quoted on the show, said:

"It is a new step for Apple to take to block them from doing their sort of publisher services. And it's core infrastructure."

Sarah Sluis, AdExchanger's editorial director, reminded listeners of the precedent: "Meta lost something like $10 billion of revenue because of ATT." ATT is App Tracking Transparency, Apple's 2021 change that let iPhone users opt out of cross-app tracking. The Big Story

3. AI shopping agents collide with Amazon's walled garden

In mid-September, Meta launched "Muse," an AI agent that shops on your behalf. Amazon blocked it almost immediately. Jeremy Goldman of Rethink Retail ("Amazon vs. Meta: Who Controls the AI Shopper?", Oct 2): "Amazon began blocking Meta's Muse shopping agent from its site starting September 20th, less than two weeks after Muse launched." RETHINK RETAIL

On Marketecture, Adam Epstein (CEO of GG) explained the economics. He estimated that about 65% of Amazon's roughly $80 billion ad business is sponsored ads on Amazon's own site. If an AI agent does the shopping, nobody sees those ads. So:

"Amazon's choice to block these AI agents and LLMs is directly correlated to the downside risk of their advertising business."

Host Ari Paparo added context: "Amazon has cut off Muse the same way that Amazon cut off ChatGPT several years ago and still cuts off ChatGPT and any other AI agent." Epstein noted the exception that proves the rule: Amazon only partnered with OpenAI once "ChatGPT had a sizable advertising inventory and surface area for Amazon to bring demand."

The same episode covered Amazon's "unBoxed" conference. Epstein's favorite announcement:

"My favorite product that I don't think many people are talking about was sponsored reviews. I think it's going to be a billion-dollar ad unit for Amazon."

The hosts also noted Amazon rebranding its demand-side platform (DSP, the software advertisers use to buy ads) around an "Amazon ads agent," and Meta hiring MongoDB CEO CJ Desai to run Meta Enterprise. Franchi: "It's not a small public company. No, it's MongoDB. Zuck is just, nothing should surprise us anymore." Marketecture: Get Smart. Fast.

Walmart is taking the opposite approach. Goldman: "Walmart is working with external AI platforms, right? Amazon has this very different approach." Ricardo Belmar (Retail Razor): "Walmart's going to embrace because Walmart wants to be everywhere Amazon is not." Separately, Goldman said Target's traffic from external AI platforms "has increased 3.5x year over year." RETHINK RETAIL

4. Retail media at $100 billion: growth slowing, proof demanded

Retail media means ads sold by retailers, such as sponsored products on Walmart.com or in-store screens at Kroger, using the retailer's own shopper data. It is now huge. Lavina Suthenthiran (SVP Global Retail Media & Commerce at Surkana, formerly at Roku) told Rethink Retail (Sept 28): "it's now at $100 billion," but "55% of advertisers cite lack of standardization as the barrier." RETHINK RETAIL

Growth is expected to slow. Aisha Khan, Head of Dentsu Commerce North America, said on The CPG View (Oct 2): "I don't think the growth rates will be 30, 40% anymore." She described how blunt big-brand briefs have become: "we want to grow market share by three basis points next year. Full stop, end of sentence, entire email, entire brief for their entire annual media budget next year." The CPG View

Waste is the problem measurement is trying to fix. Stan Turek (GM Measurement at InMarket, IAB board member) told The CPG Guys (Sept 30) that in campaigns his firm analyzed, "up to 50% of the media spend went to audiences and creatives that did nothing for incremental." Incremental sales are sales that wouldn't have happened without the ad. The CPG Guys

New networks keep launching:

  • McDonald's is piloting a media network in 450 company-owned US restaurants. Goldman: "they've got ambitions of building a billion-dollar advertising business. I think they could probably be bigger than that over time."
  • Best Buy Ads will sell Amazon Fire TV ad inventory on Insignia TVs.
  • In-store retail media is still only "about 3% of all of retail media dollars."
  • Kroger Precision Marketing's Brian Spencer: "11 million people shop at Kroger every day... 95% of Kroger sales are connected to our loyalty program." RETHINK RETAIL

Albertsons Media Collective's Liz Roche told The CPG View (Oct 1) that Albertsons has "over 51 million" loyalty members. She described a Martinelli's campaign with a "+30% sales lift," "65% new to brand," and "seven and a half incremental ROAS" (return on ad spend, or $7.50 in extra sales per $1 of ads). The CPG View

5. Google wins AI ad dollars; publishers lose traffic

Yory Wurmser, EMARKETER's head of advertising, media and tech, said on Behind the Numbers (Sept 28) that most of the ad spend "adjacent or within chatbots... is happening in either AI mode or an AI overviews. Um, right there, Google right now is winning the monetization, at least through advertising of, um, of AI." He estimated publishers are down "by about 30%" on traffic. Behind the Numbers: an EMARKETER Podcast

The Information's TITV (Sept 30) reported on Google's pilot program paying about 100 publishers for content used in AI Overviews. Reporter Alix Couture said the Washington Post's "traffic drop by 50% in the past 3 years." Payments are small: one publisher earned $50,000–$60,000, and most small publishers got "less than $1,000." The Information's TITV

Mallazzo on Always Be Testing: "Google obviously is effectively becoming its own zero-click interface... the idea of the entire web being kind of contained within an answer engine is very, very real." He expects that "Google is going to lean on YouTube more and more because they own it." Always Be Testing

6. Meta's ad machine and the AI spending question

The Intrinsic Value Podcast (TIVP099, "Meta: What the Market Misses," Sept 27) did a full investor deep-dive on $META. Co-host Daniel Mahncke cited Q2 figures: worldwide ad impressions up 14% and prices up 12%. In the US and Canada, impressions rose 9% and prices 20%. He set out 2026 capex (capital spending on data centers and chips) guidance of $130–145 billion and a base-case fair value of $650–750 per share. His core argument:

"I think the biggest payoff from AI in what Meta is doing best, and that still is ads. And you don't need superintelligence or the next computing platform or cloud business and all of that. It's just better algos and more inventory, and that would technically be enough."

The Intrinsic Value Podcast - The Investor's Podcast Network

EMARKETER is also bullish on social. Stephanie Paterik predicted that "social video is going to generate more ad revenue... in 2027, then all of converged TV combined," and "we actually see meta continuing to grow social usage, time spent overall continuing to grow." Behind the Numbers: an EMARKETER Podcast

7. Measurement, agencies and CTV in the trenches

  • Agency economics are getting worse. Tanja Mimica (Co-founder & COO of Kovva, formerly VP at PubMatic) told AdTechGod Pod (Sept 29): "72% of agencies reduced their prices in 2025," "70% of revenue still goes to headcount," and "Average net margins are at 13%, which is an all-time low." She also said each platform is building AI that only works inside its own walls: "Meta is building AI to make Meta easier to work with and perform better." AdTechGod Pod
  • Live sports are driving streaming TV. Gil Sommer (VP Product at FreeWheel, Comcast's ad tech unit) said 30% of ad-supported TV viewing in Q4 last year was live sports. He cited Sunday Night Football streams of 20–25 million concurrent viewers and about 8 million concurrent viewers per World Cup game. AdTechGod Pod
  • CTV works slowly. On The DTC Podcast (Oct 1), Keen Decision Systems' Jesse Math, drawing on "$45 billion" of client spend data, said about "30% of incremental impact occurs short-term and 70% over time" for connected TV. The DTC Podcast
  • Amazon as one-stop shop. Ryan Walker (Senior Director of Commerce, PMG) explained on a Marketecture-feed episode why IQBAR's CTV test on Amazon worked: you can "tie back those video impressions to a real person on Amazon that's going to buy a product." He added: "I'm really excited about... a movement towards more centralized buying. And I think Amazon's at the forefront of that." Marketecture: Get Smart. Fast.
  • Digital ad taxes are spreading. On Tax Notes Talk (Oct 2), Greenberg Traurig's Dee Morrow said Maryland's digital ad tax (2.5% to 10%) had collected about $535 million through July 2026, and Utah's "4.7 percent targeted advertising tax" takes effect January 1, 2027. Tax Notes Talk
  • YouTube creators want to rely less on ads. Shelly Soriano, President of Spy Ninjas (a $25M YouTube franchise), told Next in Media: YouTube ad revenue is "still the most meaningful part of our business. And one of the... things I see as my charge is to diversify away from advertising a bit." Next in Media

(b) Active Debates

1. Can OpenAI hit its ad targets?

Bulls:

  • OpenAI's Asad Awan: $1 billion ARR in under 200 days, more than 40 countries. Mobile Dev Memo Podcast
  • An AI Applied host on sponsored agents: "It's a completely new advertising model we haven't seen anywhere else... It's kind of like an innovative way to do advertising." AI Applied
  • Mallazzo expects real performance arbitrage on ChatGPT within three to six months. Always Be Testing

Skeptics:

  • Digiday's Tim Peterson doubted the run-rate math: "My run rate looks a lot better on payday weeks versus non-payday weeks. But didn't they have a bigger number in mind for 2026?"
  • Krystal Scanlon: "I don't want to say they never will... But I think it will still take a while before we start seeing real major budgets going into that platform." The Digiday Podcast
  • EMARKETER's Wurmser said OpenAI is starting "without the consumer data, without the ad tech... without the platform that Google has," and "it's going to take them a while to actually... gain many billions of dollars of ad revenue." Behind the Numbers: an EMARKETER Podcast

Middle view: Peterson noted that ad buyers "to an extent, want OpenAI to succeed because it'll keep Google, Meta, Amazon honest."

2. Is the open web finished?

AdExchanger's own team disagreed on The Big Story:

  • James Hercher: "I think the open web is pretty much toast... you gotta have a tiktok for that."
  • Allison Schiff (editor-in-chief): "I'm team challenged but i don't think challenge necessarily means falling off a cliff."
  • Sarah Sluis: "both things can be true um the open web is challenged but also... the growth is going to be more in new channels that are adopting programmatic principles."

The Big Story

3. How bad is the Safari block for The Trade Desk, and whose fault is the fallout?

  • Severe: Hercher said TTD's engineers filed a polite technical issue with WebKit, the engine behind Safari, "meanwhile, their whole business is broken." Sluis said the best case is TTD getting stuck in Apple's "slow, very frustrating... like no service kind of Apple, like app review and appeals process." The Big Story
  • Contained, for now: Hercher also said "it's not all iPhone owners, probably a minority," but "some sort of double digit minority percent of Safari is a lot of people." Franchi put iOS 27 at 5–7% of US web traffic today.
  • TTD's communication: Ari Paparo said "It is unusual that it would be this widespread, that the trade desk, unless we've missed it, did not inform their clients. So, a bunch of people have chimed in saying, wow, this is the first I'm hearing about this." Marketecture: Get Smart. Fast.

4. Are AI shopping agents mainstream yet?

On Marketecture 193:

  • Adam Epstein (yes): products like "Muse, Instinct, and OpenAI's new agent product are ingraining people... These are the masses."
  • Ari Paparo (not yet): "I think you got a little over your skis saying the normies are using it... these have got a couple million downloads on the App Store. This is still super early adopter territory."
  • They also disagreed on who wins. Epstein asked "Will ChatGPT become the de facto way that people use AI agents?" Paparo: "I'm going to disagree a little bit... which modality will be comfortable for consumers?"

Marketecture: Get Smart. Fast.

5. Amazon or Meta: who controls the AI shopper?

On Rethink Retail:

  • Ricardo Belmar (Amazon): "If anybody can pull it off, it's Amazon because... They control, what is it, 40% of e-commerce." On Muse, he called Meta a source "that I honestly don't trust with data. They've proven, I don't know how many times over the years, that it's very hard to trust them with data."
  • Charisma Glassman (Genpact, Meta): "I love what Alexander Wang has been able to pull off. And the whole change from the whole metaverse strategy to now, the new strategy is a drastic positive."
  • On Marketecture, Franchi leaned toward Meta: "I got to think that this favors Meta. Meta is so well-known. They have the ability to promote this across everything."

RETHINK RETAIL, Marketecture: Get Smart. Fast.

6. Do brands actually want retailers' new attribution tools?

Albertsons (Sept 17, built with LiveRamp and piloted by PepsiCo) and Best Buy Ads (Sept 30) both launched multi-touch attribution (MTA). Retail Media Breakfast Club (Oct 1) asked whether anyone wanted it.

  • Retailers say yes. Patrick Albano, CRO of Best Buy Ads: "it was one of the most requested measurement tool from their ad partners." Liz Roche of Albertsons: "conversions are not stimulated from one single ad impression."
  • Brands and consultants are doubtful. Host Kiri Masters: "I didn't hear a lot from consultants or brands that this is solving an underlying need for them, that maybe this is a bit of a cop-out." An anonymous CPG contact: "I think MTA is a dying breed." An anonymous consultant: "MTA is even more of a black box than ROAS." Acadia's Sally Kazin said privacy rules and fragmentation "kind of killed MTA."
  • Middle view: Marketing-mix modeling (MMM, statistical analysis of how total spend by channel drives sales) handles budget allocation, and MTA is a tactical layer on top. Shark Ninja's Dave Kersey uses both.

Retail Media Breakfast Club

7. Will measurement models work for AI search?

On Always Be Testing:

  • Mike Mallazzo: "I actually think MMMs and MTA is going to tell more of a faux precision story than a real one in the next three to five years... I'd be thinking about attribution as back to largely last click with incrementality holdout testing."
  • Host Tye DeGrange: ChatGPT's click, impression and conversion data "is going to make it even more compatible with MMMs."

Always Be Testing

8. Meta: AI payoff or capex risk?

On The Intrinsic Value Podcast:

  • Daniel Mahncke (bull, with caveats): "I believe Meta is just attractively priced because people see AI spend as sort of black and white... I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. And if that's the case, I think Meta is attractively valued today."
  • Shawn O'Malley (skeptic): Meta has already burned "close to $100 billion" on the Metaverse, and he cited reports of roughly $700 billion in off-balance-sheet commitments. Even Mahncke's base case has free cash flow at zero to negative in 2026–2028. His bear case has capex near $230 billion with margins stuck around 30%.

The Intrinsic Value Podcast - The Investor's Podcast Network

9. Is Google paying publishers enough?

On TITV, Alix Couture said "the payments are very, like, they're meaningless. So for those big publishers, they don't want to be part of it because they hope to basically pressure Google to do something better and more meaningful." She added: "I do think that Google is working on it really." The Information's TITV

10. Does Pinterest underperform, or is it just measured badly?

On The DTC Podcast, Carve Designs' Hannah Fleming said Pinterest should suit a women's apparel brand, "And we've tried it a few times and we just haven't quite cracked the code there." Keen's Jesse Math pushed back: channels that look weak in Google Analytics and click-based attribution may be performing better than those tools show. The DTC Podcast

(c) Tickers Mentioned

$TTD, The Trade Desk

  • Angle: Bear. Apple's iOS 27 Safari blocks TTD's ad-serving domain.
    • Episode: Marketecture Episode 193: Adam Epstein on Muse & Agentic Commerce, Plus TTD Blocked on Safari and Amazon UnBoxed. Speaker: Eric Franchi (co-host, Marketecture). Date: 2026-10-02.
    • "TTD bids are getting dropped entirely on updated Safari while Google's double-click.net, same URL for freaking 25 years, calls the same page." Marketecture: Get Smart. Fast.
  • Angle: Bear (client communication).
    • Episode: same. Speaker: Ari Paparo (host, Marketecture). Date: 2026-10-02.
    • "It is unusual that it would be this widespread, that the trade desk, unless we've missed it, did not inform their clients." Marketecture: Get Smart. Fast.
  • Angle: Bear.
    • Episode: Apple Takes A Bite Out Of Programmatic. Speaker: James Hercher (reporter, AdExchanger). Date: 2026-10-01.
    • "They're not able to serve ads whatsoever to Safari users who have iOS 27." The Big Story
  • Angle: Mixed (sizing).
    • Episode: same. Speaker: James Hercher. Date: 2026-10-01.
    • "it's not all iPhone owners, probably a minority... even like some sort of double digit minority percent of Safari is a lot of people." The Big Story
  • Angle: Bear (stuck in Apple's process).
    • Episode: same. Speaker: Sarah Sluis (Editorial Director, AdExchanger). Date: 2026-10-01.
    • "the best case scenario for the trade desk is just that the trade desk right now is experiencing what like Apple developers know as this slow, very frustrating. Like no service kind of Apple, like app review and appeals process." The Big Story

$AAPL, Apple

  • Angle: Platform power (bearish for open-web ad tech).
    • Episode: Apple Takes A Bite Out Of Programmatic. Speaker: Mathieu Roche (CEO, ID5), quoted on the show. Date: 2026-10-01.
    • "It is a new step for Apple to take to block them from doing their sort of publisher services. And it's core infrastructure." The Big Story
  • Angle: Precedent.
    • Episode: same. Speaker: Sarah Sluis (AdExchanger). Date: 2026-10-01.
    • "Meta lost something like $10 billion of revenue because of ATT." The Big Story

$AMZN, Amazon

  • Angle: Bull (new ad unit).
    • Episode: Marketecture Episode 193. Speaker: Adam Epstein (CEO, GG). Date: 2026-10-02.
    • "My favorite product that I don't think many people are talking about was sponsored reviews. I think it's going to be a billion-dollar ad unit for Amazon." Marketecture: Get Smart. Fast.
  • Angle: Defensive (blocking agents protects ads).
    • Episode: same. Speaker: Adam Epstein. Date: 2026-10-02.
    • "Amazon's choice to block these AI agents and LLMs is directly correlated to the downside risk of their advertising business." Marketecture: Get Smart. Fast.
  • Angle: Bull (full-funnel CTV and measurement).
    • Episode: How PMG Brought in New Customers for IQBAR Using Full-Funnel Advertising. Speaker: Ryan Walker (Senior Director of Commerce, PMG). Date: 2026-10-01.
    • "the ROI was good on the CTV? Yes, definitely helped us reach new customers at a cost to acquire them that we found was profitable based on the LTV that we know to expect from shoppers on Amazon." Marketecture: Get Smart. Fast.
  • Angle: Bull (market control).
    • Episode: Amazon vs. Meta: Who Controls the AI Shopper? Speaker: Ricardo Belmar (Founder, Retail Razor). Date: 2026-10-02.
    • "when you have that strong a leadership position, I think you get to dictate the terms of how everybody accesses your environment." RETHINK RETAIL
  • Angle: Bull (CTV lifts display).
    • Episode: Retail Media's $100B Question: Can You Prove It? Speaker: Lavina Suthenthiran (SVP, Surkana; ex-Roku). Date: 2026-09-28.
    • "the research showed that when you have CTV on, it improves the display ad performance during that time as well." RETHINK RETAIL

$META, Meta Platforms

  • Angle: Bull (AI improves core ads).
  • Angle: Bull (valuation, $650–750 base-case fair value).
  • Angle: Bull (Muse and distribution).
    • Episode: Marketecture Episode 193. Speaker: Eric Franchi. Date: 2026-10-02.
    • "I got to think that this favors Meta. Meta is so well-known. They have the ability to promote this across everything." Marketecture: Get Smart. Fast.
  • Angle: Bear (data trust).
    • Episode: Amazon vs. Meta: Who Controls the AI Shopper? Speaker: Ricardo Belmar (Retail Razor). Date: 2026-10-02.
    • "it's coming from a source, in this case, Meta, that I honestly don't trust with data." RETHINK RETAIL
  • Angle: Bull (social video growth).
    • Episode: The Future of Digital Is Defined by the Human-AI Relationship. Speaker: Stephanie Paterik (EMARKETER). Date: 2026-09-28.
    • "we actually see meta continuing to grow social usage, time spent overall continuing to grow." Behind the Numbers: an EMARKETER Podcast
  • Angle: Bear (rising acquisition costs).
    • Episode: How to Test Connected TV for a DTC Brand. Speaker: Hannah Fleming (Carve Designs). Date: 2026-10-01.
    • "as acquisition costs rose on meta, there was also a timing consideration there of like, okay, what else can we test to grow brand awareness?" The DTC Podcast

$GOOGL / $GOOG, Alphabet

  • Angle: Bull (winning AI ad monetization).
    • Episode: The Future of Digital Is Defined by the Human-AI Relationship. Speaker: Yory Wurmser (Principal Analyst, EMARKETER). Date: 2026-09-28.
    • "Google right now is winning the monetization, at least through advertising of, um, of AI." Behind the Numbers: an EMARKETER Podcast
  • Angle: Bull (inventory moat vs ChatGPT).
    • Episode: Can OpenAI build a $1 billion ad empire? Speaker: Tim Peterson (Executive Editor, Digiday). Date: 2026-09-29.
    • "There just isn't the inventory available to them." The Digiday Podcast
  • Angle: Bear (publisher fallout and regulatory pressure).
    • Episode: OpenAI Announces New AI Tools at DevDay, Google Is Paying Digital Publishers for AI Overviews. Speaker: Alix Couture (reporter, The Information). Date: 2026-09-30.
    • "it affected publishers' traffic a lot, and it was quite a big disaster for publishers." The Information's TITV
  • Angle: Neutral (zero-click shift, YouTube lean).
    • Episode: #136 The Next Arbitrage Window Is on ChatGPT. Speaker: Mike Mallazzo (Alephic Media). Date: 2026-09-29.
    • "Google is going to lean on YouTube more and more because they own it to kind of serve content." Always Be Testing
  • Angle: Neutral (search paradigm).
    • Episode: OpenAI's advertising ambitions (with Asad Awan). Speaker: Eric Seufert (host, Mobile Dev Memo). Date: 2026-09-29.
    • "Google is just anchored to that paradigm for historical reasons." Mobile Dev Memo Podcast

$RAMP, LiveRamp

  • Angle: Bull (OpenAI partnership).
    • Episode: Marketecture Episode 193. Speaker: Eric Franchi. Date: 2026-10-02.
    • "OpenAI and LiveRamp are partnering to bring custom audiences to chat ads. So LiveRamp customers can start to use the data in ChatGPTS." Marketecture: Get Smart. Fast.
  • Angle: Bear (competitor critique).
    • Episode: Hightouch's Ian Maier on Turning First-Party Data Into Advertising Intelligence. Speaker: Ian Maier (GM AdTech, Hightouch). Date: 2026-10-02.
    • "in LiveRamp, this would be matching into their identity graph against a ramp ID... if your data doesn't match into their graph, that data is dropped." AdTechGod Pod

$WMT, Walmart

  • Angle: Bull (open to AI agents).
    • Episode: Amazon vs. Meta: Who Controls the AI Shopper? Speaker: Ricardo Belmar (Retail Razor). Date: 2026-10-02.
    • "Walmart's going to embrace because Walmart wants to be everywhere Amazon is not." RETHINK RETAIL
  • Angle: Bull (Vizio for CTV reach).
    • Episode: Retail Media's $100B Question. Speaker: Jeremy Goldman (Rethink Retail). Date: 2026-09-28.
    • "you see even like the Walmart Vizio acquisition, realizing how incredibly that was going to be to reaching people in the future." RETHINK RETAIL
  • Angle: Bull but thinly disclosed (ad business up 38%).

$ROKU, Roku

  • Angle: Bull (CTV drives sales, not just awareness).
    • Episode: Retail Media's $100B Question. Speaker: Lavina Suthenthiran (Surkana; formerly Roku). Date: 2026-09-28.
    • "it absolutely drives full funnel results all the way from branding and awareness down to sales." RETHINK RETAIL

$PINS, Pinterest

  • Angle: Bear (advertiser struggles), with a measurement caveat.
    • Episode: How to Test Connected TV for a DTC Brand: $20K a Month for 60 Days. Speaker: Hannah Fleming (Performance Marketing, Carve Designs). Date: 2026-10-01.
    • "we've tried it a few times and we just haven't quite cracked the code there." The DTC Podcast

$SHOP, Shopify

  • Angle: Bull (agentic commerce partner to Meta).
    • Episode: Marketecture Episode 193. Speaker: Adam Epstein (CEO, GG). Date: 2026-10-02.
    • "Meta and its advertising business and Shopify really go hand in hand... I think it strengthens the position of Shopify and meta for these agentic commerce categories." Marketecture: Get Smart. Fast.

$BBY, Best Buy

  • Angle: Bull (new inventory).
    • Episode: Amazon vs. Meta. Speaker: Jeremy Goldman (Rethink Retail). Date: 2026-10-02.
    • "Best Buy ads will now sell Fire TV advertising inventory on new and existing Insignia TVs." RETHINK RETAIL
  • Angle: Neutral (MTA launch).
    • Episode: RMNs Are Launching MTA. Do Brands Want It? [Part 1]. Speaker: Patrick Albano (CRO, Best Buy Ads). Date: 2026-10-01.
    • "it was one of the most requested measurement tool from their ad partners." Retail Media Breakfast Club

$MCD, McDonald's

  • Angle: Bull (new retail media network).
    • Episode: Amazon vs. Meta. Speaker: Jeremy Goldman (Rethink Retail). Date: 2026-10-02.
    • "they've got ambitions of building a billion-dollar advertising business. I think they could probably be bigger than that over time." RETHINK RETAIL

$TGT, Target

  • Angle: Bull (AI referral traffic).
    • Episode: Amazon vs. Meta. Speaker: Jeremy Goldman. Date: 2026-10-02.
    • "Targets as traffic coming from external AI platforms has increased 3.5x year over year." RETHINK RETAIL

$KR, Kroger

  • Angle: Neutral (data scale).
    • Episode: Amazon vs. Meta. Speaker: Brian Spencer (Kroger Precision Marketing). Date: 2026-10-02.
    • "11 million people shop at Kroger every day... 95% of Kroger sales are connected to our loyalty program." RETHINK RETAIL

$ACI, Albertsons

  • Angle: Neutral (MTA launch, measurement proof).
    • Episode: RMNs Are Launching MTA. Do Brands Want It? Speaker: Liz Roche (VP Measurement & Media, Albertsons Media Collective). Date: 2026-10-01.
    • "advertisers expect measurement that reflects how customers actually engage across channels because conversions are not stimulated from one single ad impression." Retail Media Breakfast Club

$PUBM, PubMatic

  • Angle: Neutral (agentic buying product lineage).
    • Episode: Ep 151: Tanja Mimica of Kovva on What the Future Holds for Media Buyers. Speaker: Tanja Mimica (Co-founder & COO, Kovva; ex-VP at PubMatic). Date: 2026-09-29.
    • "we were acquired by Pubmatic and Martin became the basis of Activate, which is now a Gentic OS." AdTechGod Pod

$MSFT, Microsoft / LinkedIn

  • Angle: Neutral (early in agentic ads).
    • Episode: Apple Takes A Bite Out Of Programmatic. Speaker: James Hercher (AdExchanger). Date: 2026-10-01.
    • "Microsoft's also pushing really hard into agentech... I think it's just sort of very early for them." The Big Story

$MDB, MongoDB

  • Angle: Neutral (Meta hires its CEO).
    • Episode: Marketecture Episode 193. Speaker: Eric Franchi. Date: 2026-10-02.
    • "It's not a small public company. No, it's MongoDB. Zuck is just, nothing should surprise us anymore." Marketecture: Get Smart. Fast.

$HUBS, HubSpot

$NYT, New York Times

  • Angle: Bull (trusted publishers hold up against AI).
    • Episode: The Future of Digital Is Defined by the Human-AI Relationship. Speaker: Yory Wurmser (EMARKETER). Date: 2026-09-28.
    • "places like the New York times and Dow Jones, um, the guardian. These are places that people, you know, trust as sources... they have a loyal, uh, customer base." Behind the Numbers: an EMARKETER Podcast

Dentsu (4324 JP), agency holding company

  • Angle: Bearish on retail media growth rates.
    • Episode: The New CMO Playbook. Speaker: Aisha Khan (Head of Dentsu Commerce NA). Date: 2026-10-02.
    • "I don't think the growth rates will be 30, 40% anymore." The CPG View

Private: OpenAI

  • Angle: Bull.
    • Episode: OpenAI's advertising ambitions (with Asad Awan). Speaker: Asad Awan (Head of Monetization Product & Engineering, OpenAI). Date: 2026-09-29.
    • "hitting a billion ARR in less than 200 days since we started, and now expanded globally to more than 40 countries." Mobile Dev Memo Podcast
  • Angle: Bear (capacity).
    • Episode: Can OpenAI build a $1 billion ad empire? Speaker: Tim Peterson (Digiday). Date: 2026-09-29.
    • "they have clients actively spending $10 million a month on Google ads, but aren't able to spend more than $100,000 a month on ChatGPT ads." The Digiday Podcast
  • Angle: Neutral (trust risk).
    • Episode: Apple Takes A Bite Out Of Programmatic. Speaker: AdExchanger editor. Date: 2026-10-01.
    • "trust is going to be the number one thing. But I think there's definitely going to be breaches of trust as part of this process." The Big Story