Welcome to Week In Review
From new tools transforming creative work, to campaigns reshaped by automation, we track the biggest shifts at the intersection of AI, media, and marketing. This week, LiveRamp releases AI agents, Bank of England warns of ‘AI Bubble’, and ITV launches AI ads manager with streamr.ai.
Top Stories of the Week
LiveRamp Releases AI Agents, Expands Integrations
Ad tech company LiveRamp released a series of AI tools for marketers. The features offer a range of capabilities, from audience segmentation to campaign planning. The platform also includes integrations with more than 25 partners, including a new connection with Netflix.
Bank of England Warns of ‘AI Bubble’
The Bank of England’s financial policy committee warned of an increased “risk of sharp market correction” within the AI industry. The committee flagged that equity valuations are overstretched and that the economy is likely not prepared for the instance where the AI bubble bursts.
ITV Introduces AI-Powered Ads Manager Via Magnite’s streamr.ai
ITV unveiled a GenAI ads manager platform, built upon technology from advertising company Magnite’s streamr.ai platform. The ads manager platform allows small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to create AI-generated ads to run across ITV’s broadcasting and streaming services.
Quote of the Week
Brands & Agencies
Gap Inc. Partners With Google for Retail Strategy
Gap Inc. announced a partnership with Google Cloud to reinvent its retail strategy across its brands, including Gap, Old Navy, Banana Republic, and Athleta. The company will use Google AI for product innovation, customer service, and marketing optimisation.
44 Percent of Consumers Trust AI Recommendations, Omnicom Report Reveals
Almost half (44 percent) of consumers trust AI recommended products, services, or brands, a new report from Omnicom Media Group (OMG) revealed. The report, ‘Generative Engine Optimization: The New Paradigm for Discovery in the AI Era’, also found that more than half of consumers (65 percent) rely on Google’s AI Overviews for answers.
Huge Acquires Both&Yes To Elevate AI Creative Capabilities
Digital agency Huge acquired creative studio Both&Yes, whose founders previously worked on AI services for Google and YouTube. Huge said the acquisition will allow it to expand AI opportunities for brands.
Media
Weekly Use of AI for Information Doubled in 2025, Says Reuters Institute
A study from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism shared that the weekly use of AI for obtaining information has doubled this year, from 11 percent in 2024 to 24 percent in 2025. While getting news from an AI system is becoming more popular, 62 percent of respondents said they were more comfortable with entirely human-made content.
News Corp Chairman Warns of AI’s Impact
Michael Miller, executive chairman of News Corp Australia, addressed the immense threat AI poses to the journalism industry. “The tech revolution’s gold rush, its first ‘big steal,’ was built on the free use of other people’s quality and trusted work, and that should never have been allowed to happen,” he said in an address to the Melbourne Press Club.
The New York Times Ups its AI Initiatives
The New York Times announced new additions to its AI team. This includes Mukul Devichand, who will serve as editor of AI initiatives, and Dylan Freedman, who was promoted to AI projects editor.
Perplexity Puts Publishers at the Heart of Comet Plus Browser Launch
Perplexity announced its partnership with multiple publishers amid the launch of Comet Plus, its new journalism-centred business model. Comet Plus aims to give publishers proper compensation for their content as it is displayed on Perplexity’s AI platform.
The Financial Times Used AI To Quadruple Its Conversion Rates
The Financial Times said it quadrupled its conversion rates by implementing an AI-powered paywall. The FT has previously used AI-powered paywalls, but this is the first successful implementation of the technology, Joanna Levesque, managing director, FT Strategies, shared in a statement.
86% of AI Citations For Certain Queries Come From Brand-Managed Sources, Says Yext
Research from brand visibility platform Yext showed that, when prompted with industry-specific queries (such as food, healthcare, and retail), 86 percent of AI models’ citations came directly from brands’ sites. Yext collected information by testing queries on AI models Gemini, OpenAI, and Perplexity.
Poynter Launches AI Innovation Lab
The journalism nonprofit Poynter Institute introduced an AI Innovation Lab to help navigate shifts in the media industry. The AI lab will provide AI tools, training, and ethical guidance.
Tech
Klarna and Google Establish AI Partnership
Digital bank Klarna announced a partnership with Google Cloud to personalise shopping experiences and provide more content to customers. Klarna will use Google’s creative generation models such as Veo 2 and Gemini 2.5 to create product visualisations and enhance existing product listings.
Fortune 500 Brands Double ROAS Through Adora Platform
AI marketing engine Adora shared that multiple Fortune 500 brands, including Alaska Airlines and Brooks Running, have been able to double their return on ad spend (ROAS) using its ‘Speed-of-Culture’ AI platform. The platform creates marketing assets based on products and brand guidelines which can then be deployed and analysed.
Guideline Introduces AI Agent For Media Intelligence
Media planning company Guideline launched an AI agent designed to surface insights and trends from media data. The Guideline AI Agent generates data visualisations and enables data sharing, analytics customisation, and dashboard creation.
Oracle Rolls Out New Marketing AI Agents
Oracle introduced new role-based AI agents, including three new marketing-focused agents. These include an Account Product Fit Agent (which identifies customers likely to make a purchase), a Buying Group Definition Agent (which helps marketers curate strategies to different audience personas), and a Model Qualification Agent (which assists marketers with content targeting).
Gemini Traffic Spikes Following AI Image Tool Release
User traffic for Google Gemini saw a major increase in September after the company released new AI image generation tools, according to analysts from Bank of America. Gemini’s global average daily web traffic increased 54 percent month over month.
India Pilots AI-Driven Payments on ChatGPT
The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and fintech firm Razorpay partnered with OpenAI to test an AI-driven payments service on ChatGPT. The service will allow users to make purchases directly through the AI platform.
Google Debuts Virtual Try-On For Shoes
Google Shopping expanded its AI-powered try-on feature to allow users to virtually try on shoes. The feature is also expanding to new countries: Australia, Canada, and Japan.
OpenAI Brings Apps to ChatGPT
OpenAI is adding a range of apps to ChatGPT, enabling external services to embed directly into the ChatGPT interface. ChatGPT can direct users to apps through search queries, such as “Spotify, make a playlist for my party this Friday.”
Start-Up of the Week
David AI
The audio research lab raised $50 million in a funding round, reaching a valuation of $500 million. The startup, founded by former Scale AI employees Tomer Cohen and Ben Wiley, builds audio datasets which can be used to train voice-based AI models.
Number of the Week
That’s the number of downloads Sora, OpenAI’s video generation app, reached just five days after its release. The app, which allows users to create hyperrealistic videos, surpassed ChatGPT in downloads for its first week.
