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, OpenAI introduces Sponsored Agents into ChatGPT, California passes a momentous AI-performer law, and Google rolls out pay-per-licensing to publishers.
Top Stories of the Week Tech
OpenAI Introduces Sponsored Agents
OpenAI has introduced to select clients a new type of AI-native ad format for ChatGPT that lets brands turn an ad click into a conversation with their AI agent, rather than sending users to a website.
Why it matters: The format – Sponsored Agents, viewed and reported by Digiday – lets advertisers attach a branded agent to an ad so that when a user clicks ‘Chat with us’, they are taken to a branded chat in ChatGPT where they can speak with the brand’s agent directly.
California Signs Landmark AI Performer Law
California Governor Gavin Newson signed a new law introducing some of the most comprehensive protections yet for performers and consumers in AI-generated advertising. The law requires advertisers to negotiate and obtain legal rights before using digital replicas or synthetic performers.
Why it matters: This new law is groundbreaking for actors, and other performers, giving them direct commercial stake in whether and how their likeness is used by AI, including how brands use them.
Google Rolls Out Pay-Per-Value AI Licensing to Publishers
Digiday revealed that Google has been scaling a pay-per-value AI licensing scheme for publishers – testing a Search Console-based programme that pays publishers when their content ‘significantly’ contributes to AI responses within its LLM Gemini.
Why it matters: This move from Google provides an alternative model to the lump-sum licensing deals other AI giants have signed with publishers. It also marks the first time Google has offered publishers money instead of traffic only.
Quote of the Week
Brands
DMA: Human Word-of-Mouth Outperforms AI Recommendations
The Data and Marketing Association (DMA)’s 2026 Customer Engagement Report, found that word-of-mouth referrals remain the most trusted method to build brand loyalty, outperforming AI recommendations across all age groups. The report also found that AI-powered search disproportionately benefits challenger brands.
Estée Lauder Partners with Profound for AI Visibility
The Estée Lauder Companies has partnered with AI visibility platform Profound to improve how its brands appear in AI-generated answers and recommendations across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity.
Agencies
VML Report: The AI Race Is Outpacing Consumer Reality
VML’s Future Shopper report found that 82 percent of consumers have tried AI, but most usage remains low stakes. For example, agentic commerce is typically only used for household items, and 58 percent cross-check AI recommendations before purchasing.
Vision Bank and Publicis Sapient Announce AI Partnership
Saudi bank Vision Bank has announced a strategic partnership with Publicis Sapient to accelerate its AI transformation across banking operations, including advancing the bank’s customer experience.
Havas CX and Acquia Expand Global Partnership
Havas CX, Havas’ global customer experience network, has expanded its global partnership with digital experience platform Acquia. The partnership will give Havas agencies access to Acquia’s full ecosystem, including content management and discoverability, AI-powered personalisation, and autoscaling cloud infrastructure, and a Customer Data Platform.
Tech
OpenAI Launches Sponsored HubSpot and Shopify Agents
Alongside the click-to-chat format, OpenAI launched ChatGPT Ads into HubSpot and Shopify as its first CRM and ecommerce tech partners, letting advertisers run campaigns and manage product catalogues from within those platforms.
Mastercard and Trip.com Pioneer Agentic Commerce in Travel
Mastercard and Trip.com have announced a partnership to pioneer agentic commerce in the travel sector, letting AI agents search, book, and pay for travel on a consumer’s behalf using Mastercard’s Agent Pay infrastructure – one of the first live deployments of agentic payment capability in travel.
DoubleVerify Launches Conversational Campaign Intelligence Tool
DoubleVerify has launched a conversational AI tool that lets media buyers and brand safety teams interrogate campaign performance and brand suitability data through natural language queries.
Amazon Ads Integrates with ChatGPT
Amazon Ads also announced a partnership with OpenAI that allows advertisers to extend their existing Amazon DSP campaigns into ChatGPT, letting its advertisers reach users within the conversational tool.
Startup of the Week
Profound, a US-based AI visibility company, announced a $180 million Series D this week, led by Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins, putting them at a $1.8 billion valuation.
Number of the Week
The study also found that 56 percent of AI shoppers chose a different brand than they had originally planned because an AI tool recommended it, and 55 percent were introduced to a brand they had not previously considered.
