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, Reddit detects spam posts used to boost brand LLM rankings, AI ads on Google platforms must be labelled, and HubSpot reverses a customer data decision.
Top Stories of the Week
Reddit Is Detecting 25,000 Spam Posts a Day as AI Marketing Battle Intensifies
Reddit is intensifying its fight against stealth marketing content designed to influence responses from AI tools such as ChatGPT and Gemini. Stronger automated systems detected 25,000 spammy posts and comments per day during the first quarter, helping reduce user exposure by 20 percent year over year — with the higher detection number reflecting more effective tools rather than a major increase in spam across the platform. Reddit is also using large language models to identify subtle, coordinated fake behaviour and artificial hype that older systems may have missed.
Why it matters:
The rise of Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) has created a new marketing battleground as brands try to gain visibility inside chatbot responses, with Cornell Tech researchers finding that user-generated content can manipulate AI research tools. Reddit’s forums are among the most cited sources in AI answers, making them a particularly high-value target for brands attempting to engineer organic-looking recommendations.
Google Adds AI Disclosure Labels to Ads Across Search, YouTube and Discover
Google is adding a “How this ad was made” section to the My Ad Center panel across Search, YouTube and Discover, indicating if an ad was created or edited with AI. When advertisers use Google’s GenAI advertising tools to create ads, the disclosure will be automatically added. When they create ads elsewhere, a new control lets them indicate if GenAI was used. For ads built outside Google’s own tools, disclosure is on the honour system — Google will not run its own check to verify the claim.
Why it matters:
Google’s move front-runs tougher rules, as the EU AI Act’s transparency obligations for AI-generated content start to bite in August. Until now, Google required AI disclosure only on election ads; extending it to all commercial advertising is a meaningful widening of the policy.
HubSpot Reversed a Customer Data Decision After a Four-Day Revolt
HubSpot changed its terms on 1 July to pool customer data, including contact and employer details, for a tool that finds sales leads, opting users in by default. The backlash came at once. The revolt played out mostly on LinkedIn, where sales leaders and RevOps teams piled in — some said they would switch providers. Within days HubSpot folded. Chief product and technology officer Duncan Lennox apologised and called the change “a mistake,” saying HubSpot would not implement the new terms, and that any future use of customer data would be opt-in.
Why it matters:
The episode is a marker. Every SaaS company is weighing how to feed its AI without spooking the people who pay for it. HubSpot just ran the experiment in public, and learned that “opt-out” is now a fighting word. HubSpot is not the first — Slack and Zoom both drew similar fire in earlier years. But CRM data is a company’s competitive asset, and the speed of the climbdown signals that customers in an AI-saturated software market have more switching power than they used to.
Quote of the Week
Brands & Agencies
Dentsu UK&I Links Meta’s Creator APIs to Its Planning Tool
Dentsu UK&I has integrated Meta’s Creator Marketplace APIs into its Creator & Trends Studio planning platform, combining Meta’s Creator Marketplace and Partnership Ads APIs within the proprietary system to link creator discovery, trend analysis and paid activation in a single workflow.
Accenture Edge and Google Cloud Bring Agentic AI to Mid-Market
Accenture, through its newly launched Accenture Edge business, and Google Cloud announced a suite of agentic solutions to enable mid-market companies – those with revenues between $300 million and $3 billion – to drive technology and AI transformation, using pre-built, industry-specific agents built with Gemini Enterprise, Agentic Data Cloud and AI Threat Defense to help them move from AI pilots to production faster.
Marketers Are Gaining New AI-Enabled Roles – and Losing Old Ones
New research from The Chartered Institute for Marketers (CIM) explored the shifting shape of marketing careers in the AI era, finding that while AI is eliminating some traditional roles, it is simultaneously creating demand for new hybrid positions combining creative, analytical and technical skills. The research also found that a small five percent of marketers expect AI to create new roles.
Media
A Studio Is Making a Feature Film Starring AI Actor Tilly Norwood
UK production studio Particle6 has announced it will make a feature film starring AI-generated actor Tilly Norwood — one of the first confirmed cases of a synthetic performer receiving top billing in a feature production. The announcement is generating significant debate about creative labour and what it means to “star” in a film when the performer has no human presence behind them.
Japan’s Antitrust Regulator Surveys Publishers Over AI Search
Japan’s Fair Trade Commission has launched a survey of news publishers to examine how Google, OpenAI and other companies offering AI-powered search and summary services use publishers’ content — mirroring competition concerns regulators in Europe have raised about AI Overviews and similar products.
Record Labels Push to Label AI-Generated Songs on Streaming Platforms
A coalition of record labels and artist groups are pushing streaming platforms to require clear labelling of AI-generated music, arguing that transparency for consumers is essential as AI-produced tracks become increasingly difficult to distinguish from human-made recordings — and as the volume of AI music being submitted to streaming services continues to accelerate.
Tech
LiveRamp Launches a Netflix Brand Campaign
LiveRamp is launching its first brand campaign on connected TV, airing 15- and 30-second ads on Netflix for the next five months, targeting executives with a promise to help marketers connect data sources seamlessly — a message of trust and flexibility that arrives amid a pending Publicis takeover that has the ad industry questioning whether the platform can remain neutral.
OpenAI’s Ad Business Extends Into France, Germany and Ireland
Less than three weeks after officially launching in the UK, OpenAI is looking to expand its ad pilot across Europe, with job listings for regional ad roles in Paris, Munich and Dublin signalling imminent launches in France, Germany and Ireland — the continent’s three largest digital ad markets, which together accounted for 62 percent of European ad revenue last year.
Private Equity Makes a $3.7 Billion Bid for Criteo
Criteo is the subject of a takeover approach from private equity firms Vista Equity Partners and Quinti Capital, who jointly value the ad tech company at more than $50 per share — a premium of more than 50 percent to its recent share price – boosting its market capitalisation above $1 billion. Criteo’s board has yet to respond to the proposal, while the bidders are said to view the company’s AI capabilities as an opportunity to expand retailers’ and advertisers’ use of its platform.
EBU Calls for AI Accountability in News and Child Safety
The European Broadcasting Union (EBU), an independent confederation of broadcaster, called this week for stronger AI accountability frameworks covering news production and child safety online, arguing that voluntary commitments are insufficient as AI-generated content becomes increasingly embedded in news workflows and recommendation systems that reach younger audiences.
Startup of the Week
Velocity, a developer of AI-native monetisation infrastructure, has raised $27 million in seed funding led by NFX and Red Dot Capital Partners, with additional backing from Stardom Ventures, Corner Ventures and Transcend, to scale its platform that helps AI companies convert user growth into sustainable revenue. Velocity uses conversation intelligence to transform user dialogue into structured intent signals, enabling developers to monetise AI interactions through native advertising based on real-time user intent.
Number of the Week
Economic modelling by Kingston University London in partnership with Publicis Media UK found that employees without the skills for AI-enabled roles could see productivity fall by 24.6 percent, an estimated loss of £10,584 per person per year, with the current gap equivalent to about 150,000 full-time roles across the sector’s 609,000 professionals. The research also found that accelerating AI skills across the sector could add £69.1 billion in additional economic growth by 2030.
