Last week, the Federal Trade Commission announced a new public inquiry to investigate whether online platforms have censored users based on speech or affiliation — and if any actions break any laws.

In its announcement, the FTC said technology companies could use “confusing or unpredictable internal procedures” to cut off users with limited ability to appeal decisions. The agency also invited companies and individuals to submit commentary during the three-month public commentary period while encouraging users who have been “banned, shadow banned, demonetized or otherwise censored.”

“Tech firms should not be bullying their users,” Andrew Ferguson, the FTC’s chair appointed by President Donald Trump, said in a statement. “This inquiry will help the FTC better understand how these firms may have violated the law by silencing and intimidating Americans for speaking their minds.”

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Amazon plans to more transparency tools for its advertising offering, updates that come just weeks after its demand-side platform was among the high-profile firms publicly rebuked by lawmakers for ad tech’s role in monetizing child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and other problematic content.

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Brand Safety

Amazon, Google and verification vendors among ad tech cohort under fire from U.S. senators over child safety shortcomings Read More

Updates to Amazon’s DSP include new page-level reporting through its Traffic Events API. The goal is to further strengthen its brand safety controls using internal systems and third-party integrations, according to parties familiar with the updates.

An Amazon Ads spokesperson confirmed the changes to Digiday, noting the company already provides site-level (domain-level) transparency through its Inventory Report available through its DSP and through Amazon Marketing Cloud.

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Improving media mix modeling is a top priority for U.S. marketers, according to a 2024 eMarketer study, with 61% claiming they’re working on making MMM “better and/or faster.”

Doubtless, many hope to seize the benefits of AI, with some of the ad industry’s largest names like Amazon, Google and Meta backing open-source projects to help further adoption. Just last month, Google launched a new open-source marketing mix model (MMM) called Meridian, which is designed to help marketers measure performance across media.

Some point to the proponents of open source large language models and hope it’s not a case of adland’s digital oligopoly building a better mousetrap to ensnare marketers’ budgets further — only this time employing the user-privacy narrative as a moat.

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The big news of the week was Elon vs. Sam Altman, but in adland, our collective (AI-withered) attention was focused on other things.

The ad tech world tries to weather another brand safety storm

Every Adalytics report sparks debate around whether ad tech vendors and brand safety partners are properly managing advertiser dollars. But the latest? It hit a nerve.

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Under the leadership of Andrew Ferguson, chairman of Federal Trade Commission, the agency could shift its focus from broad regulatory rule-making to targeted enforcement actions. 

However, some observers note that doesn’t mean the FTC’s new leadership will be totally soft on Big Tech. One indication: Ferguson’s recent picks for top agency positions as indication, including some with experience from President Donald Trump’s first administration.

• Daniel Guarnera, named director of the Bureau of Competition, joins the FTC from the Justice Department’s antitrust division, where he filed monopolization lawsuits against Google and Apple. 
• Lucas Croslow was appointed FTC General Counsel. Previously, he was deputy Solicitor General of Virginia.

Key differences in FTC regimes 

Ferguson, a Republican, became an FTC commissioner in 2024 after being appointed by then-President Joe Biden. Unlike former FTC Chair Lina Khan’s tenure, which pursued expansive rulemaking efforts to reshape antitrust and privacy regulations, Ferguson has emphasized that comprehensive privacy laws should be the domain of Congress.

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We’re in the middle of the latest earnings season, where the leadership of companies in the tech and media sector set out their public strategic objectives, but other recent developments denote the tensions borne out of AI’s encroachment on the space.     

Two years ago this month, Google’s quarterly earnings call cited “generative AI” for the first time.

On the company’s Q4 2022 earnings call with investors, CEO Sundar Pichai mentioned the ability to “integrate more direct LLM-type experiences” in search and other uses: “We’ll pursue this work boldly, but with a deep sense of responsibility, with our AI Principles and the highest standards of information integrity at the core of all our work.”

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Related Insights

The Programmatic Marketer

Adalytics report exposes the intricacies of made-for-advertising sites Read More

Adalytics has been a thorn in the side of major ad platforms that have characterized its research as flawed, but now it has found an audience in the highest echelons of government. 

Members of Congress have sent letters to major tech companies, including Google and Amazon, expressing concern about ads served on websites known to host child sexual abuse material (CSAM).

Signed by U.S. Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) the open letters come after new research from watchdog group Adalytics showed examples of ad tech companies serving ads on websites known to carry CSAM.

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The open web has spent years competing for crumbs against companies like Google and Meta. But now, some ad tech players say the Chinese startup DeepSeek creates a new chance to build their own AI offerings beyond the walled gardens.

Chris Vanderhook, COO and co-founder of Viant, still remembers when Google’s AdX crushed the ad network business model right out of the gate. “Once you were in it and were bidding into them, they had such scale, and at any moment, they could tilt the rules in their favor and have all the value,” he said. 

The jury’s still out on whether the Chinese startup’s open-source R1 model is safe for U.S. companies to use — or if it’s as cheap or as accurate as initially positioned. However, Vanderhook and others don’t think they’ll be able to benefit from its innovations if they’re able to soon replicate their own AI models thanks to open-source technology without relying on models like Google’s Gemini, Meta’s Llama, or OpenAI’s GPT models.

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In case you have been hiding under a rock for the past week, DeepSeek’s emergence (seemingly out of nowhere) has underlined the geopolitical aspect of one of the most disruptive forces in economic history.

A key question facing the $225 billion-plus U.S. digital media sector is, how will its key players respond?

Developments last week hint at such players adopting an open-source approach in a rapidly evolving industry landscape. Meanwhile, Digiday’s ad tech sources noted that, while DeepSeek poses a credible alternative to Big Tech, clients are in a cautious mood, particularly around privacy.

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Despite the market disruption wrought by the technical feats of China-based DeepSeek’s new R1 large language model, privacy experts warn companies shouldn’t be too quick to dive in head-first.

However, market opinion is split already. Some privacy experts, marketers and tech execs are advocating for more testing and better guardrails before companies adopt DeepSeek’s latest AI model. Meanwhile, DeepSeek’s progress has shaken the psyche of Silicon Valley — and its investors.

Following last week’s release of the open-weight LLM, the young China-based AI startup has quickly caught attention for its low cost, fast speed, and high performance. DeepSeek’s own chatbot — a ChatGPT rival — has also risen to become the top free app in Apple’s app store. (DeepSeek also released a new AI image model on Monday called Janus-Pro.)

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In recent years, ad agencies have embraced the AI narrative to demonstrate continued relevancy, as such disruptive technologies threaten their historic value proposition: manpower.   

Now, AI startups — helmed by agency alums and former execs from Big Tech — are starting to enter the fray with further competition in the promise of “AI agents,” and some brands are starting to listen.

Last week, a new startup called Palona launched with $10 million in seed funding and plans to build AI agents that help consumer brands with sales efforts, customer support and interactive information.

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Chatter about AI agents is suddenly everywhere — from Silicon Valley to the ski slopes of Davos – but just how will they impact Madison Avenue?

Just yesterday, OpenAI previewed its new “Operator” AI agent tool to help users with web-based tasks like booking travel, making restaurant reservations and buying groceries. Early brand partners across e-commerce and travel include eBay, Etsy, Uber, Instacart, Reuters, AP, Priceline, Target and StubHub.

Despite so much use of the A-word, it’s still early for AI agent adoption, meaning marketers should ask what agents are for, how they’re made, what they do, what they might do — and what they can’t do — including potential reputational risks.  

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Last week saw not one but two high-profile AI legal battles under the spotlight, with updates in separate copyright cases against Meta and OpenAI.

Court documents unsealed in an AI copyright case against Meta raised new questions about the use of e-books from a book piracy site Library Genesis (LibGen). They also raise new questions about how much CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other Meta execs knew about Meta teams’ use of pirated content to help train its Llama models. 

Court documents allege Meta employees sought to remove copyright information — including headers and other identifiers — from various materials. One filing shows an internal Meta document with a suggestion to remove lines containing words like “ISBN,” “copyright,” and “all rights reserved.” Another filing includes messages between employees talking about the desire to compete with other AI rivals, including beat OpenAI’s GPT-4 while also describing French rival Mistral as “peanuts.”

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Shoppable TV ads powered by AI-powered visual search aren’t yet a household habit. However, one startup’s new partnerships with two major TV manufacturers are just one of the many ways AI was showcased in Las Vegas last week during CES 2025.

‘Searchable TV’?

At CES 2025 last week, a startup called TheTake announced new deals with LG and Samsung, bringing its total footprint to more than 30 million devices. Founded a decade ago, TheTake uses visual AI to let users click on items within a show to see what it is, where to buy them, and view similar items. The on-screen display also shows both organic recommendations and ads from brands and retailers.

The goal is to take a “pull more than push” approach to product discovery and the ads around them, said TheTake founder and CEO Tyler Cooper. With LG, the expanded partnership includes a new “click to search” feature to identify the products, places, and people on-screen. With Samsung, the startup debuted a new way to browse and shop for products within content, along with updates for advertisers to reach high-intent audiences.

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After another year of rapid AI development and experimentation, tech and marketing experts think 2025 could help move adoption beyond the testing phase.

The factors in play come from multiple fronts. Tech companies are expanding access to AI content creation, agencies are working on ways to improve workflows for various tools, and enterprise-focused companies are looking for more ways to drive better performance with specific applications. Meanwhile, tech companies are rushing to deploy new ways for companies and consumers to use AI agents.

While there are plenty of topics to follow in the coming year, here are five things industry experts think will happen with AI in 2025 — not to mention all the news from Las Vegas this week during CES. (Read more in our 2024 AI news timeline and how platforms are evolving with AI content and ads.)

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Reddit is rolling out several new tools for marketers that aim to demystify the platform and help advertisers engage more with users.

A new free tool for marketers called Reddit Pro Trends aims to help marketers track trends and communities in real time across the platform by analyzing keywords and phrases within Reddit conversations. Reddit also has a new ad format called AMA Ads, which gives marketers more ways to use paid media to reach the right types of users that might be interested in the platform’s “Ask Me Anything” conversations.

The updates, announced on Tuesday at CES, aims to surface contextually relevant real-time mentions of brand, topics and categories so marketers know where they should focus both paid and organic content. Pro Trends is powered by several machine learning tools such as named entity recognition, which uses natural language processing to help advertisers track more than 100,000 “smart” keywords. (For example, it’ll help a marketer know when a user or subreddit is talking about “apple” the fruit versus Apple the company.)

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When training data is similar across major large language models, finding ways to make them more creative and more differentiated is increasingly important. That reality has more enterprise customers asking for ways to make AI more creative when generating content — and to help with the actual process of thinking creatively.

Last month, the AI startup Writer released a new LLM called Palmyra Creative that aims to help enterprise businesses squeeze more creativity out of generative AI. The goal isn’t just to help with outputs; it’s also to help companies using AI in more creative ways. Palmyra Creative follows other domain-specific LLM released from Writer such as the the healthcare-focused Palmyra Med and the finance-focused Palmyra Fin. (Writer’s customers using various models include Qualcomm, Vanguard, Salesforce, Kenvue, Uber and Dropbox.)

In terms of creative thinking, AI models overall already have evolved quite a bit over the past few years. Some experts have found LLMs to be more creative than humans in areas like divergent thinking. Last year, researchers at the University of Arkansas published a paper exploring how OpenAI’s GPT-4 model is able to generate multiple creative ideas, find varied solutions to problems, and explore various angles. However, current LLMs still are largely limited to their own knowledge via training data — rather than lived experiences or learned lessons like humans are able to tap into.

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Tech giants and startups alike have spent the past year building new generative AI tools for users and advertisers.

From AI images for programmatic ads to a growing number of AI-generated TV commercials, brands are starting to explore new ways of thinking about creative across various platforms. The final weeks of 2024 had big news with expanded access and improved outputs of generative models like OpenAI’s Sora, Amazon’s Nova and Google’s Veo.

Despite the technical feats, AI-generated content has gained both eager devotees and harsh critics. Depending who you ask, the category’s a powerful new form of creativity, underwhelming “AI slop,” or an IP-stealing job-killer. However, the question is, which of these viewpoints will be the one to stick.

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In 2024, generative AI proved itself to be far more than just a buzzword. From the flurry of AI-powered gadgets to the potential regulations, the second year of a massive innovation race advanced alongside scrutiny, with questions about transparency, copyright, and ethical use.

As a follow-up to last year’s AI timeline for 2023, our recap for 2024 highlights some of the most important headlines with a sampling from every month of the year.

January

The year started off with a bevvy of AI-related announcements at CES 2024, where major tech companies and consumer brands touted new tech: AI chips for laptops and phones, smart TVs, voice assistants for cars, AI-enabled beauty products, and retailer activations. A few weeks later, AI took over NRF 2024 with nearly two dozen exhibitors touting AI.

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The influx of AI agents is quickly creating new ways to autonomously browse the internet and shop online. However, the feature also poses potential challenges for publishers, advertisers, and e-commerce companies — including new problems with how to deal with bot traffic.

Last week, Google debuted a range of new features as part of its release of Gemini 2.0, including a preview of a new agent called Project Mariner that offers to help people with everything from researching and booking trips to shopping for a range of other products.

One demo developed in collaboration with Etsy showed Project Mariner helping to research and buy paint supplies based on the kind of art someone would want to create. Google also pointed out it wouldn’t purchase products without first getting human approval and that it can’t autonomously browse in the background. Although Mariner was designed as a Chrome browser feature, that could change depending on the outcome of its search antitrust trial. 

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