Tuesday, October 20th, 2026 – 12:03 am
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Headline: So Begins ChatGPT’s Endless Ad Iterations; YouTube Affiliates With AliExpress
One way to frame the evolution of ChatGPT ad units is on a sliding scale from transparency to obscurity.
Initially, ChatGPT ads were in clearly delineated pillboxes with darkened backgrounds. But then ads lost the heavy shading, as well as the blatant “Insert Brand” and “Sponsored” copy.
Now, the ads don’t even have the structured box (h/t to <a href="https://bitcomme.com/phillippi-estate-market-returns-for-17th-season/” title=”Phillippi Estate Market returns for 17th season”>Marketplace Pulse founder Joe Kaziukėnas forflagging the latest version). The ad appears as text, more in line with normal ChatGPT responses.
But if anything’s to be learned from forerunners like Google Search and Microsoft Bing, it’s that constantly changing ad units aren’t moving toward any ideal or stable type. The amorphousness is the point.
Google and Bing never stop swapping out new colors or ways to disclose that the placement is an ad or the boldness or fuzziness of the fonts. Really, there’s no limit on ways to recombine the ad unit to look new and fresh.
Most likely, the rate of turnover in ad iterations represents how long it takes a common denominator of users to unconsciously phase the ad units out. It’s a roller coaster more seasoned ad platforms are well acquainted with.
Anyway, welcome to the ride, OpenAI!
Chinese online retail giant AliExpress (owned by Alibaba) is expanding an affiliate marketing partnership with YouTube beyond South Korea. The deal between the two companies will now cover the United States, United Kingdom, Germany and Brazil.
The integration means YouTube creators can apply insights to AliExpress’ product catalogue to find items their audience might be interested in buying,per the release. And any products the creators feature in YouTube videos will be linked to an AliExpress checkout.
The release does not mention whether AliExpress merchants or sellers have the ability to strike deals with YouTube creators directly through the program. So they probably don’t have that ability. Affiliate programs are impersonal as a matter of course.
The partnership makes sense for YouTube, which wants to cultivate live shopping and purchaseshere it doesn’t have the same cultural cache as it does in China
Relatedly, last week, Alibabaended Amazon’s four-year streakatop Ad Age’s annual advertiser tracking report. And it wasn’t even close. The top three went Alibaba ($30.2 billion), Amazon ($23.5 billion) and then Temu parent company PDD Holdings ($16.3 billion).
That’s another reason for YouTube to ride the wave of Alibaba marketing budgets.
In a delightfully ironic twist, developers want you to use artificial intelligence to make your hardware and softwarelessintelligent.
Two solutions, dumbtv and cleanyourtv, promise vibe-coded solutions for getting rid of undesirable CTV elements like sponsored ads, tracking features and TV operating system bloatware,TechCrunchreports.
Many DIY types are already using Claude to recode their Smart TVs to remove advertising (withmixedresults). Think of it as removing all the connectivity elements that make a smart TV, well, “smart.”
The dumb TV products also take aim atautomatic content recognition(ACR), a key data collection method underpinning CTV advertising.
Smart TV ACR systems are always-on mechanisms that identify what content is playing on the TV and if/when people are in the room. That data is packaged to advertisers and is also used by smart TV providers to determine which ads to serve to viewers and when.
Removing those data connections could “have the potential to disrupt the smart TV ad industry,” TechCrunch writes.
So it’s official: Ad blocking is coming for the big screen in the living room.
But Wait! There’s More!
TikTok “permanently” suspended the ad account for a new Elon Musk documentary as the film was set to expand to nearly 500 theaters this week, but then reinstated it after being accused by the director of censorship. [The Hollywood Reporter]
Meta says it temporarily suspended the Instagram account for the anti-Trump “No Kings” protest movement during a planned protest on Sunday after an internal tool erroneously flagged the account’s use of a Claude account reading tool as bot activity. [Business Insider]
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