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In today’s email:
John Lewis makes a chatshow aimed at chatbots rather than viewers
Reddit hands every advertiser the keys to its campaign AI
Google’s AI Mode quotes higher prices than its own shopping carousel
Plus: a Dept exec on who carries the blame for AI work, Cloudflare’s CEO on the end of SEO, and how to turn a sprint of shipped code into a launch post.
The Top 3 Stories
1. John Lewis is making a chatshow for the chatbots
John Lewis is launching a Gift List vodcast on YouTube, hosted by Angela Scanlon with Louis Theroux in episode one, running six episodes up to Christmas. The point is not reach. Outgoing managing director Peter Ruis says shoppers arriving via LLMs have risen from 0.3% a year ago to 2.5%, and the models favour third-party advice.
Why it matters: The models discount brand copy and trust editorial, so John Lewis is manufacturing its own third-party voice. Your product pages cannot do that job. 📰 The Guardian
2. Reddit hands campaign control to its own AI
Reddit has opened Max campaigns to every advertiser, after running them as a limited launch since January. The system picks targeting, creative, placements and budget split on its own, and now adds API support plus a Smartly integration. Beta advertisers averaged 17% lower CPA and more than 27% additional conversions.
Why it matters: Those figures are Reddit’s own, and automation usually cuts CPA by finding cheaper inventory rather than better buyers, so check where the conversions actually came from. 📰 Social Media Today
3. AI Mode quotes higher prices than the shopping carousel
Productrise tracked more than two million product listings across the US and UK through August. Only 1.28% of carousel products also appeared in AI Mode for the same query, and the top-listed seller differed 49.6% of the time. Matched products averaged 21.6% higher prices inside AI Mode.
Why it matters: Half the time a different seller wins the AI Mode listing, so a reseller may be answering for your brand at a price you never set. 📰 Search Engine Journal
More trending AI marketing news from last week
Contentsquare found 23% of AI-referred shoppers switch brands after a poor site.
Wonderful more than doubled its valuation to $5bn in six months.
Vodafone rebuilt Bundesliga’s first goal using AI and eyewitness accounts.
The Weather Company built emotional ad targeting on neuroscience data.
Shopify says AI-referred orders carry 14% higher average order values.
Freelancer listings for cleaning up AI work rose 87% to 10,760.
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That's it.
Quote of the week
Every deliverable has an accountable human. It’s not an excuse to say, ‘Oh, AI did it.’ You are still accountable whether AI did it or if it was done by a junior.
Trending AI tools for marketers
Here are 4 trending tools to explore this week. Quick, practical upgrades to your AI marketing arsenal:
Browzer: Turns your code repository into blog posts, changelogs and docs.
Articos: Tests your messaging against synthetic buyer personas in half an hour.
BrandJet: Turns public buying signals into multi-channel outreach from one inbox.
PostBox: Publishes one caption and asset set across nine social platforms.
TV, podcasts & streaming
Cloudflare’s CEO says the SEO era is finished
Alex Kantrowitz links up with Cloudflare chief executive Matthew Prince, who says the company is ready to block the big AI and search crawlers from millions of ad-supported and subscription sites unless publishers opt out. Prince argues the SEO era is over because AI broke the traffic-for-content trade, and floats micropayments as the replacement. Discovery then becomes something brands buy rather than earn, watch it here.
AI training
How to turn a sprint of shipped code into a launch post using Browzer
The overview:
Browzer reads the repository behind your product and drafts changelogs, release notes and launch posts out of what engineering actually shipped, so product marketing stops waiting on a Slack reply.
Step-by-step:
Connect the repository
Point Browzer at the repo behind the product you write about. Read access is enough, and it picks up commits and merged pull requests without anyone writing you a summary.Set the release window
Choose the sprint or release you want covered. Two weeks reads as a coherent release, a whole quarter reads as an undifferentiated list.Generate the changelog first
Let it turn merged work into plain-language entries. Every other asset inherits these facts, so correct anything overstated before you go further.Expand one entry into a post
Pick the single change customers will care about and ask for a launch post. One story lands harder than a feature roundup, every time.Rewrite the benefit lines
Engineers describe what changed, you describe what it now lets someone do. Swap the mechanism for the outcome in every heading before it ships.
Pro tip: Run it every sprint and keep the changelogs, so the quarterly roundup is already written before anyone thinks to ask for it.
The weekly deep dive
The AI spending your media budget does not work for you
Gartner’s forecast for the next two years is less a technology story than a governance one.
The handover is nearly complete
Gartner expects more than 70% of global ad spend and 80% of US ad spend to run through self-serve platforms by 2028, with AI materially influencing buying, costs and outcomes. Three platforms already take over half of all US paid media. Manual levers are being retired faster than the controls meant to replace them.
Whose objective is it
Platform AI is built to hit the platform’s revenue targets, not the buyer’s. Gartner analyst Eric Schmitt notes that the wizard-style recommendations surfacing in these interfaces tend to open with a suggestion that you spend more. That is not a flaw in the model; it is the brief the model was given.
What holds the line
Independent measurement is the only real check, because a platform grading its own performance will always find itself performing. Schmitt’s fix is unglamorous, keeping a human in the loop and pulling finance into decisions about AI platform settings. What is quietly being delegated here is budget authority, not creative judgement.
Our takeaway: Treat every platform AI recommendation as a sales pitch with a spreadsheet attached, and price it accordingly.
📖 Read the full article at Marketing Dive
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