In partnership with
Your weekly guide on everything AI marketing. Covering everything from AI marketing news, tips, deep dives, events, podcasts, jobs and much more. Never miss a beat with our 5-minute newsletter.
In today’s email:
OpenAI ditches the $50k minimum and turns on a self-serve ChatGPT Ads Manager
Absolute Agency ships a fully AI-generated brand campaign for UK housebuilder Dandara
Coty embeds Pencil's gen AI content engine across CoverGirl, Rimmel and Max Factor
Plus: Reid Hoffman on agents and identity, an ElevenLabs Music training workflow, and why OpenAI and Anthropic just made marketing consultants very nervous.
The Top 3 Stories
1. OpenAI opens ChatGPT Ads Manager to every US business
OpenAI launched a self-serve Ads Manager on 5 May, scrapping the $50,000 minimum spend that gated its pilot. Advertisers can now run CPC-bid campaigns inside ChatGPT directly, or via Adobe, Criteo, Kargo, Pacvue and StackAdapt. OpenAI is targeting $2.5bn in ad revenue this year and $100bn by 2030, so the rate of new ad features is only going to accelerate from here.
Why it matters: OpenAI now owns the demand side, the inventory and the agency partnerships in one stack. That is the same playbook Google ran in 2002, and it played out very well for whoever moved early. 📰 Axios
2. Absolute ships its first fully AI-generated brand campaign for Dandara
UK creative agency Absolute launched "You'll feel right at home" for housebuilder Dandara on 7 May, using generative AI end-to-end across films, stills and audience-tailored cuts. The agency built detailed buyer personas and ran one creative engine to produce multiple personalised variants across digital, social and performance channels. The result is a campaign that adapts to every audience segment without the cost or timeline of a traditional multi-shoot production.
Why it matters: Property is one of the slowest creative categories to adopt AI, so a UK housebuilder going AI-native is a strong signal that conservative B2C verticals are finally moving. 📰 BIMA
3. Coty embeds Pencil's gen AI content engine across its beauty portfolio
Coty announced it will embed Pencil's end-to-end generative AI platform across its Consumer Beauty division, covering CoverGirl, Rimmel, Sally Hansen and Max Factor. A dedicated Pencil team plugs into Coty's campaign workflows globally from 1 July. Pencil has already processed more than $4bn in media spend and built over 10 million ads, so Coty is buying into a content engine with proven performance prediction baked in.
Why it matters: Coty's Consumer Beauty division has been under pressure on margins for two years, and Pencil is being brought in to fix unit economics, not just speed up creative. Other CPGs with similar pain will follow within the quarter. 📰 CityAM
More trending AI marketing news from last week
Etsy went live as a native app inside ChatGPT for conversational gifting.
Adobe's marketing agents went live inside Microsoft 365 Copilot, ChatGPT Enterprise and Claude Enterprise.
Anthropic deepened its Wall Street push with new agents and Moody's data hooks.
OpenAI extended the ChatGPT Ads Manager with CPC bidding and a HubSpot CRM integration.
Want content that drives engagement, boosts conversions, and goes viral? Here's how.
minisocial combines micro-influencer activations with high-performing UGC creation. Join top brands like Plant People, immi, Imperfect Foods, and Topicals to see results like:
TikTok ads performing in the top 1% CVR
A 50% drop in cost per add-to-cart
A 92% surge in organic video views
Over a 30% increase in ROAS
With minisocial, it's simple: create your brief in 10 minutes, approve your curated creators, download scroll-stopping content with Whitelisting/Partnership Ad code access baked-in!
Quote of the week
Agents transacting with other agents will force the internet to solve identity in ways NFTs originally tried to."
Trending AI tools for marketers
Here are 4 trending tools to explore this week. Quick, practical upgrades to your AI marketing arsenal:
ElevenLabs Music: AI-generated tracks with full commercial licensing for ads and content.
RankSpot: Hands-off AI SEO agent that researches, drafts and publishes daily.
Postiz: Open-source AI social media scheduler with copilots and auto-complete across channels.
Senja: Collect and showcase customer testimonials with AI sentiment tagging and conversion-lifting embeds.
TV, podcasts & streaming
Hard Fork (The New York Times): OpenAI's big reset, AI in the doctor's office, and a pre-1930s LLM
Kevin Roose and Casey Newton dig into OpenAI's enterprise restructure and what it signals for advertisers building their ChatGPT strategy on the assumption of stability. They follow with a sharp segment on AI in regulated industries, where medical, legal and financial teams are openly wrestling with the accuracy and liability questions every marketer will face once AI output sits in front of a customer - watch it to it here.
AI training
How to create commercial-safe brand music using ElevenLabs Music
The overview:
Use ElevenLabs Music to generate fully licensed background tracks and jingles for your ads, reels and product videos in under 30 minutes.
Step-by-step:
Open the Music generator
Head to elevenlabs.io/music and sign in or start a free account. The free tier is enough to test the workflow before committing to a paid plan.Describe the track Write a 1 or 2 line brief covering genre, mood, tempo and where it will run. Be specific on instruments and reference artists, the more grounded the brief, the more usable the first generation.
Generate variations Hit create, then iterate with prompts like "warmer intro" or "punchier drop". Always generate at least three takes per brief so you have alternatives for different cuts and edits.
Pick a commercial licence Choose the Social Media, Paid Marketing or Offline tier that matches your use. Read the licence terms before download, the tier you pick locks in where the track can legally run.
Export and drop into your edit Download the WAV or MP3 and import into your Reels, ads or YouTube edit. Tag the track in your DAM with the prompt and licence so the team can reuse it later without re-generating.
Pro tip: Save your best prompts as a "sonic brand brief" so every future video starts from the same musical identity.
The weekly deep dive
OpenAI and Anthropic just declared war on McKinsey & Co. Marketing consultants should be paying attention.
OpenAI and Anthropic each launched private-equity-backed AI services ventures inside the same 24 hours, a coordinated strike at the $375bn global consulting market.
The mechanics
OpenAI's Deployment Company is seeded with $4bn from TPG and 18 other investors at a $10bn valuation, with backers guaranteed a 17.5% annual return. Anthropic's $1.5bn vehicle pulls in Blackstone, Goldman Sachs, Hellman & Friedman, Apollo and Sequoia.
Why marketing should care
Both ventures copy Palantir's forward-deployed engineer model, embedding AI labs' own people inside enterprise clients. Marketing consultancies and brand transformation arms inside the Big Four sit squarely in scope, especially the AI strategy work that has been their fastest-growing line for two years.
What changes for agencies
Mid-market PE-owned brands now have a direct path to OpenAI or Anthropic engineering teams without going through a consultancy. Expect creative networks and martech consultancies to repackage their AI offerings around proprietary data, vertical IP and creative judgement, the parts a forward-deployed engineer cannot copy from a deck.
Our takeaway: If your agency or consulting pitch leans on "we will help you adopt AI", the deck just got weaker. Lead with the proprietary data, creative IP and category expertise that an OpenAI engineer cannot show up with on day one.
📖 Read the full article at Fortune
