August 19, 2026

OpenAI published a new European Union privacy policy on August 14, detailing how it will process user data once ChatGPT ads launch across the region later this month. Free and Go tier users will be asked to consent before OpenAI serves personalized ads, built on GDPR's consent legal basis. Users who decline still see ads, targeted using the live conversation and a rough location. ChatGPT ads already run in nine markets, including the U.K., Japan, South Korea, Mexico and Brazil, since the U.S. pilot launched in February. Clara Westbrook of Arbor Law said the policy applies only to free and Go tiers, which could push some users toward paid plans to avoid ads entirely. Roughly 35 million of ChatGPT's 900 million users currently pay for Plus or Pro subscriptions.

A review of 1,771 citations from AI answer engines across industry-related search queries found that ChatGPT, Yandex's Alice AI, Perplexity, Gemini and GigaChat draw most often on specialist media and expert content sites, with company websites making up a smaller share, according to an analysis published on sostav.ru. Separate research from geoSurge found that AI systems initiate fact-checking searches 3.2 times more often for brands they already recognize than for unfamiliar ones. The analysis argues that AI answers split what used to be one metric, search ranking, into two: whether a brand appears in an AI-generated answer and whether that answer drives a click. Alice AI builds its answers on Yandex's organic results, while Western systems such as ChatGPT and Gemini crawl the web independently, producing different sets of cited sources for the same query.

Similarweb says 26% of ChatGPT responses on the Free and Go tiers already contain ads, and the company has launched AI Ads, a new tool for tracking those placements across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode. Google AI Mode carries ads in almost 30% of queries where placements are available, and more than 40% of Google searches now trigger an AI Overview capable of showing ads. The tool includes AI Ads Gallery, a database of ad placements broken out by country and market, built from real user conversations with AI services. Similarweb plans to add share-of-voice metrics and ad category data. Harel Amir, general director and head of Ad Intelligence at Similarweb, called AI advertising 'a rare moment when a major ad channel is still practically open.' Google and TikTok already run transparency tools for their own ad platforms; open data for ads inside AI responses is new.

Cybersecurity firm Akamai rethought how it shows up in search results as AI search began shaping B2B buying decisions before its own marketing had a chance to reach the buyer, Marketing Week reports. The outlet describes the shift as treating large language models like 'VIP customers.' Akamai's framing, as quoted in the piece: 'Being recommended by an LLM is more than just being the biggest brand in a category, it's proving you are the right brand for the right customer.' The approach positions AI search as a channel for earning a recommendation, Marketing Week suggests, ahead of the point where a brand's own marketing typically enters the conversation.

Esme Robinson of Epsilon, the ad tech company at the center of Publicis Groupe, writes that FMCG brands should build brand presence inside retail media as AI reshapes shopping search. Consumers increasingly ask AI tools such as Google AI and ChatGPT comparison questions, for example 'what snacks can I serve to people with nut allergies?', and generative search tools draw heavily on retailers' structured product feeds. Robinson says retail media runs on retailers' first-party data, the record of what customers browse, buy and return, and that data increasingly shapes how AI agents read a query and choose what to recommend. She points to the Black Friday through January sales peak as the period when onsite visibility becomes hardest to win and priciest to buy, making retailer-hosted content pages one of the few levers brands can fully control.

Continuum, a technology platform built for independent media agencies, published an AdExchanger analysis arguing that linear TV's biggest constraint is operational cost. Large holding companies absorb that cost with dedicated national and local buying teams, specialized cable and broadcast staff, and proprietary pricing data built over years. Independent and in-house agencies run one media buying team across every channel, so building the same infrastructure for linear alone is prohibitive. Continuum offers an operating layer connecting inventory, pricing intelligence, workflow automation and reporting, described as a white-labeled extension of an agency's TV team. The company says the platform lets smaller agencies activate faster, optimize campaigns in flight and consolidate reporting, capabilities they already expect from digital channels. Continuum writes that streamlined workflows improve agency margins and free capacity, letting independent shops compete for larger accounts and judge linear TV purely on the media value it delivers to a campaign.

OpenAI rolled out an update to ChatGPT Ads in July 2026 that adds conversion-optimized cost-per-click bidding, known as oCPC, letting advertisers set a goal while the platform targets people likely to convert and still bills per click. Daily budgets now average out over a rolling seven-day period, giving campaigns room to vary spend with demand, a format familiar to Meta and Google Ads users. Product ads gained pricing and star ratings, and the Ads API now supports asynchronous bulk creation across campaigns, ad groups, and ads. New integrations with AppsFlyer and Adjust let app-based businesses track installs and in-app activity, and Automatic Advanced Matching uses hashed customer data to connect conversions across devices. The platform currently measures click-through attribution only; view-through tracking is not yet supported, according to Floodlight and SearchEngineLand.

Asda, one of the UK's biggest grocers, has partnered with Amazon to run its retail media platform, the first time Amazon has brought this technology to Europe at this scale. Asda has pursued retail media ambitions for several years, and Amazon's arrival breaks a pattern of European retailers rotating among the same handful of specialist providers. The deal could solve a measurement problem that has frustrated brands: if Asda's platform uses the same attribution logic as Amazon Ads, marketers running campaigns on both would gain a consistent way to compare performance across two of their largest retail media investments. IAB Europe has named inconsistent measurement standards as the industry's biggest barrier to growth, since each network sets its own attribution window and ROAS definition. In an opinion piece for The Drum, Ada Wachowska argues the move could pressure other retail media networks to close that gap.

More than 40 brand media heads, including Mondelez, PepsiCo, Hershey, Colgate Palmolive, Clorox and Intel, helped the Association of National Advertisers draft a "Retail Media Measurement Standardization" report the group plans to issue. The recommendations ask retail media networks for valid third-party measurement, transparency into methodology and definitions, a standardized 14-day loopback window, and a shared definition of "outcomes." Walmart Connect, Sam's Club Connect, CVS Media Edge, Instacart, Albertson's Media Collective, BJ's Media Edge and Roundel reviewed the framework and gave feedback ahead of its planned release. Amazon did not respond to the ANA's outreach and is absent from the process. ANA evp Jackson Bazley said comparing performance across retail media networks today is "like evaluating purple to bananas to 9.7 stars." Albertsons Media Collective's Liz Roche called the framework "a meaningful step" and said standardization should start with a common foundation and a commitment to transparency.

SVOD viewing overtook linear television in New Zealand back in 2023, opening a seven percentage point gap, according to the country's broadcast commission. New data now shows that gap has closed: linear viewing has climbed back above subscription streaming this year. The commission attributes the shift to a slight rebound in linear viewing combined with a significant drop in SVOD consumption. The reversal runs against the pattern seen across most markets, where SVOD viewership keeps rising as linear consumption falls, a trend some have read as a sign of linear's terminal decline. New Zealand's figures show that assumption failing to hold in at least one market. VideoWeek published the data this week as part of its Week in Charts series.