By Vismaya V

OpenAI has added shopping, trending search suggestions, and citation improvements to ChatGPT, bumping against Google’s ad-driven business.

On Monday, OpenAI announced a new set of upgrades for chatbot ChatGPT’s search experience, including a new shopping feature that allows users to find, compare, and buy products directly, without any sponsored placements.

“Product results are chosen independently and are not ads,” OpenAI posted on X, alongside the announcement.

The company revealed that ChatGPT handled over 1 billion web searches just in the past week, sharing the growth of a tool that was only officially added in November.

With ChatGPT now offering ad-free shopping alongside real-time search, OpenAI is directly challenging Google’s model of monetizing search through paid ads, a system that has generated hundreds of billions of dollars for Google over the past two decades.

The AI search bot can now detect when a user’s query indicates shopping intent, such as a search for gifts or affordable electronics, and surface product listings, pricing, reviews, and direct links to make a purchase.

The new features are rolling out globally to Plus, Pro, Free, and even logged-out users, and should be fully deployed within a few days, the AI research company said.

Alongside shopping, OpenAI has upgraded ChatGPT’s search to include multiple citations for a single answer, highlight citations linked to specific parts of responses, autocomplete, trending searches, and live answers via WhatsApp through 1-800-ChatGPT.

Websites that permit OpenAI’s crawler to scan their pages can be included in search results, and any clicks from ChatGPT will carry a tag identifying them as traffic coming from ChatGPT, according to the company statement.

Feature Image Credit: Shutterstock

By Vismaya V

Edited by Sebastian Sinclair

Sourced from Emerge

By John Winsor

In a major shift for the creative industry, Microsoft recently launched an ad for its Surface line that was almost entirely created by artificial intelligence. Using tools like Hailuo and Kling, the design team generated every scene except for a few human close-ups, such as hands typing. The ad ran for three months without anyone noticing it was AI-made, proving Shelley Palmer’s insight: “If you cannot tell the difference, there effectively is no difference.”

This milestone highlights a critical transformation in how brands create content. As Palmer smartly frames it, creative work now falls into two categories: “required” content, practical, executional work increasingly handled by AI, and “inspired” content deeply human storytelling still beyond AI’s full reach. Microsoft’s Surface ad achieved a 90% reduction in time and cost while maintaining broadcast-quality standards. For brands and agencies alike, this signals an urgent need to rethink how creativity is produced, valued, and rewarded.

When I led strategy at Crispin Porter + Bogusky, one of the most decorated creative agencies in history, we focused intensely on unpredictable human creativity. Later, at Victors & Spoils, we pioneered open talent models, demonstrating that creativity could survive and thrive in new structures. In my book Open Talent, I argue that embracing open networks and AI-driven collaboration doesn’t diminish creativity; it liberates it, amplifying human potential by automating required content.

The implications are clear: AI can now efficiently handle the “required” creative work, freeing human teams to focus on the “inspired” work that moves hearts and builds brands. However, the economic efficiencies AI brings are already compelling brands to recalibrate their balance between human creativity and machine-driven execution.

Brands now have the opportunity to fundamentally rethink their creative strategies. First, it’s no longer necessary or financially wise to pay for agency overhead. Freelancers, empowered by AI tools and connected through emerging platforms like Hence Creative, can deliver exceptional results with greater agility and at a fraction of the cost. The bloated agency model is giving way to streamlined, open networks that prioritize speed, innovation, and return on creative investment.

Second, companies must recognize the opportunity to automate and streamline their required content. AI can rapidly generate high-quality, functional creative assets, enabling brands to reduce costs and reallocate resources toward more strategic and emotionally resonant initiatives. This shift is not about replacing creativity; it’s about reclaiming the time and space for deeper innovation.

At the same time, AI’s ability to handle routine creative tasks allows human teams to focus on what matters most: inspired storytelling. Freed from production-heavy demands, creative professionals can push boundaries, explore cultural narratives, and forge the emotional connections that truly engage audiences. In this new era, the brands that thrive will be the ones that understand creativity as more than content; they’ll see it as a profound emotional dialogue with consumers.

Finally, brands must adopt an open talent mindset. AI reaches its greatest potential when paired with diverse human insights. By tapping into a global pool of freelance and independent talent, brands can access broader perspectives, richer ideas, and faster innovation. AI isn’t a competitor in this model; it’s a collaborator, amplifying the capabilities of a dynamic, distributed creative workforce.

Ultimately, the adoption of AI-generated content might spell the end of traditional ad agencies that cling to outdated structures. Those unwilling to evolve will find themselves struggling to survive. But those who embrace AI as a tool for enhancing human creativity, blending technology with diverse, open networks of talent, will lead the next wave of storytelling innovation.

The future of creativity won’t be built behind the walls of traditional agencies. It will emerge from open ecosystems, where humans and machines collaborate, liberated from legacy systems, and ready to meet a new era of brand building.

Feature Image Credit: Brands&People

By John Winsor

Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website or some of my other work.

Sourced from Forbes

By Steven Ezekiel

Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming the creative landscape, particularly in the visual arts.

Since 2022, AI-powered image generation tools have exploded in popularity, flooding social media platforms and sparking intense debate within the art community. These tools, often trained on vast datasets of existing images scraped from the internet, allow users to create intricate, photorealistic, or abstract images simply by typing text prompts. This technological leap has fuelled a burgeoning market, with the global AI image market projected to surpass $0.9 billion by 2030, a significant jump from $0.26 billion in 2022. This rapid expansion begs the question: who stands to gain from this boom, who is being left behind, and what does the future hold for the intersection of art and artificial intelligence?

The Beneficiaries: Tech, New Creators, and Expanding Markets

The most obvious beneficiaries of the AI art boom are the tech companies developing and deploying these powerful generative AI models. Platforms offering AI image generation tools, some operating on subscription models or selling credits, stand to gain significantly as adoption increases. These tools democratize art creation, allowing individuals without traditional artistic training to generate visuals, sometimes leading to commercial success through platforms like Etsy or Redbubble. Some artists are even finding novel ways to profit by selling the sophisticated text prompts used to generate specific styles or images.

Beyond individual creators, businesses are adopting AI-generated art to streamline workflows, particularly in marketing and advertising, saving time and potentially costs associated with hiring human designers for specific tasks. Some artists themselves are embracing AI as a collaborator, using it to brainstorm ideas, explore new styles, expedite parts of the creative process, or enhance their existing work. Nearly half of the artists surveyed found text-to-image technology useful in their process. Furthermore, AI is creating new avenues in the art market, such as AI-generated art sold as NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens), attracting younger collectors and enthusiasts more readily than traditional buyers. High-profile sales, like the $432,500 auction of an AI-generated portrait at Christie’s in 2018, have brought mainstream attention, although the market remains somewhat inconsistent. AI is also being explored for its potential in art authentication and market analysis, interpreting vast datasets to identify trends and potentially assess value.

The Casualties and Concerns: Artists, Copyright, and Ethics

Despite the opportunities, the AI art boom casts a long shadow, primarily over working artists. Many fear significant negative impacts on their income, with estimates suggesting over half of artists feel AI will harm their ability to make a living. Illustrators report declining commissions as clients turn to cheaper, faster AI alternatives, while concept artists face layoffs or pressure to incorporate AI into their workflows. This displacement raises existential concerns within the creative community. A major point of contention is copyright. AI models are typically trained on enormous datasets, often including copyrighted images scraped from the internet without permission from the original creators. This practice has led to lawsuits and widespread anger among artists who feel their work is being used unfairly to train systems that could ultimately replace them or devalue their unique styles.

Current U.S. copyright law complicates matters further, as it only protects original works created by humans. Works generated solely by AI, even with detailed text prompts, generally cannot be copyrighted, though works incorporating AI elements alongside substantial human creativity might qualify on a case-by-case basis. This legal ambiguity leaves many artists feeling unprotected, with nearly 90% fearing that copyright laws are outdated for the AI era. Ethical concerns also abound. AI systems can perpetuate and amplify biases present in their training data, leading to skewed or stereotypical representations of race, gender, and other groups. The potential for AI to generate convincing deepfakes or misinformation is another significant worry. Moreover, critics argue that AI art, derived from existing data, lacks the genuine emotion, intent, originality, and lived experience that define human creativity. While some argue AI can’t replicate human creativity, the uncanny resemblance and speed of AI generation challenge traditional notions of artistry.

The Road Ahead: Integration, Regulation, and Redefinition

The future of AI in art appears poised for deeper integration rather than outright replacement of human artists. Many envision AI evolving into a powerful collaborative partner or creative assistant, enhancing ideation, speeding up production, and enabling artists to explore novel forms of expression. Future AI tools are expected to offer greater realism, integrate multiple media (like text, animation, and sound), and become more interactive, perhaps even suggesting modifications in real-time during the creative process. Personalized AI models, trained on an artist’s specific style or dataset, could offer more tailored creative possibilities.

However, navigating this future requires addressing the significant ethical and legal challenges. Calls for regulation are growing, demanding transparency about AI use, compensation for artists whose work is used in training data, and clearer copyright guidelines. Establishing ethical frameworks and potentially new legal structures to manage ownership, bias, and intellectual property in the age of AI is crucial. The ongoing dialogue involves artists, tech companies, policymakers, and the public, debating how to balance technological advancement with the protection of human creativity and livelihoods. While some predict AI will become ubiquitous in creative fields, potentially displacing certain roles, others believe human artists will remain central, leveraging AI as just another tool in their arsenal, albeit a uniquely powerful one. Ultimately, the AI art boom is forcing a reevaluation of creativity itself, challenging us to define what art means in an era where machines can generate aesthetically compelling images, and pushing us to consider the future landscape of human expression.

Feature Image Credit: Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

By Steven Ezekiel

Sourced from MarylandReporter.com

By Kehl Bayern

Well, until they told us that is.

In a sign of the times, Microsoft published a blog describing the process behind one of their latest ads which relied upon AI-generated imagery and content to work.

Ostensibly conceived to demonstrate the company’s prowess in AI, the ads show off Microsoft’s latest iteration of the Surface along with what is can do for businesses using CoPilot.

How did this come to be?

Hint: If you’ve ever used ChatGPT or anything like it before, then you probably have some idea.

“We probably went through thousands of different prompts, chiselling away at the output little by little until we got what we wanted. There’s never really a one-and-done prompt,” Creative Director Cisco McCarthy told Microsoft.

“Like carving a masterpiece from a block of marble, each prompt was a careful stroke of the sculptor’s tool that gradually revealed the form within. Through relentless experimentation and countless revisions alongside generative AI, the team eventually conjured a library of stunning art for characters and sets, translating their ideas into captivating visualizations for the ad,” the company writes.

That’s an interesting way to describe it. The results speak for themselves, naturally, and you can watch them over on YouTube at this link.

From our perspective, we’re seeing it as yet another sign of the times and as further evidence of one of the biggest trends to shake up our industry since we started writing this news blog. How we got here and where we are going are always interesting to ponder but they might make us miss the fact that the future is very much here and now already.

Any thoughts that you might have on AI-generated advertising are welcome in the comments.

We have some other news you might like to read at this link.

Feature Image Credit: Windows

By Kehl Bayern

Kehl is our staff photography news writer since 2017 and has over a decade of experience in online media and publishing and you can get to know him better here and follow him on Insta.

Sourced from Light Stalking

By Dana Sullivan Kilroy

Until now, the company has kept shoppers inside its ecosystem.

The pandemic was unkind to many businesses, but others saw it as an opportunity to fine-tune their e-commerce business.

Take Amazon. It saw a surge in revenues and profits during 2020 and 2021 — up 220% at one point — and has managed to maintain double-digit growth in its e-commerce sector each year since.

While e-commerce still accounts for a small minority of overall retail revenues (around 16% in 2024, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce), there are a few dominant players.)

Walmart, Target, and eBay are a few of them. But the uncontested leader is Amazon, which commands nearly 40% of the market, according to Statista. In fact, the other nine of the top 10 retailers combined add up to barely 22% of the market.

Historically Amazon has preferred to keep customers inside of its ecosystem, a “walled garden,” as it’s known in the tech world.

How ‘walled gardens’ benefit tech companies

In general, keeping customers inside an ecosystem gives a company more control over their experiences. By the way, Amazon is not alone in this practice. Plenty of other companies do the same thing, including Apple, X, and Facebook, to name a few.

In the case of Amazon, the walled garden structure gives the company total control over what users can see and do on their sites. It controls the advertising that can be shown on its site, and it controls all the data it collects.

Amazon is able collect data about customers’ shopping habits and product preferences and then target them with ads and special offers.

It all gives Amazon a competitive advantage that has helped it remain the dominant player in the e-commerce space.

Despite Amazon’s dominance, some brands have chosen not to make their products available on the platform. Now Amazon is testing how it can make some of these products available via its platform anyway.

Amazon testing a way for customers to ‘shop directly’ from brands

Amazon recently revealed it is testing a new feature called “Buy for Me” among a subset of users in the Amazon Shopping app.

The feature, which is currently in beta, “helps customers discover and seamlessly purchase select products from other brands’ sites if those items are not currently sold in Amazon’s store,” according to a company announcement.

Amazon is testing a limited number of brand stores and products. It plans to roll out to more customers and expand offerings based on feedback.

Customers who currently have access to the feature can search for specific brands in the Amazon Shopping app, and in some cases they’ll see relevant results from Amazon and third-party sellers. They might also be shown additional products from other stores in a separate section of search results labelled “Shop brand sites directly.”

Customers can link directly to these sites, or in some cases, customers will see a link to Buy for Me.

Amazon says it is not charging brands a commission for these transactions.

“We’re always working to invent new ways to make shopping even more convenient, and we’ve created Buy For Me to help customers quickly and easily find and buy products from other brand stores if we don’t currently sell those items in our store,” said Amazon Shopping Director Oliver Messenger.

By Dana Sullivan Kilroy

Dana Sullivan Kilroy has been a writer and editor for more than 20 years. Her work has appeared in publications including The New York Times, Real Simple, Self and Outside and on digital platforms including BabyCenter, Everyday Health and WebMD. You can email her here.

Sourced from TheStreet

By Rex Jones

You’ve got the camera. You’ve got the talent. You even have a slick little website that screams “I take this seriously.” So why does it feel like you’re shouting into the void? Spoiler: it’s not your work, it’s your SEO (or, more accurately, the lack of it).

Most photographer websites look great but function like a sealed vault when it comes to Google. If the world’s biggest search engine can’t figure out what you do, who you do it for, or where you are, you’re basically a very talented ghost.

In this article, we’re going to fix that. We’ll cover why Google doesn’t care about your pretty pictures, what SEO actually means in plain English, and how to make your site go from “meh” to magnetic. No tech-speak. No marketing guru nonsense. Just straight-up strategy, wrapped in sarcasm and served with a side of clarity.

Why Google Doesn’t Care How Pretty Your Site Is

This part stings a little, but it’s important to hear: Google doesn’t care how gorgeous your site is. It doesn’t care about your cinematic reels, that custom typeface you bought, or the way you cleverly laid out your galleries. Google isn’t a person, it’s a machine. It doesn’t see your work. It reads your site. And if all it finds is a bunch of beautiful images with no context, no structure, and zero information about what those images mean… it bails.

Google is trying to answer questions. If someone searches for “natural light family photographer in Southern Arizona,” but your homepage just says “Welcome to my site” and your images are all titled IMG_9273.jpg, guess what? You’re not getting that traffic.

Imagine Google as an overworked librarian trying to organize an infinite number of books. Your site is a photo book with no title, no chapters, no captions, just vibes. And unfortunately, vibes don’t rank.

How to Tell If You’re Invisible (Without Needing a Degree in Data Science)

You don’t need fancy tools or spreadsheets to know if your site’s underperforming. You just need to look at it the way your potential clients do. Open your site in a new tab, pretend you’ve never met you, and ask yourself:

• Do I instantly know what kind of photographer you are and where you’re located?
• Is it obvious what I’m supposed to click on next?
• Do your images have filenames and alt text that describe what’s in them?
• Is your “About” page helping me trust you, or is it just a list of facts about your camera gear and coffee preferences?
• Can I contact you in two clicks or less, or is it buried under a dropdown like a game of hide-and-seek?

If you can’t answer these questions with a confident “yes,” don’t panic. Most photographers are in the same boat: amazing work, buried under a confusing, text-light, SEO-optional website that might look great but doesn’t function for search.

Let’s fix that, yeah?

What SEO Actually Is (and Why It’s Not Black Magic)

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, but if that phrase makes your eyes glaze over, let’s simplify it. SEO is about helping Google (and other search engines) understand your site well enough to confidently send traffic your way.

When someone types “portrait photographer near me” into Google, the search engine scans all the content it’s indexed and tries to serve the best match. If your site doesn’t clearly say what you do, where you do it, or who you serve, Google’s not putting you on that list, no matter how good your work is.

SEO isn’t trickery. It’s structure. It’s clarity. It’s thinking like your client and the algorithm at the same time. It means:

• Writing in a way that mirrors how your ideal client searches.
• Structuring your pages so Google can understand your hierarchy.
• Using the right words in the right places, headlines, page titles, alt text, and blog posts.
• Keeping your site fast, easy to navigate, and mobile-friendly.

You don’t need to learn to code. You just need to start thinking about your site as a place people land, not just something you launch.

What Google Loves (And What It Couldn’t Care Less About)

Google’s love language is clarity. It adores:

• Homepages that say what kind of photographer you are and where you’re based.
• Page titles that aren’t just “About” or “Gallery,” but “About | Utah Brand Photographer.”
• Fast load speeds. (Massive uncompressed photo files? Yeah, Google hates those.)
• Internal linking. (A blog post that links to your services page? Yes, please.)
• Actual text. Not just pretty pictures floating in white space.

What Google doesn’t like:

• Generic sites that feel empty or hard to crawl.
• Pages without headings or structure.
• Sites with no updated content or context.
• Portfolio-only websites with zero keywords.
• File names like IMG_8632.jpg and alt text fields left completely blank.

Google isn’t trying to punish you, it’s just trying to give its users the best answer to their question. If your site doesn’t provide that answer, you’re not in the conversation.

Easy SEO Fixes You Can Make This Week

Let’s get you on the map. Literally. You don’t need a complete overhaul, just a few strategic changes to get Google’s attention and give it something worth indexing.

• Add a clear value statement on your homepage. A single sentence that includes your specialty and location is all you need to start. “I’m a New York portrait photographer specializing in candid, natural-light sessions for families and creatives.”
• Rename your top 20 images. If you’re still uploading files as DSC_0487.jpg, stop. Rename them to something like miami-florida-family-photo-session-2024.jpg.
• Use alt text like a storyteller, not a robot. Alt text is a quick sentence that describes what’s in the image, this helps Google “see” what your image is showing. Keep it short and descriptive: “Mother and daughter walking along a white sandy beach in San Diego.”
• Update your page titles and meta descriptions. These are what show up in search results. Your homepage title should include your location and specialty. Your meta description should give a reason to click. Title: “Southern Utah Elopement Photographer | Wild & True Photography” Meta: “Natural, adventurous elopements in Southern Utah’s wildest places. See galleries, get planning tips, and book your session today.”
• Audit your contact page. Can people reach you in two clicks? Does your form work on mobile? Is your location listed somewhere on the page? These all impact local SEO and conversion.

None of this is hard. It just requires intention. You don’t need more effort. You need more alignment.

SEO Isn’t a Trick, It’s a Service

Let’s be honest, SEO can feel dry. But it’s really just the art of making your website useful. To Google, yes, but more importantly, to your clients. It’s not about chasing an algorithm. It’s about understanding that your work deserves to be seen, and search engines need a little help connecting the dots.

You don’t need to game the system. I mean, seriously, do you think any of us can outsmart a trillion-dollar company? You just need to describe yourself clearly. Keep your site structured. Use words people are already typing into Google. And show up consistently with content that reflects who you are and what you offer.

That’s not “strategy.” That’s just being findable.

What’s Coming Next

Now that you’ve got a solid handle on why your site might be invisible and how to start changing that, we’re going to dive into the engine behind visibility: keywords. Not the spammy kind. The real ones. The phrases your clients are already searching for, the ones that will help you write better content, create better service pages, and actually show up when it matters.

You don’t need to write more (not necessarily, though more content does tend to be advantageous over time), you just need to write smarter. That’s what we’ll tackle in Part 2.

But for now? Take five minutes and go look at your homepage. Ask yourself:

If someone landed here for the first time, would they know what I do and how to book me?

If the answer is “probably not,” that’s okay, you just found your starting point.

By Rex Jones

Rex is a commercial photographer and branding strategist based in Saint George, Utah. He helps businesses look less boring, market like grown-ups, and actually get noticed instead of merely blending into the background. He also shoots portraits, products, and whatever else catches his eye before the caffeine wears off. rexjones.photo

Sourced from Fstoppers

Sourced from Association of Advertisers in Ireland

Join us on Thursday, 22nd May from 8.30am to 10.30am at Core (1 Windmill Lane, Dublin 2) for a special morning seminar:
Unleashing the Power of Social Media – A Global and Irish Perspective

In collaboration with IAPI and Ipsos B&A, we’ll be unveiling findings from a new study that tested the effectiveness of selected Irish ads on platforms like TikTok and YouTube — using a simulated social media environment to mirror real digital behaviours.

The session will feature:

• Adam Sheridan, Global Head of Products at Ipsos Creative Excellence, sharing global social media trends, best-in-class creative and insights from his book Misfit – how creativity in advertising sparks brand growth.

• Jimmy Larsen, Director at Ipsos B&A, presenting key learnings from the Irish study and what drives success on platforms like TikTok and YouTube.

Agenda
8.30 – 9.00: Registration & Networking
9.00 – 9.10: Opening Remarks
9.10 – 9.40: Global Perspective – Adam Sheridan
9.40 – 10.20: Irish Perspective – Jimmy Larsen
10.20 – 10.30: Q&A

📍 Core, 1 Windmill Lane, Dublin 2

We look forward to seeing you there.

REGISTER NOW

Sourced from Association of Advertisers in Ireland

By Ian Shepherd

By any measure, Linus Tech Tips is one of the most successful YouTube channels in the world with more than 16 million subscribers and 8 billion views. But what Linus Sebastian has built goes far beyond a channel. It’s a diversified, vertically integrated media company—one that continues to grow in scale, influence, and sustainability.

In a detailed (and very on-brand) video posted to the Linus Tech Tips channel this week, Linus and his team broke down exactly how their business made money in 2024. While they no longer disclose exact revenue figures, the percentage split reveals how the business has evolved over the last 8 years.

Merch

The single largest source of revenue in 2024 was LTTStore.com, which accounted for 55% of total revenue—up from just 15% in 2020. That growth has been driven by product innovation, fulfilment efficiency, and sheer scale.

“Back then, two of our biggest product families didn’t exist yet—hand tools and bags—which now make up about half the revenue,” the team explained in the video.

LMG even flipped the model—going from being sponsored to becoming a sponsor themselves. “We recently flipped the script and went from sponsor to sponsorer, choosing some of our favourite creators to show off all of our products,” said COO Nick Light.

AdSense: Share Shrinking, Revenue Growing

AdSense made up a smaller percentage of revenue in 2024 than in previous years—down from 26% in 2020. But that’s not a decline in performance; it’s a reflection of how fast other areas of the business are growing.

“Just because it’s a smaller percentage does not mean that it’s less money,” said another team member. “It means that LMG is far less reliant on our Google overlords than we used to be.”

61.5% of YouTube revenue came from traditional ads, while 37.3% came from YouTube Premium—despite Premium users only making up 29% of views. Shorts, by comparison, underperformed: one 13-million-view short earned just $1,300.

LMG’s top channels for AdSense were the main Linus Tech Tips channel (76%), ShortCircuit, and TechLinked.

Sponsors

Sponsorships made up 21% of total revenue in 2024, broken down into:

• 9% from in-video ad reads
• 12% from fully sponsored videos

LMG now works with over 150 sponsors across 13 categories. PC parts made up 34.6% of sponsor revenue, followed by SaaS (25.5%) and lifestyle brands (13.6%).

“A sponsor can buy airtime on our channel, but they can never buy our opinion,” Linus said. “And if a sponsor doesn’t like it, we’ll just drop them—like we’ve dropped so many others.”

Floatplane

Floatplane, LMG’s proprietary paid video platform, contributed 7% of revenue—up 1% from the year before. Despite subscriber losses after the August 2023 “great reset,” the platform bounced back thanks to stronger exclusive content and new offerings like 4K video and event access.

“You are the boss… when you choose to directly support us on Floatplane,” Linus told viewers.

Affiliate Links

Affiliate marketing brought in 3% of revenue. These are links typically found in video descriptions or on LMG’s websites that generate a commission when users make a purchase.

From Scrappy Creator to Scaled Operator

What makes Linus’s story so compelling is how deliberately he’s built LMG from the start.

“Unlike most creators that I meet, I was never a one-man show—not even for one day,” Linus told Colin and Samir in a December 2024 interview. “I always had someone operating a camera, operating a timeline—usually both.”

In the early years, money was tight: “We almost ran out of money… If I didn’t nail things, we just wouldn’t have had money to pay pay checks. I had what I called the one-take policy.”

Today, the company employs over 100 people. Linus has stepped back from daily operations (he hired a CEO in 2023), but remains deeply involved in scripting, creative direction, and writing.

“If there’s anything that I am as a creative, I would say it’s that I’m a writer… My canvas is a blank sheet of paper.”

Even as the business has matured, its core philosophy hasn’t changed. “The audience is the boss,” Linus said. “And it’s the hardest boss in the world.”

A great case study for the Creator Economy

What Linus has built is far beyond the “solo creator + AdSense” model. It’s an independent media company with:

• Owned IP
• A direct-to-consumer merch line
• A proprietary subscription platform
• Multi-channel ad revenue
• Production-for-hire capabilities
• And a highly engaged community

As an investor in creator-led businesses, I’ve seen first hand how this model of vertical integration and audience alignment can scale and is exactly the kind of structure we aim to build with the creators we partner with. I believe the next great media brand won’t come from Hollywood—it’ll be built by creators who follow this playbook.

Feature Image Credit: Linus Sebastian, Linus Tech Tips

By Ian Shepherd

Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website.

Sourced from Forbes

By Brett Wilson

Despite recent market turmoil, the AI revolution continues apace as new breakthroughs in models and architectures get applied across a growing number of industries.

While AI’s impact on advertising is widely debated, one area is moving so quickly—with implications so potentially far-reaching beyond its narrow format—that advertisers should start planning around it now: AI search.

A potential searchpocalpypse

Anecdotally, many of us rely on AI search and seek it out—even if we don’t know we’re doing it. While official numbers are spotty, independent studies suggest that over 11% of Google searches now feature AI-generated summaries. Newer AI answer engines like Perplexity—which tops 20 million queries daily for its paid enterprise product—as well as Microsoft Copilot and ChatGPT search are also gaining ground, thanks in part to timely investments in brand advertising.

The consequences of this are not escaping notice. In carefully worded statements during Google’s most recent earnings call, its chief business officer touted its own AI Overviews product, noting that “AI Overviews continue to drive higher satisfaction and search usage” while delivering revenue at “approximately the same rate” as conventional search results.

While Google has a massive incentive to get this right, it is likely to struggle with some near-term misses. AI and large language models are popular precisely because they get people answers and information faster than clicking around—and that probably means fewer (though potentially higher-intent) searches long term. In all, Gartner predicts that traditional search engine volume will decline 25% by 2026.

There’s also an open question around the optimal ad formats and pricing models for AI search. AI-generated answers take up a lot of real estate normally occupied by ads on Google, making an update on where and how ads appear—and associated growing pains—all but inevitable.

It’s worth noting that Perplexity’s ad format, a sponsored follow-up question, is more akin to native advertising, with the company charging a CPM rather than a cost per click. Microsoft is also continuing to experiment with different ad formats for Copilot with varying success.

An era of inflation and less advertising surface area

If ever there were a year to spend big at the upfronts, this is it. As users get answers faster via AI and potential cracks emerge in traditional search volume and performance, new formats, and other ad mediums may need to pick up the slack.

For many direct response advertisers, display is the closest substitute to search. Unfortunately, display is also likely to get hit as fewer searches translate to less organic traffic for publishers. While some anecdotal evidence suggests that this may not be happening evenly yet as Google and others better embed source links into AI answers, ultimately a trend of fewer or materially different searches spells trouble for search-dependent aggregators and publishers that drive a lot of display volume.

All of this puts renewed pressure and a premium on video, TV, and social advertising. Although video on demand CPMs are forecasted to decline slightly in 2025—partially counteracting a spike in social—this may be short-lived or change quickly.

The collapse of traditional SEO is also likely to contribute to CPM inflation. Brands that rely on organic search—such as Chegg and Hubspot—are seeing their traffic decline significantly, putting a hole in go-to-market strategies that only paid media can likely fill in the short term. Over time, content marketers will need to retool to market to agents and get into LLM training data.

AI-native consumer expectations

As users grow accustomed to immediate AI answers, brand marketers face a parallel challenge of meeting these heightened expectations across every other touch point.

What this looks like will vary by industry, but the opportunities are there for the taking. After spending years investing in first-party data and related infrastructure, brands can now leverage this foundation to fine tune LLMs for a variety of applications and force the integration points that matter across their stack.

Ultimately, where AI lives will determine how the ecosystem evolves. Brands can control more of this future or cede it to walled gardens.

A decade ago, advertising was one of the earliest industries to deploy AI at scale, as systems relying on traditional machine learning models informed everything from programmatic bidding strategy, budget forecasting, targeting, click-through rate optimization, and more. By making the right moves in an evolving space, brand marketers can once again lead the way forward in AI.

Feature Image Credit: Malte Mueller/Getty Images

By Brett Wilson

Brett Wilson is general partner at Swift Ventures. He was formerly vp and gm of advertising at Adobe, as well as CEO and co-founder of TubeMogul.

Sourced from ADWEEK

By Georgia Coggan

Could this AI tool be the future of graphic design?

Chat GPT 4-o’s image generator is getting more sophisticated, with the latest update bringing tools that more than encroach on graphic design work. This has been noticed by one Redditor, who asks the graphic design community for their thoughts. “I don’t think I should continue in design,” she says. “I would love for someone to change my mind”.

The user points out that the Chat GPT 4-o can “edit images, make thumbnails from sketches, static ads and a lot more,” which (they say) is terrifying for someone starting out in design. Responses are very mixed, and a little different in tone from the hopeful discussion over whether graphic design is dead that’s happening elsewhere on Reddit.

The post has received 169 comments, offering different perspectives on how much of a threat AI will be (find out here how we think the future of AI in graphic design will look).

The tool may not be good enough to fully replace designers now, the thread says, but with the speed that the technology is progressing it may well be capable of producing something that is at human-level, or at least passable for many clients, in a few year’s time.

Community comments fall into two broad camps: 1. AI tools are there to be integrated into a designer’s workflow so everyone should stay calm, 2. People are being way too calm.

People will be needed, says one boss, because someone needs to be there to run the AI.

“Well, speaking as a business owner of a tech start up and the owner of 5 companies where we hire over 50 programmers to work with us in developing our software,” one comment reads.

“I can honestly say from experience and watching my staff work, that chatGPT is great but it’s only as great as those who know how to use it. You can ask Google questions but if you don’t ask it the right questions, it can’t really help you.”

Another user agrees: “Calm because panic produces nothing. It’s a tool. People have been saying the same thing for decades about whatever the latest software is. Most people don’t use AI. Including clients, for now.”

Many other comments recommend mastering the tools in order to make your designs even better. One creative director of an AI company even said “jump on the train or get out of the way” – showing that the progression of AI is unstoppable and anyone not onboard will be left behind.

But others disagree.

“Not trying to argue but 99.9% of graphic design work is research and remixing, that’s exactly how these generative models work,” one comment reads.

“Almost all graphic design jobs will be replaced in the next 5 years and you might just have 1-2 people per big company who will prompt these models to create whole ad campaigns in mere minutes.”

As a graphic designer, I see more and more of my clients replacing design tasks with AI,” agrees another commenter– but offers a glimmer of hope. “However, one thing that ChatGPT and other AI software can’t handle is typography.”

This week Bill Gates made some worrying premonitions about AI, and that it has the ability to replace all but three jobs (of which graphic design isn’t one). But he also said that humans would be the ones to determine how far the creep of AI would get. Discussions like this promote awareness of how to stay relevant, and will help humans to retain the upper hand against AI.

By Georgia Coggan

Georgia is lucky enough to be Creative Bloq’s Editor. She has been working for Creative Bloq since 2018, starting out as a freelancer writing about all things branding, design, art, tech and creativity – as well as sniffing out genuinely good deals on creative technology. Since becoming Editor, she has been managing the site and its long term strategy, helping to shape the diverse content streams CB is known for and leading the team in their own creativity.

Sourced from CREATIVE BLOQ