Posts tagged “AI Industry”

Everyone has an opinion on whether calling an AI dangerous makes it look more capable. Nobody has tested it. The adjacent literatures are strong, the manipulation is trivially cheap, and the obvious design has a confound that would sink it. The question, the surrounding evidence, the study that would settle it, and the four ways it goes wrong.

AI tools deleted visible configuration, and the setup work moved where buyers cannot see it. The 2026 tooling market ran the experiment at full scale: easy to try, easy to cancel, and billing units that admit nobody has settled what AI value costs. We built the chain that measures conversions from AI, and we publish our own numbers, zeros included.

In Q1 2026 Google's three ad lines went in three directions: Search +19%, YouTube +11%, Google Network -4%. EMARKETER projects Meta will overtake Google on total ad revenue this year. Treating 'Google Ads' as one channel with one strategy is now a planning error.

A planner's field guide to ChatGPT Ads in May 2026: auction mechanics, targeting controls, the OAIQ pixel and Conversions API, robots.txt rules for OAI-AdsBot, eligibility, and where the channel actually fits in a media plan.

ChatGPT ads launched February 9, 2026 with sponsored placements below answers on Free and Go tiers. The targeting signal isn't a keyword; it's the entire reasoning context, and most agencies aren't built to use it.

Between 2025 and 2026 Google stopped shipping a toolkit and started shipping an operating system. The quiet commercial changes will hit Western Canadian SMBs before any AI-Overview headline does.

Envato slashed AI generations from unlimited to 10 per month, signaling a broader market correction for the entire SaaS industry.