ADWEEK AI, Tech & Money newsletter

Click here to view this email in your browser Happy October, people. This is AI, Tech & Money. I’m Kendra Barnett, writing this week from Miami. I’m in the Magic City for the inaugural Jupiter Festival, a media-slash-entertainment-slash-advertising-slash-sports conference started by Cannes Lions alum William Mellis and the former CMO of Fox Sports Media Group Eric Markgraf, with backing from Art Basel parent MCH Group, the Interactive Advertising Bureau and Boston Consulting Group. On the ground, the event feels like a flashy, well-funded, if overly ambitious, push to assert its rightful place in the increasingly crowded conference circuit. Find a braindump with some of my initial impressions in the Deep Learning section below, and expect a more comprehensive recap from ADWEEK in the days to come after I chat with Mellis and Markgraf about how the three-and-a-half day event fared in its first iteration. Back in New York, ADWEEK hosted some of the most influential leaders from every corner of the industry at ADWEEK House Advertising HQ this week. My newsroom colleagues also covered Advertising Week, which descended on The Penn District for the fourth consecutive year. While some years are sleepier than others, adland heavyweights this time round used the event as a launchpad for major announcements: TikTok said it’s extending its advertising reach off-platform in the U.S. and unveiled a new AI shopping agent, while Meta said it’s testing an AI assistant that can plan and create campaigns, change targeting and budgets, and remember past campaigns. Keep scrolling for some unfiltered thoughts on the conversations defining both Jupiter Festival and Advertising Week New York this year. Outside of the conference halls this week, Paramount’s highly anticipated $110 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery closed Tuesday. Now come the layoffs, as my colleague Mark Mwachiro reported. Plus, OpenAI is introducing visual ads to ChatGPT, Disney agreed to license Disney+ titles to Netflix, and Google sparred with the DOJ over the terms of a final judgment in the historic antitrust case over its adtech dominance. What a week! As always, replies to this email go straight to my inbox, so please share feedback or tips. Or reach me securely at kendra.16 on Signal. Read on! KENDRA BARNETT, SENIOR TECH REPORTER, ADWEEK kendra.barnett@adweek.com | @kendraebarnett If you were forwarded this newsletter, you can sign up here.   THE TOP LINE One Walmart exec spells out the retailer’s vision for taking over TV advertising. OpenAI is testing brand suitability controls with DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science. TikTok’s new AI shopping assistant lets users automate purchases directly from brands; meanwhile, TikTok’s off-platform ads biz comes to the U.S. THE QUANT Google still owns the first click in searches about local businesses, but rarely the last one. Among U.S. consumers surveyed, 52% began their most recent local business search on Google Search, and another 9% on Google Maps, according to recent BrightLocal data. For searches that follow, however, Google Search dips to 19%, behind Google Maps (24%) and social media (22%). Some three-quarters of consumers used more than one channel. Over the full journey, 30% turned to social, 23% to AI tools and 19% to review sites.   DEEP LEARNING Across Jupiter Festival and Advertising Week, Agentic Ads and the Health of the Open Web Grabbed the Spotlight The crowded marketing and media conference circuit has a new kid on the block: Jupiter Festival Miami, which this week made its entrance at the Miami Beach Convention Center. The event, looking for its footing, feels in many ways like an ambitious push to win some of the mindshare—and big money—that Possible has secured for itself under the oversight of Beyond Ordinary Events and Christian Muche. I arrived in Miami midday Tuesday and checked into my hotel room to discover what can only be called an abundance of welcome swag: a Jupiter-