ADWEEK Daily AI, Tech & Money newsletter

Click here to view this email in your browser Happy Thursday, and welcome to another edition of AI, Tech & Money. I’m Kendra Barnett, ADWEEK’s senior tech reporter, in New York. After a couple of months of standard post-Cannes quiet (well, maybe “quiet” isn’t the right word, but you get it), the event circuit is picking up again. This week, I popped into Smartly’s Advance event in lower Manhattan, where Horizon’s Bob Lord railed against the holdcos’ FTE-based pricing models. It felt somewhat pointed considering he shared a stage with a WPP executive, as the British holdco has said that labor-based compensation will remain key to its “mixed” model; Lord said he was “not picking on anyone.” Also at the event: Timbaland. Yes, Timbaland the rapper, who spoke with Smartly CEO Laura Desmond about tastemaking and creativity in the AI era. Missed it? Fear not! The event onslaught is only beginning. Next week, I’ll be in Miami for the inaugural IAB-backed Jupiter Festival. There, I’ll lead an onstage interview with Aaron Sisto and Scott Greenberg, the cofounders of Chronicle Media, an AI upstart automating audience discovery for creators, Hollywood studios, and brands. If you’re in Miami, drop me a line. Meanwhile, many of my newsroom colleagues will be on the ground next week at ADWEEK House: Advertising HQ. We have a week of stellar programming (and fun happy hours) lined up, so please stop by. Even Gronk is going to be there! You can register here. Replies to this email go straight to my inbox, so feel free to share feedback (unless you despise this newsletter, in which case, keep it to yourself!) or tips. If you prefer, reach me securely at kendra.16 on Signal. 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 Amazon overhauled its ad platform, putting agents front and center. OpenAI launched Dots, its answer to Meta’s always-on assistant Muse. Horizon Media leader Bob Lord railed against the holdcos’ FTE pricing models. AI video startup Runway debuted an agent that can create and measure ads. THE QUANT Muse, Meta’s AI personal assistant unveiled in early September, is the buzziest model du jour. Its adoption has been impressive, and it’s already the leading source of AI-agent traffic, Human Security found, with agents browsing the web and taking actions on users’ behalf. By September 27, less than three weeks after its launch, Muse was generating 2.34 times more requests than all other measured AI agents combined, according to Human Security. Also notable: Muse would appear to be particularly well-suited for shopping; the research found that the AI is 25% more likely to reach checkout pages than other agents. The findings were published before the Tuesday lauch of Dots, OpenAI's rival agent.   DEEP LEARNING Google Gets to Keep Its Adtech Stack Intact. Does The Trade Desk's Pitch Lose its Punch? Despite finding that Google operated illegal monopolies in the ad exchange and publisher ad server markets, a federal judge last month ruled that the company would not be forced to break up its adtech stack. Instead, the tech behemoth received a series of small orders designed to fix the monopolies. These include connecting its ad exchange AdX and its publisher ad server DFP to Prebid, requiring them to play by the same rules as everyone else, requiring AdX bids to alternative publisher ad servers to offer the same terms as they would to DFP, limiting self-preferencing in the adtech stack, and sharing data on ad auction wins and losses with publishers. In short: Google’s adtech biz gets to walk away largely unscathed. Though Google might be riding high on the outcome (particularly after a different federal judge who previously ruled that Google’s search business was an illegal monopoly also let the company off the hook with little more than a wrist slap), one adland heavyweight might be more salty: The