Your weekly guide on everything AI marketing. Covering everything from AI marketing news, tips, deep dives, events, podcasts, jobs and much more. Never miss a beat with our 5-minute newsletter.
In Today’s Email:
OpenAI and Microsoft formalise a £103bn-era AI partnership
Google hits its first ever $100bn (£76bn) quarter off the back of AI ads
TikTok rolls out AI tools (and quietly dangles 90% rev share)
Plus: Pichai’s “AI is paying off” quote, a daily AI news pod, 1 must-watch YouTube how-to, and 3 fresh AI-marketing jobs
The Week’s Top Stories
1. OpenAI locks in a mega-deal with Microsoft
OpenAI has wrapped its restructure into a non-profit Foundation and a for-profit arm, with Microsoft’s stake now valued at about $135bn (≈£103bn). That ends months of uncertainty over how OpenAI would be governed and funded.
Why it matters: A fully capitalised, Microsoft-backed OpenAI makes it much safer to build marketing assistants, AI content ops and retrieval workflows on its stack. 📰 Time
2. Google posts first $100bn (£76bn) quarter and credits AI for ads
Alphabet reported its first ever $100bn quarter and Sundar Pichai said outright that AI is now “driving real business results.” Growth came from Search, YouTube and Cloud, all helped by Gemini features and AI-driven ad formats. Google also said Gemini now has 650m monthly users — a huge upsell pool.
Why it matters: AI in Google isn’t a pilot anymore… it’s what’s pushing your CPCs, attribution and creative, so 2026 plans need to assume AI-by-default. 📰 Google
3. TikTok ships Smart Split + AI Outline, and top creators can get 90% rev share
TikTok launched Smart Split to auto-cut long videos into ready-to-post vertical clips, plus AI Outline to turn a prompt into a shootable script. It also dangled up to 90% subscription revenue for creators who meet higher engagement thresholds. It’s the clearest end-to-end AI workflow TikTok has offered.
Why it matters: Repurposing long content into TikToks just got easier, which means more high-quality vertical inventory and more competition for attention. 📰 The Verge
4. Meta’s AI ad tools keep turning themselves back on and brands aren’t amused
Brands told Business Insider that Meta’s “test new creative” and Advantage+ AI options were re-enabling themselves, leading to off-brand AI images in live ads. Some ads even showed products that didn’t exist, forcing refunds. Agencies are now checking accounts multiple times a week just to keep AI from doing weird things.
Why it matters: If your creative guardrails only live inside Meta, they can be overridden — you need pre-flight checks and your own asset approvals. 📰 Business Insider [paywall]
5. Reddit’s AI-powered ad targeting gives it a bumper holiday forecast
Reddit raised its Q4 2025 revenue outlook to $655m–$665m and said AI was placing ads inside the most relevant community conversations. Advertiser numbers are up 75% year-on-year, with several verticals growing over 50%. Investors liked that Reddit now has two AI monetisation streams: ads and content licensing.
Why it matters: It’s proof that AI + community context can be a real performance channel, not just Reels/Shorts, especially for B2B and high-consideration products. 📰 Reuters
Quote Of The Week
Customers who use Rufus during a shopping trip are 60% more likely to complete a purchase."
Said on Amazon’s Q3 2025 earnings call (30 Oct 2025) when he was explaining how Amazon’s gen-AI shopping assistant Rufus is directly lifting conversion. It’s a clear indicator that AI assistants can push people over the line to buy.
The Weekly Deep Dive
Google’s first fully AI-generated ad stars… a turkey
Google finally ran a TV/social spot made end-to-end with its own gen-AI tools — and used a plush turkey called Tom instead of a human. It’s timed to the holiday season and plugs the new AI Mode in Search. The interesting bit: Google didn’t label it “AI-generated.”
Why Google did it now
Google waited until its AI video was good enough not to embarrass the brand. Launching it around a high-attention moment guarantees PR. It also shows advertisers “we eat our own cooking.”
Why a turkey, not a person
Cartoon/mascot = no uncanny valley. It’s a safe way to show off AI without weird fingers/faces. Marketers can copy this tomorrow.
What marketers still need to do
Most regulated brands can’t skip disclosure. Add an internal rule for labelling AI visuals. Keep a human in the approval loop.
Our takeaway: Google’s saying “AI ads are fine now” — just keep people out of frame and label it if you’re in a sensitive sector. 📖 Read the full article at The Keyword
Drowning in Details? Here’s Your Life Raft.
Stop doing it all. Start leading again. BELAY has helped thousands of leaders delegate the details and get back to what matters most.
Access the next phase of growth with BELAY’s resource Delegate to Elevate.
What To Watch
AI Visibility You Can Measure – AI Search Reporting for Marketers
Fresh YouTube upload (within the last 24 hours) walking through how to report on AI-driven search experiences, which every SEO/paid hybrid team now has to explain to their CMO. It shows where impressions are moving, how to attribute AI answers, and how to talk about “lost” clicks without sounding defensive - watch it here.
Podcasts
Wikipedia’s Crucial Role in the Digital Age: From Volunteers to Algorithms
A really PR-nerdy episode on how Wikipedia is being used in the AI era for reputation management, why accurate entries matter when LLMs train on them, and what that means for comms teams pitching or correcting pages. Good for agency and in-house PR leads who are being asked “how do we show up in AI search?” right now.
AI Training
Create an AI-powered PR pitch & newsroom pack in Notion AI
The overview: Build a lightweight PR tool inside Notion AI that takes a product update + audience + tone and spits out: email pitch, press-note style summary, 3 headline options, and social captions — so marketing can ship coverage requests in under 10 minutes.
Step-by-step:
Create a new Notion page called “PR Pitch Generator – [Brand]” and add 3 properties at the top: Launch / update, Audience / publication, and Tone (e.g. “B2B SaaS, UK trade, authoritative”).
Add a database view called “Pitch Components” with entries for: Email pitch, Press-note (150 words), 3 subject lines, X/LinkedIn caption, Angle alternatives.
In each entry, click Ask AI → Continue writing → Custom and paste this prompt:
“You are a UK PR exec. Write a media pitch about [Launch] for [Audience] in [Tone], 140–160 words, with a newsy first line and 1 proof point.”Generate again on the “Angle alternatives” item with:
“Give me 3 alternative media angles: 1) data/insight, 2) founder POV, 3) customer/vertical story. UK spellings. No US-isms.”Share the page with sales/CS as “View” so they can grab the latest pitch and social copy without touching the AI prompts.
Pro tip: Repurpose this workflow for other marketing tools by swapping the PRD for a social media caption generator, blog post outliner, or ad copy brainstormer. The same process works for any content creation tool you need.
Trending AI Tools For Marketers
Here are 4 trending tools to explore this week — quick, practical upgrades to your AI marketing arsenal:
🌈 Canva Grow – new campaign/workflow space with AI optimisation for emails, social and video, launched this week. Great if you’re doing everything in Canva already.
🤖 HubSpot Breeze AI updates – fresh October drops: smarter AI assistants for content, reporting and automation, so you can brief once and repurpose. Perfect for teams already in HubSpot.
🖌️ Adobe Express AI Assistant – conversational editing + on-brand social/video assets from a prompt; ideal for fast campaign variants.
🧱 Adobe GenStudio – Content Production Agent – new agent that spits out ad and email variants from a marketing brief, geared at enterprise content supply chains.
