LiveRamp has donated the User Context Protocol (UCP) to IAB Tech Lab, which is incorporating it into the Open Source Initiative. UCP defines how AI agents exchange real-time intent and response signals in advertising. It uses embeddings to preserve privacy when encoding the signals.
Google is rolling out Gemini models Ads Advisor and Analytics Advisor, which will be available globally early next month. Ads Advisor works in Google Ads accounts to brainstorm campaign ideas, generate relevant keywords, and diagnose performance. Analytics Advisor works in Google Analytics to perform key driver analysis and suggest growth opportunities.
Brands want to make sure their content is findable in AI searches. AirOps uses brands’ target personas and proprietary knowledge to refine content that AI will see. They just raised a $40 million Series B, having grown from 20 employees to almost 100 this year.
Meta has announced agreements with USA Today, People Inc., and other news publishers to pay for access to their content and link to their articles in its AI chatbot. It’s a sharp contrast to Perplexity, which the Chicago Tribune and New York Times are separately suing for allegedly scraping content and bypassing paywalls. Despite this deal, Meta apparently still opposes compensating publishers for news links in social media posts.