Speaking of new ad channels, it was only a matter of time until Meta began serving ads on its Threads platform. It will happen early next year, according to reports in The Information. Threads recently hit 275 million monthly users.
Perplexity AI will begin serving ads alongside clearly marked “sponsored” follow-up questions. Whole Foods Market and PMG are among the initial advertising partners. Not only will brands not influence responses to initial questions, the sponsored follow-up questions will also be answered using Perplexity’s regular AI technology.
Audience platform Alliant has been acquired by private equity firm Inverness Graham. Alliant offers marketers custom audience segments based on data sources including proprietary transactional data. It will continue to operate as an independent company.
A U.S. district court judge has ruled that Google acted to create illegal monopolies in online advertising technology in a way that blocked competition and allowed higher ad prices to be charged. Google will appeal; meantime, the government will decide what to ask the court to do to remedy the monopoly. Google also faces a new U.K. antitrust lawsuit over its dominance of search.