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2026 ChatGPT Ads Predictions
“I kind of think of ads as a last resort for us as a business model.” — Sam Altman, 2024 On January 16, 2026: OpenAI announced it will begin testing ads in ChatGPT. While the pilot is currently invitation-only for major partners, we’ve all seen this movie before. PREDICTIONS ADVICE FOR BRANDSIf you can access…
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It’s Time For Agencies to Start Investing In Clients
I worked with a public company trading at roughly 8x price-to-sales. That means the market valued every $1 of new annual revenue at $8 of equity value. The value created for shareholders was massive. Yet, the agency’s fees remained a flat, single-digit percentage of the media budget. This is the irony of the agency model.…
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Agencies Aren’t Retained – They’re Re-Chosen
The agency business is brutal. I reviewed a small agency’s 2024 client list. By January 2026, 55% of those clients were gone or inactive. That’s not a performance anomaly. It’s the operating environment. What the data suggests:– 78% of senior marketers expected to run an agency/partner review in the next 12 months (Campaign Live, November…
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Prediction: Agencies will See Higher Churn in 2026
The agency business is brutal. I reviewed a small agency’s 2024 client list. By January 2026, 55% of those clients were gone or inactive. That’s not a performance anomaly. It’s the operating environment. What the data suggests: What the means for Agency growth: Implications: Service diversification matters (when done right): In a world of short…
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Brands will increase spend across low-cpm, mid-tier and long-tail podcasts in 2026
My iPhone auto-downloaded 13 podcasts this week via Apple Podcasts.That’s ~91 “delivered” ads at roughly a $30 CPM. Of those downloads, I listened to just 4 episodes—and skipped about 80% of the ads.In total, I actually played 6 ads. That’s a 93% drop-off from delivered to heard.👉 Which means advertisers effectively paid ~$455 CPM to…