1Shopify’s AI traffic tripled — and 34% growth came with it
Shopify posted Q2 revenue of $3.58 billion, up 34%, with GMV climbing 32% to $115.57 billion — its fifth straight quarter of 30%+ GMV growth — and an 18% free cash flow margin. The AI numbers were the story: AI-driven traffic and AI-driven orders each tripled year over year, and 75% of AI-attributed purchases came from outside the top 100 product categories. The stock closed up nearly 17%.
That last stat is the one to sit with. Agentic commerce isn’t just funneling demand to bestsellers — it’s discovering the long tail. If AI shoppers buy from catalog depths that search and social never reached, structured product data across your entire catalog just became an acquisition channel, not a hygiene task.
2Pinterest called AI a “clear accelerant” — and 640 million users agree
Pinterest beat Q2 estimates with revenue of $1.18 billion, up 18%, and adjusted EPS of $0.43 versus $0.36 expected. Monthly active users hit 640 million, up 11% — the eleventh consecutive quarter of double-digit user growth — while global ARPU rose 7% to $1.86. The company raised its full-year EBITDA margin outlook to roughly 30% and is repositioning from inspiration to purchase decisions with Pinterest Assistant, Performance+, and Smart Assembly.
Pinterest is quietly writing the mid-size platform playbook: don’t compete on frontier models, use AI to close the gap between intent and checkout. The pilots wiring first-party measurement into AI bidding — optimizing toward customer lifetime value and incremental ROAS rather than clicks — are the part performance buyers should watch.
3AppLovin grew 53% — and tied its only miss to model release pace
AppLovin reported Q2 revenue of $1.92 billion, up 53%, with adjusted EBITDA up 58% to $1.61 billion and EPS of $3.76. Revenue came in a hair under estimates, and management’s explanation was remarkable: a “lighter-than-normal pace of advertising-model improvements” during the quarter. The next model improvement is already live, and Q3 guidance of $2.055–2.085 billion implies 46–48% growth.
Read that explanation again: an ad platform’s revenue now tracks its ML release cadence the way SaaS revenue tracks sales headcount. Model ops is the growth lever. It’s also a due-diligence question every advertiser should ask their platform vendors — how often do your models ship, and what happened to performance last time they didn’t?
4Disney sold out the Super Bowl — and floated a free ad tier
Disney beat fiscal Q3 estimates with adjusted EPS of $2.06 versus $1.86 expected, and entertainment streaming revenue up 11% to $5.53 billion. But streaming ad revenue rose just 3% — impressions were up while rates fell. Meanwhile, Disney said it has already sold out Super Bowl inventory for February’s ABC/ESPN broadcast and confirmed it’s exploring a free, ad-supported streaming product.
The split tells you where video pricing is going: live tentpoles are inflation, everything else is deflation. Disney’s answer to falling streaming CPMs isn’t higher rates — it’s more ad-supported reach. Plan budgets accordingly: scarcity buys keep getting more expensive while everyday streaming impressions get cheaper.
5OpenAI gave ChatGPT ads conversion bidding and a shopping carousel
OpenAI shipped a wave of ChatGPT ads upgrades: conversion-optimized CPC campaigns that steer spend toward clicks likely to convert, expanded measurement and budget tools, and a Google Shopping–style carousel arriving ahead of Q4 via product feed campaigns. A beta self-serve Ads Manager is open, with Dentsu, Omnicom, Publicis, and WPP as agency partners and Adobe, Criteo, Pacvue, and StackAdapt on the tech side.
Four months after opening to advertisers, ChatGPT ads already look like Google’s performance playbook — feeds, carousels, conversion bidding, and all. For anyone planning Q4 budgets right now, the carousel is the test worth running before CPCs discover their real market price.
6Teads sued Google over 6.88 trillion lost impressions
Adtech firm Teads filed suit against Google, seeking damages and court-ordered changes and alleging that Google’s restrictive practices cost it 6.88 trillion impressions across the open-web advertising market. The suit lands as US antitrust remedies against Google’s ad stack are still being worked out.
This is the private-litigation wave everyone predicted after the DOJ verdicts — adtech companies putting a hard number on the harm and asking courts to collect. However these cases resolve, the open web’s plumbing is getting repriced under legal pressure. Buyers should be stress-testing supply-path diversity now, not after the remedies land.
7Hearst bought Disney’s A+E stake for $1.2 billion
Hearst agreed to buy Disney’s 50% stake in A+E Global Media for $1.2 billion, taking full control of Lifetime, History Channel, A&E Network, and A+E’s streaming and production assets.
Disney sheds a linear-adjacent asset to keep feeding streaming; Hearst gets cable brands it can run for cash and spin into FAST channels and streaming niches. Expect more legacy TV changing hands at a discount — and for advertisers, that consolidation usually means cheaper, more flexible reach in the mid-budget tier.
8Spotify’s automated channels near 40% of ad-supported revenue
Spotify said automated channels — self-serve and programmatic buying — are approaching 40% of its ad-supported revenue. The company flagged India and Indonesia as “very populous” and “lucrative” markets as it works to convert its large free-user base into paying and monetizable listeners.
Audio is following Meta’s arc a decade later: automation first, then price discovery. When 40% of an ad business is machine-bought, rate cards stop mattering and auction skill starts. If audio is in your mix, the efficient inventory increasingly lives in the self-serve stack, not the IO.
9India threatened Meta’s safe harbour — and got an apology
An Indian parliamentary panel told Mark Zuckerberg to apologise over a PM Modi video takedown or risk Meta’s safe-harbour protection — and he did. Officials argued Meta’s recommendation systems actively select and distribute content, making it a publisher rather than a neutral intermediary, with scrutiny extending to CSAM ads, algorithmic bias, and wrongful takedowns.
The intermediary-liability shield is cracking in the world’s largest internet market, on the exact logic Brussels has been testing: recommendation equals editorial responsibility. If that precedent sticks, every feed-driven platform’s moderation costs, ad policies, and brand-safety guarantees change — and not just in India.
10Performance pay became the majority of creator deals
Performance-tied compensation now makes up 53% of brand-creator partnerships, up from 23% two years ago — the standard offer has shifted from flat fee to a guaranteed base plus commission on attributable sales. US creator ad spend is projected to pass $40 billion in 2026, with 59% of marketers planning to increase influencer budgets against just 9% planning cuts.
The flat-fee era is over. Creators are becoming a performance channel with talent-management overhead — which rewards brands with clean attribution and punishes anyone still paying on follower count. Fix your tracking before your next campaign brief, because the creators you want are now negotiating on the sales they can prove.