Issue
No. 07.

This Week in AI + Advertising

1. 1

   ChatGPT Ads Are in India.

   OpenAI switched ads on in India on Thursday, for logged-in adults on the Free tier and the ₹399/month Go tier only, clearly labelled and placed below the response. WPP and Omnicom are the first agency partners, with over 50 brands going live this week. India is ChatGPT’s second-largest market at 100 million-plus weekly users, doubling year on year, and the launch lands as OpenAI builds revenue ahead of a planned IPO. The self-serve Ads Manager opens on 4 September with a daily minimum of ₹725, which is the real test of whether this is a platform for 50 big brands or for everyone.

2. 2

   Your Organic Traffic Is Down 10%. The People Still Showing Up Are Worth More.

   Brainlabs looked at 54 advertisers and found organic search sessions fell 10.5% as Google AI Overviews became the default experience, with some categories losing far more. But traffic arriving from ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini and Perplexity rose 163%, and those visitors completed key actions at roughly 1.5 times the rate of organic search visitors. The read: AI is swallowing the early, exploratory searches, and the people who still click through are further along and more likely to buy. A traffic dashboard that only tracks organic sessions is now telling half the story.

3. 3

   Google Will Start Generating New Footage for Your Video Ads. You Have Until September 4 to Say No.

   Performance Max is getting an upgrade that goes past its usual crop-and-resize trick: for gaps in horizontal, vertical or square inventory, Google will now generate new pixels rather than reframe existing ones. Advertisers who don’t want this have to actively opt out, either through their account team or Google’s opt-out form, by 4 September. Anyone in a regulated category, or anyone precious about what their product actually looks like on screen, has one week to make that call before it’s made for them.

4. 4

   65% of Shoppers Say They’ll Use AI This Festive Season. 8% of Retailers Say They’re Ready.

   Narvar’s new shopper survey has consumers well ahead of the brands meant to be serving them: 43% plan to use AI for gift discovery, 33% for comparing products and summarising reviews, and 63% expect to spend more than last year. On the other side, the vast majority of retailers surveyed have no real plan for how AI-assisted shoppers should be handled differently. The gap between how people already shop and how brands are set up to sell to them keeps showing up in every one of these reports, this is just the festive-season edition.

5. 5

   India Is About to Spend More on Festive Shopping Than Last Year, and Feel Slightly Better About It

   Hansa Research’s Festive Insights 2026 finds stronger spending intent this season, more of it happening online, and a growing preference for eco-friendly choices even in gifting categories. Nothing shocking on its own, but stack it against the AI-shopping-readiness gap above and the brief for this festive season is clearer than usual: more money moving, more of it online, more scrutiny on what a product is actually made of. Plan creative accordingly.