Wei

@AdamRy_n 100% on challenging the DSP margins. This gives Publicis a better story to negotiate with TTD or even to move away from TTD.

Publicis buying LiveRamp is one of those acquisitions that the strategy is perfect in every way. But that doesn’t mean it’ll work. As Rich says, “Own the identity layer, the data stack, and the targeting decisions, and the open internet becomes just the pipes.” This is the strategy behind the deal and he is spot on. The distribution tax of The Trade Desk is to identity and the supply. If you’re Publicis, you have control enough budget to get access to supply, so acquiring for identity is the missing gap to vertically integrate their offerings and expand margin. But not so fast. This is no different than Informa buying TechTarget or Under Armour buying all the fitness apps. Both data plays that on the surface were a no brainer. But the execution of these deals is way harder than people realize. Integrating the teams, the data, and the different models make it a huge uphill battle. If they pull it off, it’s bad news for The Trade Desk. Not only questions their network effects, but they’ll pay an additional tax to Ramp to support their UID2. I still think this will work and the deal makes sense. I dont know what agentic offerings this helps Publicis with… but maybe that’s just PR BS. We’ll see in ~2 years how it turns out.

@schiste @madiator Yeah! What do you think of this impact to websites and publishers?

@hsuehwei2000 @madiator Codex can still do live fetch, you can even force it, in CLI. Same for Claude Code. Web versions it’s much harder. They are most probably also using indexes to complement their own crawling.

When CC or Codex do web search, what are they using underneath?

@schiste @madiator Thanks for sharing ! I am looking into this mechanics that impact web publishers. Agents seem to be moving away from live fetch/RAG for better latency and cost. I found codex now default to cache unless you ask it to live fetch. Seems a big impact to how we track AI bots.

@madiator The fun way to discover all of that is to create a website with anoter company owning same name different .tld and trying to get him to fetch data on the non cached website. Spoiler: it won't fetch it.

@Hk05Krishnan @thesamparr Normally agencies are profitable early on, why do they still need PE money though?

@thesamparr The shift to 75% gross margins means AI-enabled agencies are now competing directly against traditional SaaS for the exact same private equity dollars.

The agency business model just got really interesting. Shaan and I were talking about this thesis called "service as a software" on MFM. I always thought running an agency was a huge pain in the ass. But AI flips the math. The old model requires an army of humans to get things done, which meant low margins and low multiples. So you replace the human labor with AI, where one person can do the work of seven. At the same time, private equity firms are shifting their budgets away from SaaS to buy up these new service companies. A traditional agency that might run on 40% gross margins, is now an AI service biz that hits 75% and gets tech multiples. Wild shift.

AI agents may monetize : the urge to command A different kind of addiction might be forming Social media monetized scrolling. Agents will monetize command. Both are desired loops. That is where things get interesting. And dangerous. Something to closely watch out soon

@andrewchen The smaller ai apps don't have the scale for ads to work and also they probably don't capture the same level of user intent that ChatGPT does. Hard to imagine that ads can work there l.

tldr; mega explosion in ad-supported consumer AI in ~18 months

@poezhao0605 Kaishou already has distribution, the video ai is an value add i will say.

OpenAI announced today it is shutting down Sora. On the same day, Kuaishou’s Q4 earnings revealed Kling AI generated RMB 340 million in revenue last quarter. ARR surpassed $300 million by January. 60 million global users. 600 million videos created. The divergence is striking. OpenAI treated video generation as a showcase. Kuaishou treated it as a product line.

@_simonsmith There are 2 paths now for AI monetization 1. Consumer facing for free users : ads 2. Enterprise facing : AI agents by tokens. Both can drive revenue for OpenAI I believe

More thoughts about OpenAI’s enterprise pivot: Does it mean the ad tests so far haven’t been great, that revenue there looks less promising? Does it mean lower priority for consumer hardware, or a pivot to make hardware more business focused?

My daily reminder

@WifiMoneyPlant @stratechery Search revenue might still go up even search volumes come down, you can do so by increasing the cpc or ecpm per search. Also this why Google bidding has become even more blackbox late year.

@stratechery i wonder when does google search start going down impressive how they are still growin

2-5-2025 ($) •Google Earnings •Search Status •China Antitrust Actions stratechery.com/2025/google-ea…

General Users: Thrilled to have access to more free and efficient AI tools. Undeniably, DeepSeek’s rise signifies a new phase in the US-China AI war. PS: While I was initially skeptical of DeepSeek, after reading more, I believe we should view this as a positive sign for all

Different Perspectives: United States: Nervous, as their business model of selling expensive models and building large-scale facilities is being challenged by a lower-cost alternative. China: Proud, demonstrating China's technological power and challenging the US technology.

# DeepSeek Sparks AI Warfare! DeepSeek’s emergence has undoubtedly dropped a bombshell into the AI world. After reading numerous comments, I find that everyone’s arguments are valid, depending on whether you focus on its advantages or controversies.

Stargate project Alliance - the ah ha moment Oracle seems to be positioning itself to become the preferred channel partner for OpenAI. Imagine OpenAI AGI + the client base of Oracle. The market adoption will be so much faster than OpenAI pushing alone.

If Perplexity is disrupting search, then search ads might be disrupted as well. What do you all think the future of search ads will look like?

Figuring out your next steps : Not easy unless you have been thinking about it for a while, so need to take your time, and that is why the severance package nego is so important to buy time for yourself!

Knowing what you need : I am like most people needs money, but there are other things I was thinking, like handover period, insurance, internal/external communication etc.. All the things I need from now to land my next thing

I was recently let go due to company shift of focus. since then I started my journal, and I want to share my journey that helps me so far - The first 90 days, it is all about understanding the situation, by knowing your leverage, your needs and figuring out your next steps