In today’s Digest, we cover OpenAI expanding its ChatGPT ads pilot to 31 European markets, Apple’s latest spyware alert wave appearing to be its largest yet, according to a digital rights group, and Taboola striking an exclusive programmatic display deal with NBC News.

OpenAI expands ChatGPT ads pilot to 31 European markets

OpenAI announced Wednesday that it's extending its advertising pilot to 31 markets across Europe, including Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Ireland, Belgium, Austria, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Portugal. The pilot had previously been limited to the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Japan, South Korea, Brazil, and Mexico. The expansion comes as OpenAI's ad revenue has grown more than 25% since the start of August, according to Colin Fleming, the former ServiceNow advertising executive who now serves as OpenAI's enterprise CMO, speaking during a briefing call.

Apple's latest spyware alert wave appears largest yet

Apple sent out a fresh round of spyware notifications, warning customers in 110 countries that they had been targeted with sophisticated spyware, prompting a wave of public and private reports over the weekend from people who received the alerts. Over the past several years, Apple says it has sent such alerts to people in more than 150 countries, but according to one digital rights group Apple directs victims to for support, this latest batch appears to be the largest yet.

Mohammed Al-Maskati, who leads the Access Now team investigating reports to its security helpline, told TechCrunch the organization has seen a record number of people seeking help since the notifications went out. This includes individuals who had also received threat notifications from Apple in the past. Al-Maskati estimated the volume of inquiries is running roughly 30% to 40% higher than what the nonprofit typically sees following an Apple notification wave. 

Taboola strikes exclusive programmatic display deal with NBC News

Taboola has secured a deal to exclusively power all of NBC News' programmatic display advertising sales, CEO Adam Singolda told Axios. This marks a significant milestone as the ad tech company works to expand beyond its native advertising roots into broader open-web display advertising. Under the arrangement, NBC News will use Taboola's Realize performance ad platform to handle all of its global programmatic display sales across digital properties including NBCNews.com and TODAY.com. NBC News' internal ad sales team will continue managing direct sales for premium video and other display offerings, while Taboola becomes the sole outside vendor responsible for programmatic display, effectively consolidating what had previously been spread across multiple demand- and supply-side platforms.

NBC News' display inventory, including high-impact homepage banners, will now be accessible for Taboola to sell alongside the network's own sales team, and any outside ad tech vendors seeking access to that inventory going forward will need to go through Taboola directly.