This week, AI advertising took another step towards becoming a mainstream media channel, while mixed spending signals and agency growth. In today’s MadTech Daily, we discuss United reorganising its advertising business to support its tech push, WARC tracking shifts in ad spend among 25 global brands, and Alibaba’s Taobao adding AI to cross-border shopping.

OpenAI is looking to move ChatGPT advertising beyond the experimental stage. The company is recruiting an agency partner tasked with making its ads a permanent line item in media plans at major advertising holding companies. However, OpenAI also faces legal pressure from Apple. A US judge has ordered the company to hand over evidence early in Apple's trade secrets case, citing concerns that data on devices belonging to former Apple engineers now at OpenAI could be erased. 

Meanwhile, marketing budgets are sending mixed signals across markets. In the UK, the latest IPA Bellwether Report found that marketing budgets rose at their fastest pace in more than two years in the third quarter, with a net balance of +14.3% of companies increasing spending. Australia, by contrast, saw agency-booked advertising expenditure fall 3.4% year on year in August, driven largely by weaker digital spending, although year-to-date expenditure remains slightly ahead of 2025.

Against this backdrop, Publicis Groupe reported accelerating third-quarter growth, with net revenue reaching €3.81bn (£3.32bn), up 7.9% year on year, and organic growth hitting 5%. The group attributed its performance largely to winning market share from competitors.

The media industry is also navigating difficult workforce decisions. Netflix is cutting approximately 6% of its global workforce, or around 1,000 jobs, in its largest round of redundancies since 2022. The reductions will affect several departments, including product, technology, legal and human resources, even as the streaming giant continues investing in areas it considers strategically important.

Finally, publishers are strengthening their collective position in negotiations with AI companies. The New York Times has joined SPUR (Standards for Publisher Usage Rights), a coalition seeking common standards for AI licensing agreements.