In today’s ExchangeWire News Digest, we discuss OpenAI opening unsold ChatGPT ad space to programmatic buyers through Magnite and PubMatic, The New York Times and other publishers suing Brave over AI scraping and paywall bypass, and Deloitte finding that free-to-air TV ads are losing some of their appeal in Australia but remain influential.

OpenAI opens unsold ChatGPT ad space to programmatic buyers

OpenAI has struck deals with independent ad exchanges Magnite and PubMatic to sell its unsold ChatGPT ad inventory programmatically, according to a report first attributed to The Information. Advertisers will be able to set budgets, bid and upload creative through tools they already use, while OpenAI keeps control of ad placement and delivery. The deals cover remnant inventory, meaning space not taken up by direct sales.

Financial terms and expected volumes were not disclosed.

Brave faces Publisher lawsuit over AI scraping

The New York Times and the publishers of the New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune and Orlando Sentinel have filed lawsuits against Brave Software. They accuse it of unlawfully scraping their content for AI use and letting users bypass their paywalls. According to the complaint from the Daily News, Tribune and Sentinel publishers, Brave has made money from its index of scraped websites by selling AI companies paid access to real-time content. The filing names Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI and Cohere among the recipients.

The complaint also says Brave advertises that hundreds of top publishers can be accessed through its paywall-blocking feature, and that it never sought permission or paid the publishers. A Times spokesperson, Graham James, said Brave ignored repeated requests to stop.

Australian TV ads lose some pull but remain influential

Free-to-air television ads are influencing fewer Australian shoppers than a year ago but still top every other medium, according to Deloitte’s Media & Entertainment Consumer Insights report. The share of Australians who say free-to-air ads sway their buying decisions fell to 46% from 50%, one point ahead of social media at 45%. Free-to-air also ranks first for comfort with advertising, including among Gen Z. Most other channels slipped too: shopping websites to 44%, search engines to 38%, streaming video to 36% and radio to 34%. Out-of-home edged up to 38%.

Social media leads among Gen Z (65%) and Millennials (63%), while free-to-air leads among Gen X (47%) and Boomers (37%). Weekly video viewing fell to 16 hours 55 minutes from 19 hours 55 minutes, though willingness to engage with ads rose slightly, to 34% on television and 41% on smartphones.

Deloitte’s Peter Corbett advised advertisers to think less about a single winning channel and more about reaching people across screens and platforms.