Here's a wild split: The Wall Street Journal says AI is gutting Madison Avenue, automating creative work into oblivion. Then the same outlet pivots—companies are hunting for storytellers like never before. So which is it? Both, actually. Smart algorithms crush low-level production tasks while brands realize they're starving for human narrative. The promo move: let AI (and commonsku’s automation) handle the back end, then redirect that saved energy into the pitch stories and client relationships only you can build. Tech handles the grind. You handle the magic.
OpenAI just rolled out a fresh image model for ChatGPT, and the reactions are all over the map. One reviewer calls it "stunning and enormously fun," while another points out serious competitive gaps. The official drop from OpenAI promises faster rendering and sharper outputs—but does it nail the mockup-to-reality leap promo pros actually need? For now, it's worth testing if you're already in the ChatGPT ecosystem. Just don't expect it to replace your art director yet.
If you're still optimizing for Google alone, you're missing where the traffic's headed. AI engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity are rewriting discovery—and the promo shops they surface first are the ones who welcome their crawlers, not block them. This breakdown from Dharmesh Shah (Founder and CTO Hubspot) lays out the playbook: open your robots.txt to LLMs, restructure content as clean Q&A blocks with schema markup, and lean into authoritative cross-posting (think LinkedIn, industry newsletters) so AI trusts your answers enough to cite them. It's not about ranking anymore—it's about being the source AI quotes when buyers ask, "Who can help with custom merch for our next event?"
Google just dropped CC, an AI assistant that wants to be your alarm clock's smarter sibling. Instead of reaching for your phone to doomscroll, CC serves up a personalized morning brief—news, calendar, priorities, the works—all curated while you're still asleep. Think ChatGPT Pulse, but with Google's full toolkit behind it. The coolest tip? You can literally train CC like a long-term chief of staff. Email it directly, reply to its briefs, and it'll remember your preferences, priorities, and recurring tasks over time. Tell it "these five clients are top priority" or "always flag travel days," and future briefs get smarter and more dialed in.
From platform overhauls to skucast truth bombs to workflow features distributors requested, we shipped. Our End-of-Year Recap breaks it down: milestones, community moments, biggest releases, and the 2026 pipeline. Mark and Catherine unpack where promo's trending. This one's got receipts.
PPAI Expo, January 12-15. Find us at Booth #2310 for platform walkthroughs. Breakfast Club's at Libertine Social. We're running conference sessions on AI and maximizing commonsku. Plus happy hours for anyone tired of small talk. Basically, we packed the week with reasons to connect. See the lineup.
Typing out AI prompts is so 2024. Multimodal user interfaces (MUIs) let your team talk, gesture, and show instead of hunt-and-peck through typing queries—think speech, vision, images—and the productivity leap is real. Google's rolling out audio updates, and the shift is already here. If your ops team is still keyboard-bound, buy them mics. Seriously. Voice prompting cuts friction, speeds up workflows, and frees hands for the work that actually requires finesse. The shops embracing this now won't just move faster—they'll leave the typers behind. It’s also why these old-school gooseneck mics are making a comeback.
💸 Really cool animation that shows where all the AI money has gone, from 2019-present day.
📹 Zoom's AI Companion 3.0 just landed, packing smarter meeting summaries, follow-ups that actually make sense, and workflow automation that might finally justify all those video calls.
✍️ An AI Content Strategy app: airops
👓 We’re calling it: AI gear (glasses, apparel, jewelry) is about to be big, here’s how Meta’s AI glasses help folks hear better.
🎬 Adobe’s letting you edit Firefly videos just with prompts now, plus, you can edit with Photoshop in ChatGPT
🔮 Stanford's AI experts predict 2026's terrain—multimodal agents, regulation shifts, and the tech that'll actually stick.
🎙️ Whoa, this is crazy: Meta drops a text-prompt audio editor
🏛️ The White House just cleared the runway for federal AI policy, blocking states from throwing up roadblocks to AI progress.
🎟️ Going to Expo? See all the commonsku happenings at Expo plus deets for our session on the AI Trends and Tools Every Promo Pro Needs Now!