By Piet Baudoin · Poldermarketing
October 25, 2026 · First edition
AI is taking on more work on both sides of marketing: comparing businesses and adapting ads. This first daily newsletter covers two developments from the past week. What changes for your business, and what do we learn from them?
How does my business appear in AI answers?
Demandbase announced an AEO agent on October 20. Here, AEO means working on how AI assistants describe and recommend your business. The vendor says teams can examine this for each role in a buying group and identify the sources informing those answers.
The announcement names a useful step: “Teams can spot outdated information and content gaps”. When a potential customer uses AI to research vendors, you want to understand the picture it presents of your company. Demandbase sells this software; its announcement does not demonstrate additional revenue.
Marketing OS learns: compare AI answers for each buying question with current company information and record discrepancies as specific content tasks.
Source: Demandbase, October 20, 2026.
Can ChatGPT Ads change my ads automatically?
On October 20, Barry Schwartz published an email he personally received from OpenAI as an advertiser. It says creative enhancements will be enabled from October 30 for new and existing self-serve campaigns. Advertisers can opt out in Ads Manager.
Changes can cover headlines, descriptions, image sizes, translations, and destination links. The email says: “without requiring you to review or approve each version.” Each variation can therefore run without your prior approval. Your landing page also becomes source material for your ad. An outdated offer can consequently travel beyond that single page.
Marketing OS learns: assess automatic ad variations together with their source copy, landing page, and tracking links before allowing them.
Source: Barry Schwartz, Search Engine Roundtable, October 20, 2026.
What do the people doing the work say?
New in this newsletter: voices of people who practice the craft themselves. These are opinions, not facts. Under the story on ChatGPT Ads, an advertiser who had already tested the channel commented:
“We ended up pausing our ChatGPT ads test due to poor lead quality and now I’m glad we did.”
Melissa Mackey, comment on Search Engine Roundtable · October 20, 2026
She stopped her test because the leads disappointed, and is glad she did. On the Demandbase AEO agent, we have not yet found an independent voice.
Marketing OS learns from this: judge a new ad channel on the quality of its leads, not just the number.
Where are we heading?
This week brought tools that measure how AI talks about a business, and ads that rewrite themselves without anyone approving every version. So I expect that within five years the first comparison between suppliers will usually be done by an agent, not a person. The buyer will say: just send it to my agent. And that agent reads everything: your offer, your methods, your evidence, and what you contribute to the world.
Then the loudest voice no longer wins. The one who truly delivers value, and shows it clearly, does. Marketing becomes more honest and moves to the core of the business: seeing what customers really need, and building the product around it. To me that is the best part of this shift: doing good starts to pay.
What does this mean for you?
Your company information serves customers and supplies material for AI. At Poldermarketing, I use AI agents and AI automations to connect that work: clarifying your offer, running campaigns, and learning from the results. One specific marketing task is the starting point; what we learn determines the next step.
Which sources were used?
Both sources were opened directly using Python urllib on October 25, 2026. Every quote appears word for word in its source. The accompanying source file records the checks and rejected sources.