Speaker 1: Welcome to AI assembled the top AI news for small business.
Speaker 1: I'm Chris daily and each week I bring you the
Speaker 1: most important AI developments that can transform your business. Let's
Speaker 1: dive into this week's top stories.
Speaker 2: Open ai has quietly changed the shape of its Chat
Speaker 2: GPT advertising rollout, and if you run a small business,
Speaker 2: this one lands squarely in your world. As of this week,
Speaker 2: the sponsored ad test that started in February for logged
Speaker 2: in adult users on the free and Go tiers in
Speaker 2: the US is now expanding to Canada, Australia and New Zealand,
Speaker 2: and the format is starting to firm up. Ads sit
Speaker 2: below the response, clearly labeled sponsored, visually separated from the
Speaker 2: answer itself. They do not appear in temporary chats, They
Speaker 2: do not appear when you are logged out, they do
Speaker 2: not appear after image generation, and they do not appear
Speaker 2: inside the chat GPT Atlas Browser, paid tiers plus Pro Business,
Speaker 2: Enterprise and edgew remain ad free. Why this matters, Chat
Speaker 2: GPT is no longer just a research assistant sitting off
Speaker 2: to the side of your marketing plan. It is turning
Speaker 2: into a paid channel and the audience is people in
Speaker 2: what open ai internally calls solve mode. They are asking
Speaker 2: for a recommendation, a comparison, a next step that is
Speaker 2: high intent traffic. Here is the small business reality check.
Speaker 2: There is still no broad self serve AD manager. Reported
Speaker 2: early participants are big brands and agency holding companies Target Adobe, William's, Sonoma, Audible,
Speaker 2: Hello Fresh, wpp, densu Omnicom. Trade Press has reported CPMs
Speaker 2: around sixty dollars and minimum commitments around two hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: So most SMBs cannot buy a chat GPT AD today
Speaker 2: even if they wanted to. But and this is the
Speaker 2: part your competitors will miss, you can absolutely prepare three
Speaker 2: concrete moves this week. One map the five to ten
Speaker 2: questions your customers actually ask an AI when they are
Speaker 2: shopping in your category, not keywords, full questions. Two tighten
Speaker 2: your landing pages so the offer, the proof, and the
Speaker 2: price are legible in about eight seconds, because AI driven
Speaker 2: traffic reads a page differently than a Google click. Three
Speaker 2: fix your attribution before the flood. Assume the reporting on
Speaker 2: this channel will be thin and messy for at least
Speaker 2: a year, so build assisted conversion and incrementality thinking into
Speaker 2: your data board. Now, the brands that win on chat
Speaker 2: GPT ads will not be the loudest. They will be
Speaker 2: the ones that are easiest for the model to summarize
Speaker 2: accurately and easiest for a human to trust after the click.
Speaker 2: Google made a move this week that is going to
Speaker 2: change what small business marketing looks like. Almost overnight, from
Speaker 2: July thirtieth through eleven fifty nine pm Pacific on August fourth,
Speaker 2: Google is giving every Gemini user, including people on the
Speaker 2: free plan with no Google Ai subscription, ten free video
Speaker 2: generations using Gemini's new omni video model. Ten free, no
Speaker 2: credit card, no upgrade, no wait list. You just open
Speaker 2: the Gemini app, tap create video in the tools menu,
Speaker 2: describe what you want, and it makes it. This is
Speaker 2: the same underlying model that powers Google's paid video product.
Speaker 2: It handles text to video and image to video. It
Speaker 2: can restyle existing clips, and unlike a lot of earlier tools,
Speaker 2: it generates the audio track along with the visuals, voice,
Speaker 2: ambient sound, music beds. Now, let me be clear on
Speaker 2: what this actually is. It is a promotional window designed
Speaker 2: to move free tier users into paid AI plans. After
Speaker 2: August fourth, video generation on the free tier gets sharply
Speaker 2: limited again and unlimited access goes back behind Google Ai
Speaker 2: Plus Pro or Ultra. But that promotional window is the
Speaker 2: opening for an SMB that has never seriously touched video.
Speaker 2: This is the cheapest, lowest risk test drive you are
Speaker 2: going to get in twenty twenty six. Think about what
Speaker 2: ten free clips can do. A restaurant can produce three
Speaker 2: social videos of new menu items and shoot two short
Speaker 2: spots for weekend promotion. A local service business plumber, dentist,
Speaker 2: real estate agent can generate a friendly explainer for the
Speaker 2: five questions customers ask most. An e commerce shop can
Speaker 2: create product in use b roll for the top selling
Speaker 2: item in three different lifestyle contexts without a shoot. And
Speaker 2: here is the deeper story underneath the promo. Google is
Speaker 2: clearly trying to make generative video feel as casual as texting,
Speaker 2: and the pricing signal is a warning shot at every
Speaker 2: video editing tool your business currently pays for. If Gemini
Speaker 2: Omni becomes the default way, a solo owner produces a
Speaker 2: thirty second ad that is a category level shift. Two
Speaker 2: cautions before you go generate first, the free tier will
Speaker 2: have water marking and quality caps compared to the paid model.
Speaker 2: Do not shoot your once a year hero commercial on
Speaker 2: the promo.
Speaker 3: Second, get a written release from any real person you
Speaker 3: want to appear in a video, even if you are
Speaker 3: only using their photo as a style reference. The legal
Speaker 3: ground under AI likenesses is still moving fast. James back
Speaker 3: to you.
Speaker 2: Thanks Sam. Two more items that hit small business owners
Speaker 2: this week, one on tools you probably already pay for,
Speaker 2: one on policy. First, Microsoft rolled out its July update
Speaker 2: for Microsoft three sixty five Copilot, and the small business
Speaker 2: relevance is bigger than the headline suggests. Three changes to know.
Speaker 2: Copilot chat now lets you at mention the word Excel
Speaker 2: and PowerPoint agents directly inside a single chat window, so
Speaker 2: you can draft a proposal, drop it into a spreadsheet,
Speaker 2: and turn it into a deck without ever changing apps.
Speaker 2: Copilot cowork now supports local browser automation inside Microsoft Edge,
Speaker 2: which means Copilot can log into your SaaS tools, your
Speaker 2: booking system, your accounting portal, and actually click through workflows
Speaker 2: on your behalf and event triggered tasks let you tell
Speaker 2: Copilot when a specific client emails me or when someone
Speaker 2: at mentions me in teams, draft the response and have
Speaker 2: it waiting under the hood. Microsoft has swapped in the
Speaker 2: newer Open AIGPT five point six Family and Anthropics, Claude
Speaker 2: Sonnet five and Claude Fable five models, so reasoning quality
Speaker 2: on the same subscription just went up without a price change.
Speaker 2: If you were on Microsoft three sixty five Business Standard
Speaker 2: or Business Premium with Copilot, those became permanent SKUs on
Speaker 2: July first, at twenty three dollars fifty and thirty two
Speaker 2: dollars a seat per month, respectively. You already have access.
Speaker 2: Turn on cowork this week and pick one repetitive weekly
Speaker 2: task to automate just one second. On the policy side,
Speaker 2: the FTC's public comment window on its proposed policy statement
Speaker 2: about AI accuracy closed on July thirty first. The short version,
Speaker 2: the FTC is signaling that if an AI system's outputs
Speaker 2: are quietly manipulated in ways a reasonable consumer would not expect,
Speaker 2: that may be a deceptive practice under Section five of
Speaker 2: the FTC Act. It also signals that the agency views
Speaker 2: some state AI laws, including Colorado's, as potentially preempted. Two
Speaker 2: SMB takeaways. One, If you use an AI chatbot on
Speaker 2: your web site or in your customer service, you are
Speaker 2: on the hook for what it tells your customers. Pricing availability,
Speaker 2: refund policy, medical or financial claims. Build a review layer two.
Speaker 2: The state versus federal fight over AI rules is heating up,
Speaker 2: and the compliance picture in twenty twenty seven is going
Speaker 2: to look different depending on where you operate. If you
Speaker 2: sell into Colorado, California, Texas, or Illinois, keep an eye
Speaker 2: on your state level obligations even while the federal picture shifts.
Speaker 2: So three moves for this week. Sketch your top ten
Speaker 2: AI shopping prompts before chat gpt ads reach your category.
Speaker 2: Burn a few of those free Gemini videos on real content,
Speaker 2: not test clips. And if you pay for Microsoft Cope,
Speaker 2: turn on cowork and automate one recurring task. That's your brief.
Speaker 1: That's it for this week's AI assembled the top AI.
Speaker 2: News for small business.
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Speaker 1: until next week, Keep innovating and keep it real