Welcome to this week’s edition of Katalys Connect – your shortcut to the latest in performance marketing!
[Read time: 5 minutes]
What’s in this issue? Each week, we pack the latest trends, actionable insights, and industry breakthroughs into a quick read – ensuring you’re not just keeping up, you’re staying ahead.
- Monetization: Perplexity rethinks its ad strategies, The Trade Desk challenges Google’s dominance, and publisher alliances expand across borders.
- Growth: From events-based tracking to TikTok’s performance pivot and Google’s evolving ad labels, advertisers are redefining how results are measured.
- Future of Commerce: YouTube becomes the new holiday hero, ChatGPT enables seamless shopping, and AI pushes online sales toward record-breaking highs.
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💸 Monetization
Perplexity Pauses Ads • Perplexity has halted new ad deals to rethink how monetization fits into its AI-powered search experience.
- With just $20,000 in ad revenue last year, Perplexity faces mounting pressure to create sustainable revenue streams that also benefit publishers seeking visibility within AI-driven search environments.
- Perplexity’s VP, Jessica Chan, confirmed the suspension of new advertiser partnerships as the company reassesses its ad model to balance user trust, transparency, and long-term scalability.
OpenAds Unpacked • The Trade Desk’s new OpenAds auction wrapper promises greater transparency for publishers — but raises questions about control and complexity across the open web.
- OpenAds promises to resolve auction visibility issues associated with recent Transaction ID changes by Prebid, although it may introduce new dependencies for publishers to manage.
- The Trade Desk markets OpenAds as a win for the open internet, yet critics warn it could create a new form of platform consolidation—mirroring Google’s historic grip on programmatic ecosystems.
Ozone Expands Stateside • UK publisher alliance Ozone is taking on the U.S., signing major partners and evolving into a full audience insights platform.
- With new members including The Wall Street Journal, CNN, and The Guardian U.S., Ozone is building a cross-publisher marketplace that promises advertisers richer first-party audience data.
- The company plans to expand its U.S. team from 10 to 50 employees in 2025, signaling an aggressive push to deepen agency relationships and compete directly with major ad networks.
📈 Growth
Events Power Partnerships • Moving beyond last-click, event-based tracking gives affiliate programs transparency and builds stronger partner relationships.
- By allowing affiliates to track beyond just conversion events such as email sign-ups, demo requests, and content downloads, advertisers can better understand how affiliates drive early-funnel engagement.
- This data-sharing approach fosters trust and accountability across partnerships, enabling brands to attract quality affiliates and shorten activation cycles.
Google Revamps Labels • Google’s new “Sponsored results” header unifies ad labeling across formats, but also changes how users choose to interact with paid content.
- The redesign consolidates Text and Shopping ads under a single “Sponsored results” banner, creating a more cohesive experience across desktop and mobile search interfaces.
- Because users can now minimize or hide entire sponsored groups, brands must invest in relevance and creative execution to drive engagement from consciously selective consumers.
TikTok Proves Its Power • TikTok is reshaping its identity from cultural hub to performance powerhouse to win back advertisers.
- Its new Smart+ automation tools help marketers refine targeting and creative testing, providing measurable ROI metrics that mirror the rigor of performance platforms like Meta.
- Through integration with Google Analytics, TikTok now offers a clearer link between brand engagement and conversions—hoping to help advertisers further justify spend and scale confidently within the app’s ecosystem.
🚀 Future of Commerce
YouTube’s Holiday Takeover • YouTube is emerging as a top holiday ad channel for growth-focused brands as they diversify budgets away from Meta.
- Advertisers who are reallocating spend toward YouTube are looking to capitalize on long-form, high-intent engagement as video consumption surges during the holiday season.
- Some agencies report a sharp increase in clients prioritizing YouTube within omnichannel plans, as the platform’s reach and performance data rival traditional TV and outperform social competitors on brand lift and conversions.
ChatGPT Goes Shoppable • OpenAI’s new Instant Checkout feature lets users shop directly in ChatGPT—bringing in true “agentic commerce.”
- The feature allows users to discover, select, and purchase products in a single conversation, with Etsy merchants among the first to integrate checkout experiences.
- Broader support for Shopify and other platforms is planned, offering merchants new exposure opportunities as ChatGPT’s ranking algorithm prioritizes product relevance and content quality.
Holiday Sales Forecast • Adobe forecasts a record $253.4B in online holiday sales for 2025, boosted by early shoppers and AI-fueled discovery.
- The “Cyber 5” period is expected to account for 17.2% of all holiday spend, with Cyber Monday alone projected to hit $14.2B in online sales—the largest single day ever recorded.
- Generative AI tools are forecasted to drive a 520% surge in retail traffic, empowering consumers to find deals faster and pushing brands to use predictive pricing and recommendation engines to stay competitive.
