So This Happened...16 July 2025
Your weekly filter for what actually matters in the world of content, tech, and commerce
This week in So This Happened…
The European Commission says “there is no stop the clock. There is no grace period. There is no pause” when it comes to rolling out the EU AI Act, ITV and Disney announce content exchange partnership, Condé Nast and Hearst secure multi-year licensing deals for Amazon’s Rufus shopping assistant, Linda Yaccarino steps down as CEO of X after two turbulent years amid ongoing brand safety challenges, social media emerges as preferred product discovery engines in a major challenge of Google's dominance, and OpenAI quietly adds Shopify as shopping search partner…
Let's dive in!
EU says it will continue rolling out AI legislation on schedule
Why It Matters:
The European Commission has rejected pressure from over 100 tech companies, including Google and Meta, to delay the AI Act, signalling that regulatory clarity is arriving whether industry embraces it or not…and the commercial implications are major.
This isn't about compliance burden, it’s about trust, transparency and competitive positioning for sustainable revenue growth. Consumer trust has become the fundamental currency of commercial success, with research indicating that 72% of European consumers express deep concerns about AI data usage. This means that brands and publishers who build transparent AI governance frameworks aren't merely avoiding regulatory risk, they are building what in Europe, and ideally globally, will be a competitive advantage that is directly linked to improved consumer trust (a key currency) and in turn, market share.
Flashback to the early days of GDPR seven years ago: These regulations create immediate consolidation pressures similar to GDPR's impact. What was the outcome? Early adopters who spent time integrating compliance captured market differentiation whilst competitors struggled with reactive measures imposed by the EU and disenfranchised users, leading to migration towards more trusted platforms.
EU regulators, however, have tried to balance AI innovation with the requirement for regulatory frameworks to build sustainable foundations that maintains consumer confidence. This means that publishers need to take note that the Act's risk-based approach means most content recommendation engines, programmatic advertising systems, and audience analytics platforms seem to remain outside restrictive frameworks.
So what does that mean? Smart publishers and brands recognise that you need to be pro-Brand Safety. So they support this regulatory framework as market infrastructure that enables both AI capabilities and ethical leadership (something that we know consumers value highly). With specific prohibitions around exploitative practices, deliberately targeting vulnerable consumers, compliance aligns naturally with brand safety imperatives and consumer expectations.
Brands who recognise AI governance, not as operational overhead or something that you have to do for the sake of doing, but as a revenue-driving infrastructure that builds market advantages through consumer trust will be able to take the most advantage of the situation. As with GDPR, we predict short-term pain for long term gain! Watch this space, this is a big one.
ITV and Disney sign latest distribution deal between European broadcaster and SVOD giant
Why It Matters:
More significant partnership news as ITV and Disney announce a content exchange partnership, representing the latest example of "diagonal integration" reshaping European media economics. This follows remarkably similar recent deals between TF1 / Netflix and France Télévisions / Amazon Prime, suggesting a coordinated shift rather than isolated tactical moves.
Although this all sounds great on paper, the partnership model is more of a taster menu than wholesale collaboration. ITV's curated "Taste of Disney+" rail will feature select content such FX's “The Bear” and Hulu's “Only Murders in the Building”, while Disney+ presents "A Taste of ITVX" featuring carefully chosen programming like “Mr Bates vs The Post Office” and selected “Love Island” series. There are clear limits to Disney's content generosity!
This curated approach aims to prioritise mutual audience discovery of content, without platform cannibalisation. This makes sense given ITVX Premium's concerning 23% subscriber decline while the platform targets £750 million digital revenues by 2026.
Traditional broadcasters are leveraging global streaming reach, and international platforms are gaining access to local content and linear viewing habits they currently lack at scale. ITV’s diversified partnerships with Disney, Netflix and social platforms through initiatives like Zoo 55 create new inventory opportunities and seek to offset declining linear advertising revenues.
However, these content exchanges potentially fragment audience measurement and complicate attribution models (something that the advertisers aren’t going to be big fans of) across converged platforms, some creating both opportunity and operational complexity for media planners.
As we’ve been seeing over the past few weeks, some of the leading TV broadcasters are leaning in to the platforms (particularly looking at you, Amazon) and recognising these partnerships as strategic infrastructure rather than tactical distribution, building investment strategies around collaborative content ecosystems rather than competitive platform silos.
What do you think? Are content partnerships between local streamers and the global platforms going to become the future going forward?
Condé Nast and Hearts strike Amazon AI licensing deals for Rufus
Why It Matters:
How do you monetise decades of editorial expertise when the very nature of content discovery is being rewritten by AI? And why are some publishers rushing to become commerce infrastructure, rather than fighting the tide?
Condé Nast and Hearst have joined The New York Times in securing multi-year agreements with Amazon to power its AI shopping assistant Rufus, representing far more than building an opportunistic new revenue stream. What it does is build archive AND new editorial content (something that can be difficult to monetise other than through ad placement) into the core value drivers. As we move to the age of conversational search optimisation, editorial content is a critical component of engaged conversational search. This is a significant extension of a publisher-led value proposition and yields considerable leverage and power back into publishers genes.
The commercial logic here is worth pausing and thinking about…These content collaborations overhaul how editorial assets create value. Why? Because they build conversations around brands. When consumers query Rufus about "the best moisturiser for dry skin" or "what to wear to a summer wedding," they're not accessing generic product databases. They're tapping into decades of curated lifestyle expertise that publishers have meticulously built through SEO-optimised content, gift guides, and editorial judgement.
This change in positioning transforms publishers from traditional media channels into essential data infrastructure for AI-powered commerce, embedded directly into purchase decisions rather than sitting upstream in the awareness funnel.
Publishers have discovered something transformative: their editorial archives constitute invaluable training data that generic AI systems simply cannot replicate. Matt Prohaska of Prohaska Consulting identifies the strategic overlap perfectly: publishers with shopping-related content represent "natural bedfellows for Amazon's LLM ambitions" because their expertise naturally maps to consumer purchase intent. And purchase intent is the key metric as we move beyond Attention to the Intention Economy.
Is this triggering a rethinking of content partnership strategies going forward? We think so. Publishers aren't just discovering that their content archives are alternative revenue streams, they're becoming essential infrastructure for AI-powered commerce. The convergence of editorial expertise with AI training creates unprecedented opportunities to monetise content assets that were previously confined to traditional advertising models.
Amazon's approach suggests that future content success won't just depend on audience reach or engagement metrics. It will require understanding of how editorial judgement becomes embedded in AI-driven purchase journeys across multiple platforms simultaneously.
So here's the question: Are we witnessing the emergence of content as essential commerce infrastructure (as we’ve been predicting at Atonik for a while!)? And perhaps more provocatively: if publishers become integral to AI-powered commerce, what does this mean for brands who've traditionally viewed them as media channels rather than strategic partners?
Linda Yaccarino Stepping Down As CEO Of X
Why It Matters:
It's been a decidedly challenging week at the platform formerly known as Twitter. Linda Yaccarino's departure from X, after two turbulent years is much more than an executive turnover story. It illuminates the impossibility of building sustainable advertising revenue when platform governance and brand safety remains unpredictable.
Yaccarino's exit, arriving shortly after Grok's antisemitic content controversy, demonstrates why even the most accomplished advertising executives struggle to create stable revenue foundations on platforms where content moderation policies are non-existent. Despite her previous NBCUniversal credentials and efforts to diversify revenue through video content, subscription models, and premium partnerships including the NFL, X has consistently lagged behind competitors in advertiser confidence metrics.
The broader challenge extends beyond individual leadership capabilities, to fundamental platform architecture. WARC analysis reveals the commercial devastation: X's ad revenue plummeted 46.4% between 2022 and 2023 - from $4.5 billion to $2.2 billion - representing an estimated $5.9 billion loss since Musk's acquisition. While advertisers had been dipping their toes into returning to the platform, we’re sure Grok’s meltdown last week will have to be factored in to any brand’s decision to fully commit back to the platform.
So why is it that even one of the most experienced and well-connected media executives couldn’t build advertiser confidence in the X platform?. It’s not rocket science - brands don’t want their content next to unpredictable abhorrent material - Brand safety wins!
Would you consider advertising on Twitter / X given the latest brand safety issues? We think not!
These social media platforms are beating out Google for product discovery, reviews
Why It Matters:
Should every content strategist be urgently rethinking their commercial architecture when discovery itself is migrating away from traditional search into community-driven, contextual environments?
PartnerCentric's recent research reveals something very significant for content strategists: only half of Gen Z consult Google first when seeking product reviews, while one in ten millennials and Gen Z prefer Reddit over Google entirely. Two-thirds of respondents use Reddit for product discovery, bypassing traditional content-to-commerce funnels in favour of community-driven recommendations embedded within content consumption itself.
Think about what this means! This change in online purchase behaviour is a hugely significant disruption to content monetisation models, rewiring how content creates commercial value and challenging two decades of search-optimised content strategies.
Perhaps most significantly for content monetisation, nearly one in five Gen Z respondents pay for access to private retail and product communities. This isn't supplementary discovery, it’s the emergence of subscription-based content ecosystems that monetise curation expertise and community access, completely outside the traditional advertising channels.
The spending patterns validate this behavioural shift: Americans average $133 monthly on Facebook Marketplace and $40 on TikTok Shop, whilst two-fifths use Discord for shopping. These platforms aren't simply distribution channels. They're becoming integrated content-commerce environments where discovery, evaluation, and purchase happen within unified experiences.
We're witnessing the emergence of "contextual content commerce" where commercial value is created through community interaction and contextual discovery, rather than search engine optimisation and traditional advertising placements, and most brands aren’t ready for the shift.
The smart money is now on content creators and publishers who understand that commercial success depends on building discovery ecosystems within content experiences themselves. A focus on developing community-driven, contextual commerce rather than search-dependent monetisation strategies. It's a substantial shift in thinking, but increasingly necessary for sustainable growth, and it’ll be fascinating to see it in action. We are watching closely as this evolves rapidly.
Are you repositioning your content commerce strategy around community-driven discovery rather than search-optimised monetisation strategies? What impact does this have on your media spend and partnership ambitions?
OpenAI Quietly Adds Shopify As A Shopping Search Partner
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/openai-quietly-adds-shopify-as-a-shopping-search-partner/550884/
Why It Matters:
Back in an April edition of So This Happened… we covered a story about some hidden code in ChatGPT that indicated that Shopify and OpenAI were going to announce a partnership. We’re excited to say that we were right (although it was a slightly lower key announcement than we were anticipating) as OpenAI's quiet recognition of Shopify as a third-party search partner validates precisely what we've been tracking: the emergence of AI-powered commerce infrastructure that fundamentally rewires how content creates commercial value in conversational environments.
ChatGPT search now returns detailed shopping results with images, prices, and review data sourced from Shopify merchants alongside Amazon and other platforms. We are witnessing the construction of conversational commerce ecosystems where discovery, evaluation, and purchase intent converge within unified AI experiences. This isn't simply adding another distribution channel, it's the emergence of contextual commerce where purchasing decisions happen within conversational flows rather than traditional e-commerce pathways.
The commercial implications extend far beyond merchant listings, although it’s an exciting development for Shopify’s many small businesses. OpenAI's system uses structured metadata and Schema data, presumably incorporating product descriptions, reviews, and contextual information that increasingly relies on content quality and editorial judgement. As merchants are ranked according to data received from third-party providers, content creators and publishers who understand how their editorial assets become integrated into AI training data gain competitive advantages. As we keep saying - we’re moving way beyond traditional SEO!
The content-to-commerce funnels that we have been used to for the last 20 years are being replaced by intent-driven discovery mechanisms where AI systems synthesise product information, generate summaries, and guide purchase decisions through conversational interfaces. Success increasingly depends on creating content that enhances AI understanding rather than optimising for traditional search algorithms.
This shift demands rethinking content strategies around AI-powered discovery environments where commercial value is created through contextual integration rather than search-dependent monetisation models.