Observed Signal · Aug 31, 2026 · Market Signal · Source: U of Digital · Impact: 4/5
U of Digital Selected by the ANA to Deliver AI Education for Marketers
New collaboration includes live workshops, in-person conference programming, and an e-learning curriculum for ANA members.
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Is AI Really a Form of Publishing?
A guest column by Myles Younger, Chief Growth Officer of U of Digital, challenges the prevailing assumption that consumer AI will inevitably be ad-supported like the internet or traditional media. He argues that AI is fundamentally different from publishing: it is an artificial intellect, a form of labor, has genuine utility, and lacks the economies of scale of content distribution. He suggests AI may be more like a utility or appliance, citing the possibility of bundling AI with mobile plans or embedding it in hardware. While he acknowledges that many AI applications will incorporate advertising, he urges the industry to consider alternative economic models for consumer AI.
We Taught Claude How U of Digital Teaches. Now It Helps Us Scale.
See how U of Digital built a Claude Ask Your Org workspace with instructions, files, tools, skills, and memory so every conversation starts with context.
Perplexity blocks Time's agent-targeted markdown ads
Perplexity has blocked advertising embedded in AI-readable markdown versions of Time’s webpages from influencing its search index and AI agents. Time, working with adtech partner Mobian, inserted sponsor-approved FAQ-style content into markdown pages intended for AI crawlers; early participants included Ally Bank and the Project Management Institute. Perplexity called the tactic deceptive, confirmed it suppressed those markdown ads from surfacing in agent results, and warned publishers using such formats risk reputational downgrades and lower trust scores in its proprietary index. Reporting and tests (e.g., The Register) found AI crawlers received sponsored markdown while Google’s standard crawler got the human-facing HTML. The episode highlights differences in platform approaches to commercial data for AI systems and arrives amid an IAB AI Transparency and Disclosure Framework (Jan 2026) that does not explicitly address ads delivered to AI crawlers.
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