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- New York Just Changed AI Advertising Forever!
New York Just Changed AI Advertising Forever!
Plus: The authenticity crisis hitting major brands and tools you need for 2026
Aleric Heck
December 22, 2025
In partnership with
The AI marketing world delivered some genuinely consequential developments this week—and I'm not just talking about shiny new tools. We're witnessing a fundamental shift in how brands must approach AI-generated content, with New York's new disclosure law setting a precedent that's likely to ripple across the country.
But here's what really caught my attention: while 92% of businesses now use AI-driven personalization, trust in advertising has hit a troubling low. Six out of ten people now distrust ads they see, largely because they believe the content is AI-generated or manipulated. That tension between scale and authenticity? It's the defining challenge heading into 2026.
📍 Quick Preview:
New York's AI disclosure law—what it means for your campaigns
Meta's new creator partnership tools that could transform influencer marketing
The authenticity backlash hitting Amazon, McDonald's, and major publishers
7 AI tools worth exploring this week (including some impressive updates)
Let's dive in.
📈 Today's Top AI Marketing Story
New York Signs AI Disclosure Law—Here's What Advertisers Need to Know
Governor Kathy Hochul signed legislation this week requiring advertisers to make "conspicuous" disclosure when ads feature AI-generated people or synthetic avatars that don't correspond to real humans.
This isn't a minor compliance checkbox. If you're using AI-generated spokespeople, synthetic influencer replicas, or avatar-led content in advertising, you'll need visible disclosure in your creative. The law does carve out exceptions for expressive works like movies, TV shows, and video games where avatar use aligns with the work itself—but standard advertising doesn't get that pass.
Why This Matters:
The implications extend well beyond New York. This sets a regulatory precedent that other states are likely to follow, and it introduces real friction into AI-generated talent workflows. Teams need disclosure rules, review checklists, and vendor guidance in place now—not when the next state follows suit.
There's also an interesting market dynamic at play: authentic human talent just became more valuable from a compliance perspective. Brands that maintained human-centered creative approaches may find themselves with a competitive advantage as disclosure requirements proliferate.
⚡ Quick Action Tip: Audit your current creative assets for any AI-generated or synthetic elements. Build a disclosure template now that can be adapted across formats, and loop in legal early rather than retrofitting compliance later.
🚀 AI Marketing Quick Hits
Meta Launches AI-Powered Creator Partnership Tools
Meta rolled out a suite of AI tools that could fundamentally change how brands approach influencer partnerships. The system analyzes organic content performance and matches brands with relevant creators based on audience overlap, engagement patterns, and content style.
The standout feature? One-click conversion of any creator's existing content into partnership ads. This preserves the authenticity of organic content while extending reach through paid distribution. All performance data consolidates within Facebook Ads Manager, eliminating the measurement fragmentation that's plagued influencer marketing.
Why This Matters: This democratizes influencer partnerships beyond mega-influencers to micro-influencers and niche experts at scale. What previously required manual relationship management and expensive agencies can now happen programmatically.
✅ Action Item: If you're running influencer campaigns, explore Meta's new creator discovery tools in Ads Manager. The AI matching could surface partnership opportunities you'd never find through manual research.
Meta Expands AI Personalization Across Facebook & Instagram
Meta's AI personalization now fuses data across platforms in ways that have significant targeting implications. Conversations with Meta's AI assistant now inform ad targeting simultaneously across Instagram and Facebook, and feed algorithms consider AI conversation topics when determining content visibility.
Here's the notable part: photos, voice messages, and multimedia shared with Meta's AI assistant now feed into targeting signals. Add Microsoft data sharing into the mix, and the targeting data pool extends well beyond Meta's ecosystem.
Why This Matters: This represents a shift toward conversation-driven targeting. User intent expressed to AI assistants becomes a first-party signal more immediate than search or browsing behavior. Marketers who understand this dynamic can craft messaging that aligns with how consumers express needs conversationally.
Google AI Mode Expands to Discover
Google is rolling out AI Mode capabilities to Discover with three interactive features: "Summarize with AI Mode" to distill articles to key points, "Ask a Follow-up" for conversational refinement, and "Dive Deeper with AI Mode" for agent-driven research expansion.
Why This Matters: Content optimization now needs to account for AI-driven discovery alongside traditional search rankings. Structure, clarity, and cite-friendly formatting become essential—your content needs to be easily understood and summarized by AI systems, not just ranked by algorithms.
✅ Action Item: Review your top-performing content for AI readability. Does it have clear structure? Can key points be easily extracted? Consider adding FAQ sections and structured data that AI systems can parse efficiently.
The Authenticity Crisis Hitting Major Brands
This week brought more evidence of the growing backlash against AI-generated content. Amazon pulled an AI-generated Prime Video recap after factual errors went viral. McDonald's Netherlands removed an AI clip-based Christmas ad following online criticism. Multiple publishers have stumbled with inaccurate AI articles and fabricated quotes.
According to iStock's VisualGPS research, six out of ten people now distrust advertising they see, largely believing it's AI-generated or manipulated.
Why This Matters: This creates a fascinating paradox. AI enables unprecedented scale, but authenticity becomes the competitive differentiator. Brands that can balance automation with genuine human connection signals will stand out in an increasingly synthetic landscape.
💡 Pro Insight: Consider maintaining a "human touch" audit for your content pipeline. Not every piece needs human creation, but strategic placement of authentically human elements—behind-the-scenes content, genuine employee voices, unpolished moments—can differentiate your brand.
ChatGPT Launches Shopping Research Feature
OpenAI deployed Shopping Research within ChatGPT, transforming it into an AI-powered product discovery assistant with personalized buyer's guides. The feature is available across Free, Go, Plus, and Pro plans.
Major retailers are already scrambling to optimize product data for LLMs and ensure reviews appear on platforms referenced by AI models.
Why This Matters: KPMG reports that 30% of young shoppers now use AI for product discovery. This isn't a niche behavior anymore—it's becoming a primary channel. Brands must appeal not just to human eyes, but to the AI systems curating options for consumers.
✅ Action Item: Audit how your products appear when queried in ChatGPT and other AI assistants. Optimize product descriptions for conversational clarity and ensure your review presence is strong on platforms these systems reference.
🔍 Featured AI Tool Spotlight
If you're creating content for TikTok, YouTube Shorts, or Instagram Reels, Vidalgo caught my attention as a tool that removes virtually all the friction from vertical video production.
What You Can Do With It:
The platform transforms ideas into complete videos in minutes—no editing skills required. Powered by OpenAI, Vidalgo handles script composition, image selection, and video assembly automatically. You input your concept, and the AI generates a publish-ready vertical video.
The platform includes access to 30+ music tracks designed for engagement, a library of quality visuals that align with your content, and multilingual support across 11 languages including English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, and more. That global reach capability is particularly valuable for brands targeting international audiences.
The "Infinite Ideas" feature provides a continuous flow of creative concepts through a random idea generator—useful when you're producing content at scale and need inspiration on demand. You can also customize voices, styles, and music to match your brand.
Key Stats: Over 200,000 creators have used the platform to generate 60,800+ videos. The company claims 99% time savings on editing, 40% engagement boost, and 3x more viral content for users.
Pricing: Check Vidalgo for current plans. They also offer a 50% affiliate program.
Why It's Noteworthy: With video content dominating social algorithms and AI-generated video costs dropping dramatically, tools like Vidalgo democratize what previously required production teams or expensive software. For marketers who need consistent short-form video output, this could be a significant workflow accelerator.
The AI Ad Audience Builder KeywordSearch.com
Supercharge Your Google & YouTube Ad Campaigns with AI-Powered Audience Targeting
If you've been following the latest in digital marketing, you know that precise audience targeting is the difference between wasted ad spend and explosive ROI. And you know we're obsessed with using AI to make the impossible, possible!
Now imagine having AI that analyzes millions of data points to build your perfect ad audiences in just 60 seconds – transforming your campaigns from guesswork to guaranteed performance.
Introducing KeywordSearch - AI-Powered Audience Building for Google & YouTube Ads
Key Features of KeywordSearch
Built by marketers who've managed millions in ad spend, KeywordSearch.com delivers the tools that actually move the needle:
1. One-Click AI Audience Builder
Simply describe your business or campaign goal, and watch as AI creates laser-targeted audiences based on proven data patterns.
2. Instant Google Ads Sync
No more manual audience setup. Sync your AI-generated audiences to Google & YouTube Ads with literally one click.
3. YouTube Ad Spy Database
Access 100,000+ competitor YouTube ads with full targeting insights – see exactly what's working in your industry.
4. Keyword Topic Auto-Expansion
Turn a single keyword into hundreds of related, high-performing variations using our AI expansion engine.
5. From Concept to Campaign in 2.6 Minutes
Our users average just 2.6 minutes from initial idea to fully synced ad audience. That's hours saved on every campaign.
6. Proven Results at Scale
Join 15,000+ marketers who've discovered 3.9 million keywords and transformed their ad performance.
🛠️ More AI Tools Worth Exploring
AdCreative.ai released updates focused on holiday campaigns and Q1 planning. The new Social Post Feature offers three generation approaches: upload preferred ads as templates, select from 15M+ optimized designs, or use fully custom prompts. Generation consumes zero credits, enabling unlimited testing.
The Multi-Item Product Ads feature finally lets fashion and product brands combine multiple items in single creatives while maintaining fabric authenticity across pieces.
Standout Feature: Stock Video integration with Sora 2, with output quality matching professional production benchmarks.
Pricing: Currently 50% off quarterly and yearly plans through the holiday period.
Remio 2.0 – Personal AI for Windows
Remio extends to Windows with a local-first privacy architecture. Key capabilities include unlimited free transcription, real-time AI summaries with decision extraction, and a unified hub connecting websites, Slack, emails, and other data sources.
Notable Capability: Always-on AI copilot for editing and browser tasks without app-switching.
BeatViz 2.2 – AI Music Visualization
For teams building video content libraries, BeatViz now generates video prompts automatically based on music analysis. The Music Analyzer understands rhythm, mood, and structure to guide video generation with improved timing and visual alignment.
Potential Use Case: Social media creators and brands creating music-driven content at scale.
Mistral AI OCR v3 – Document Intelligence
Mistral's advanced OCR moves beyond text extraction toward semantic document understanding. It processes images, scanned PDFs, and complex layouts while outputting recognized content in JSON/Markdown formats for downstream AI workflows.
Key Specs: ~94-95% accuracy with 2,000+ pages per minute processing.
Potential Use Case: Marketing teams processing competitor research, contracts, or archived content at scale.
Google Search Console – Hourly Insights
Not a new tool, but a significant update: Google now provides hourly breakdowns of clicks, impressions, and CTR in Search Console. This enables real-time performance monitoring and faster detection of indexing issues or algorithm fluctuations.
Why It's Noteworthy: Correlate SEO trends with media, paid, and social activity as they happen rather than waiting for daily reports.
Find customers on Roku this holiday season
Now through the end of the year is prime streaming time on Roku, with viewers spending 3.5 hours each day streaming content and shopping online. Roku Ads Manager simplifies campaign setup, lets you segment audiences, and provides real-time reporting. And, you can test creative variants and run shoppable ads to drive purchases directly on-screen.
Bonus: we’re gifting you $5K in ad credits when you spend your first $5K on Roku Ads Manager. Just sign up and use code GET5K. Terms apply.
💡 Pro Tip of the Day
Optimize Your Content for AI Citation
With Google's Gemini Deep Research and other agent-driven discovery systems gaining traction, being cited in AI-generated outputs is becoming as important as traditional search rankings.
Implementation Steps:
Structure content with clear, extractable claims. Use headers that state conclusions, not just topics. "AI Personalization Drives 202% Higher CTR" is more citable than "About Personalization."
Include specific, sourced statistics. AI systems prioritize content with concrete data points they can reference and attribute.
Add FAQ sections. These provide clear question-answer pairs that AI systems can easily parse and surface.
Use structured data markup. Schema.org markup helps AI systems understand content relationships and authority signals.
Build topic authority through content clusters. AI systems recognize and cite sources that demonstrate comprehensive expertise in specific domains.
🎯 Success Metric: Track how often your brand or content gets cited in AI-generated summaries. Tools like Visalytica are emerging to help monitor AI search brand visibility.
⚡ Supercharge Your Ad Targeting
Speaking of AI-powered optimization—all these developments share a common thread: the marketers winning in 2026 will be those who leverage AI for precision rather than just scale.
That's exactly why we built KeywordSearch.com. While other tools focus on content creation, we focus on ensuring your ads reach the right audience in the first place.
What Makes It Different:
Our AI Audience Builder generates laser-focused audience lists in seconds—not hours of manual research. One-click sync to Google and YouTube Ads means you're running optimized campaigns faster than competitors still building audiences manually.
With 15,000+ marketers already using the platform and access to 100k+ competitor ad examples for targeting inspiration, you get both the AI horsepower and the strategic intelligence to outperform.
→ Start Your Free 5-Day Trial – Unlimited access, no obligations.
📊 Key Stats Shaping 2026 Strategy
Before we wrap, here are the numbers that should inform your planning:
92% of businesses now use AI-driven personalization
202% higher performance from personalized CTAs vs. generic
71% of businesses adopted generative AI by late 2024 (up from 65% earlier that year)
60% of consumers distrust advertising they perceive as AI-generated
30% of young shoppers use AI for product discovery
3-4x higher loyalty from personalized video vs. generic content
The trajectory is clear: AI adoption is near-universal, but trust and authenticity are the differentiators.
That's a wrap for this week. The AI marketing landscape continues to evolve faster than any of us can fully track—but these developments represent the signal worth paying attention to amid the noise.
See you in the next issue,
Aleric & Greg KeywordSearch.com
P.S. Curious how AI can supercharge your ad targeting? Take KeywordSearch for a test drive with our unlimited 5-day free trial and see the difference yourself. Start here →
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