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- NY Now Requires AI Ad Disclosure
NY Now Requires AI Ad Disclosure
New compliance rules hit advertisers—plus the tools to stay ahead of AI search
Aleric Heck
December 21, 2025
In partnership with
We're closing out the week with some genuinely significant developments that could reshape how you approach advertising in 2025 and beyond. New York just signed legislation that creates real compliance obligations for anyone using synthetic media in ads, Google's pushing Gemini 3 Flash across its entire ecosystem, and there's a fascinating shift happening in how we measure marketing success.
The throughline? AI isn't just changing how we create marketing—it's changing what success even looks like. Traditional rankings matter less when AI systems are generating answers directly. Disclosure requirements are tightening. And the gap between companies adopting AI and those actually seeing ROI from it is becoming impossible to ignore.
📍 In Today's Issue:
New York's AI disclosure mandate and what it means for your campaigns
Why "AI visibility" is becoming as important as market share
A deep dive on Needle, a knowledge threading platform that connects all your data sources
Fresh tools for retail media, campaign automation, and content optimization
The workflow redesign most teams are ignoring (but shouldn't)
Let's get into it.
📈 Today's Top AI Marketing Story
New York Mandates AI Transparency in Advertising
Governor Kathy Hochul signed legislation this week that requires advertisers to disclose when ads feature AI-generated people or synthetic avatars that don't correspond to real humans. The disclosure must be "conspicuous"—no burying it in fine print.
A separate bill also requires consent from heirs or executors before using deceased individuals' names or likenesses commercially. This directly affects campaigns using digital resurrections or AI-generated versions of historical figures.
Why This Matters for Your Business:
If you're using synthetic spokespeople, AI-generated influencers, avatar-led performance ads, or any creative featuring people who don't actually exist, you now have concrete compliance obligations—at least for New York audiences. Given New York's market size and influence, expect other states to follow.
This isn't about stifling creativity. It's about transparency. And frankly, brands that get ahead of disclosure requirements tend to build more trust than those caught scrambling to comply.
🎯 Quick Action Items:
Audit current and planned campaigns for synthetic media usage
Create a review checklist for AI-generated human likenesses
Update vendor contracts to include disclosure requirements
Brief your creative teams on what triggers disclosure obligations
🚀 AI Marketing Quick Hits
Google Rolls Out Gemini 3 Flash as Default Everywhere
Google made Gemini 3 Flash the default model across both the Gemini app and AI Mode in Search globally. The model handles video, images, audio, and text while being faster and cheaper to run than its predecessor.
Why This Matters: The competition with OpenAI just intensified, but more importantly for marketers, this accelerates the shift toward AI-generated search responses. Your optimization strategy needs to account for how AI systems summarize and cite your brand—not just where you rank.
AI Visibility Emerges as Critical Marketing Metric
Here's a number worth remembering: between August and October 2025, ChatGPT's cited sources grew nearly 80%. U.S. advertisers are projected to spend over $25 billion annually on AI-powered search placements by 2029—roughly 14% of total search budgets.
Why This Matters: "AI visibility"—how often and accurately your brand appears in AI-generated responses—is becoming as important as traditional brand metrics. If AI systems don't know about you, or worse, describe you inaccurately, you're invisible to a growing segment of discovery.
✅ Action Item: Start tracking whether your brand gets mentioned in AI search responses. Tools like Evertune and geoSurge are specifically built for this.
Image Generation Arms Race Heats Up
OpenAI launched ChatGPT Images with faster generation and more precise editing that preserves lighting and composition across iterations. This directly challenges Google's Nano Banana model and Adobe's Firefly capabilities.
Why This Matters: Creative velocity is increasing, but so is the risk of brand sameness. When everyone has access to the same powerful generation tools, your brand controls and creative direction become the differentiator.
AI Content Failures Spark Brand Backlash
Amazon pulled an AI-generated Prime Video recap after it contained errors. McDonald's Netherlands removed an AI clip-based Christmas ad following online criticism. Multiple newsrooms have published AI articles with fabricated quotes and nonexistent book titles.
Why This Matters: Speed without oversight creates reputation risk. The lesson isn't "don't use AI"—it's "don't deploy AI-generated content without human review in the loop."
💡 Pro Insight: The brands succeeding with AI content aren't the ones moving fastest. They're the ones who've built review processes that match AI's speed. Think same-day editorial review, not week-long approval cycles.
Wearable AI Creates New Discovery Touchpoints
Meta added Conversation Focus to Ray-Ban Meta glasses, using directional microphones to enhance speaker voice in noisy environments. They also integrated Spotify so Meta AI can play music based on what users see—matching audio to visual environment automatically.
Why This Matters: Marketing is shifting toward context-driven, situational relevance. Future discovery happens in ambient moments, not just search boxes. Brands need to consider how they show up in always-on, environment-aware AI interactions.
🔍 Featured AI Tool Spotlight
Needle: The Knowledge Threading Platform That Connects Everything
What It Does: Needle is a knowledge threading platform that enables AI-powered automation and information discovery across all your data sources. Think of it as a central nervous system for your company's knowledge—connecting tools like Google Drive, Slack, Notion, HubSpot, Confluence, and 25+ other apps so you can search, automate, and act on information without switching between platforms.
The platform combines three powerful capabilities: AI-powered search across all connected data, agentic workflows that automate multi-step processes, and a RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) API for developers building custom AI applications.
What Makes This Noteworthy:
According to McKinsey, employees spend 1.8 hours every work day searching for information. Needle directly attacks this problem by making your entire workspace searchable through natural language queries.
But the real power is in the workflow automation. You can create AI agents that do things like: automatically qualify leads when they book a demo, generate personalized cold outreach based on LinkedIn profiles, rank CVs for hiring, or batch process invoices—all without coding.
Potential Use Cases for Marketing Teams:
Automate competitor research across web sources and internal docs
Generate SEO keywords from market trend data
Create FAQ content from support threads automatically
Send personalized follow-ups to leads who haven't responded
Consolidate customer insights from CRM, email, and Slack into actionable briefs
Key Features:
One-click connections to 25+ apps (Slack, Google Drive, HubSpot, Notion, GitHub, Salesforce, and more)
Slackbot integration for instant answers without leaving conversations
Drop-in chat widget for customer-facing AI assistants
Automatic data syncing so answers always reflect latest information
Multilingual search across different language content
GDPR and CCPA compliant with SOC 2 Type II certification coming
Why Small Businesses Should Care:
The platform tackles something frustrating about modern work: your knowledge is scattered across dozens of tools, making it nearly impossible to find what you need when you need it. Needle creates a unified layer that makes everything searchable and actionable—without requiring you to migrate data or change how you work.
For marketing teams specifically, the workflow automation could dramatically reduce time spent on repetitive research and data compilation tasks.
The AI YouTube ThumbnailCreator.com
A Full AI YouTube Thumbnail Creation Studio (Trained on 3 Million Thumbnails!)
If you've been following the AI Marketing Newsletter, you know how powerful the right strategies can be. And you know we love leveraging the power of AI to amplify them!
Now imagine having AI that's been trained on 3 MILLION+ viral thumbnails creating your designs – guaranteeing thumbnails that stop the scroll and demand clicks.
Key Features of ThumbnailCreator.com
As you'd expect from someone who's generated 150M+ YouTube views, we've built ThumbnailCreator.com with practical, results-oriented features:
1. AI-Powered Design Generation Input your video topic, and get professional thumbnails based on proven viral formulas.
2. Trained on 3M+ Viral Thumbnails Our AI knows exactly what makes people click because it's studied millions of successful examples.
3. Zero Design Skills Required If you can type a description, you can create pro-level thumbnails in 60 seconds.
4. Style Matching Upload examples of thumbnails you like, and the AI will match that style for consistency.
5. A/B Testing Templates Generate multiple versions instantly to test what resonates with your audience.
6. Time-Saving Workflow Cut thumbnail creation from hours to minutes so you can focus on content creation.
🛠️ More AI Tools Worth Exploring
Campaign & Content Management
Blueshift: Compass & Launchpad Agents Autonomous agents that translate customer data directly into marketing actions, simplifying campaign creation and execution.
Reduces manual campaign setup steps
Automatically segments and activates audiences
Executes multi-step workflows without constant input
Clinch: Predict IQ Scores AI-based creative asset evaluation before launch—essentially pre-flight analysis of how your ads might perform.
Evaluates creative assets before spending media budget
Identifies potential performance issues early
Helps prioritize which creative variations to test
AI Search Visibility
Evertune: Topic & Brand Relevance Metrics Measures how your content sources influence brand visibility in AI-generated outputs.
Bridges traditional analytics and AI discovery measurement
Tracks citation frequency across AI platforms
Identifies content gaps affecting AI visibility
Now integrated with impact.com for native tracking
Uberall: GEO Studio Increases brand discoverability in generative AI recommendations, built in collaboration with AthenaHQ.
Optimizes local business presence for AI systems
Focuses on generative search recommendations
Particularly relevant for multi-location businesses
Retail & Commerce
Teikametrics: Artificial Retail Intelligence (ARI) Uses predictive models and first-party data for planning across Amazon and Walmart.
Automates budget allocation based on predicted incrementality
Works across multiple marketplace platforms
Focuses on actual sales lift, not just ad metrics
Spreetail: True Ads Retail media tool analyzing incrementality to reduce wasted ad spend in marketplace advertising.
Identifies which ad spend actually drives new sales
Reduces wasted budget on customers who would have converted anyway
Designed specifically for online marketplace sellers
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💡 Pro Tip of the Day
Redesign Your Workflows Around AI Speed—Not Just AI Tools
Here's the insight that separates teams seeing real ROI from those just "using AI": the bottleneck isn't content creation anymore. It's governance, compliance, and review.
Brand-tuned AI models now produce usable outputs on the first pass. What used to take weeks of revisions can happen in minutes. But if your approval process still runs on weekly meetings and email chains, you've just shifted the bottleneck—not eliminated it.
Implementation Steps:
Map your current approval workflow from AI output to published content. Identify every handoff and waiting period.
Embed policy controls inside your tools rather than as separate approval gates. If brand guidelines can be checked automatically, do it.
Create same-day review tracks for AI-generated content. This might mean dedicated review slots or async approval systems.
Define clear escalation criteria so routine content moves fast while sensitive content gets appropriate oversight.
Success Metric: Track time-to-publish for AI-assisted content. If it's not meaningfully faster than your previous process, your workflow hasn't actually changed.
⚡ Supercharge Your Ad Targeting
Speaking of workflow efficiency—audience research is one of those tasks that eats hours without always delivering proportional results.
KeywordSearch.com's AI Audience Builder tackles this directly. Instead of manually researching audience segments, competitive targeting, and keyword opportunities, the platform generates AI-powered audience lists you can sync to Google and YouTube Ads with one click.
What You Get:
AI-generated audience targeting based on your niche
One-click sync to Google & YouTube Ads campaigns
Access to 100k+ competitor ad examples for inspiration
Keyword topic expansion for discovering untapped opportunities
The average marketer spends 5+ hours weekly on audience research. That's time you could redirect toward strategy, creative, or—honestly—anything else.
That's your Friday briefing. The AI marketing landscape is moving fast, but the fundamentals—audience understanding, brand clarity, workflow efficiency—still determine who wins.
Have a great weekend, and we'll see you next week with more developments worth knowing about.
Aleric & Greg KeywordSearch.com Co-Founders
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 for yourself. Start free →
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