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In this newsletter, youâll find:
đ 20% Off vs a $20 bonus card: we ran the math on 100 holiday orders
đ Microsoft Clarity adds AI agent tracking as study reveals ChatGPT brand sentiment risks
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Together with AirOps
See what competitors are advertising in ChatGPT
Planning a ChatGPT ads test? Seeing what other brands are running gives you a clearer starting point for deciding whatâs worth your budget.
The AirOps ChatGPT Ad Library lists 6,000+ brands. Search by brand name or domain to see competitor ad messaging, then explore the prompts where those ads appeared to understand the conversations behind the creative.
Bring those examples into your next campaign discussion. Use them to choose a messaging angle worth testing and explain why that test deserves budget.
Youâll have real ads to reference when your team asks what you want to run and why.
Before your next campaign brief gets locked, see whatâs already out there.
đ 20% Off vs a $20 bonus card: we ran the math on 100 holiday orders
Gift cards topped the National Retail Federationâs holiday wish list this year at 47%. The survey, released October 20, covered 8,094 adults from October 1 to 7. It also found 56% expect the economy to affect their spending, 43% plan to start before November, and 53% plan to shop online.
Shoppers watching money and buying gifts early is a setup for two competing offers. Put them in the same ring with the same 100 shoppers spending $100 each. All figures are illustrative.
In this corner: 20% off
Revenue: $10,000 becomes $8,000.
Cost of the offer: $2,000, all of it today.
Who it suits: self-buyers who compare prices and expect a sale.
Hidden cost: you discount orders that would have happened anyway.
In the other corner: buy a $100 gift card, get a $20 bonus card valid from January
Revenue: you keep the full $10,000.
Cost of the offer: 100 bonus cards carry $2,000 of retail value. Redeemed on products with a 60% margin, the goods cost you $800, paid in January.
Who it suits: gift buyers, which this survey suggests are many.
Hidden bonus: some cards never get used, and shoppers redeeming a card often spend past its value.
The scorecard
The discount costs $2,000 now. The bonus card costs at most $800, later and brings a customer back during a quiet month.
On cost alone, the bonus card wins clearly. But cost is half the fight. A self-buyer who wants a deal today wonât be moved by a card that works in January.
The deciding question
Is your holiday customer buying for themselves or for someone else? Your order data shows it. Count gift notes, different shipping addresses and gift wrap requests from last December.
The verdict
Run both, aimed at different shoppers. Keep a modest percentage off for self-buyers, and lead gifting emails and pages with the bonus card. In my judgment, the bonus card is the stronger offer for gift-heavy weeks, especially December.
Before launch
Gift card rules vary by state, including limits on expiry dates. Check them, and write the bonus terms in plain language on the offer page.
Your number
Pull last Decemberâs share of gift orders. Above a quarter, build the bonus card offer before your Black Friday creative goes final. Below that, the discount probably does more work for you.
đ Microsoft Clarity adds AI agent tracking as study reveals ChatGPT brand sentiment risks
Microsoft has introduced new AI-powered features in Clarity to help businesses track AI agents and understand website behavior, while a separate study reveals how strongly the wording of ChatGPT prompts can influence brand sentiment.
The Breakdown:
Microsoft Clarityâs new Agentic Analytics tracks AI agents visiting websites and their actions, including searches, form submissions, bookings, and checkouts, with simulations to test task completion.
Microsoft expanded Brand Agents to support business discovery across Copilot, Bing, and MSN, while Ask Clarity lets marketers analyze website behavior through natural-language questions backed by session data.
A study of 900 ChatGPT responses found negative prompts had roughly twice the impact of positive ones, with sentiment scores of -36 for negative prompts, +20 for neutral, and +46 for positive.
Only 44% of prompts produced consistent sentiment classifications across five runs, while changing the wording of brand comparisons caused sentiment swings of up to 184 points.
As more customers use AI to research brands and interact with websites, businesses need to understand both sides of that experience. Microsoftâs new tools help track what AI agents actually do, while the ChatGPT study shows why brands shouldnât judge their AI reputation using just a few carefully worded prompts.
Together with Insense
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A creator disappears. A shipment stalls. Your paid team waits another week for content while someone tracks contracts and payments across separate tools.
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More than 5000 brands and agencies use Insense, with first creator applications arriving within 48 hours and teams saving 40+ hours monthly.
Book a free strategy call and get $200 platform credits towards your first campaign.
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