Ads, AI, and internet behaviour worth caring about.

The industry feels caught between two speeds: AI is automating more, but human signal is more valuable than ever. Tools get faster, but audiences are demanding truth, transparency, and real outcomes. If your ads aren’t instantly explainable, someone else’s will be. This week isn’t about shiny tech. It’s about what you do with it. Let’s get into it.

February 06, 2026

The Big Story

The Super Bowl Ad Wars Are Actually a Marketing Case Study

Anthropic launched its first Super Bowl ad this past weekend, and it wasn’t just flashy football marketing — it’s a positioning play. 

They used humor to hook attention, then contrasted their product (Claude AI) against a competitor’s monetization choice, staking territory not just in product features but in user experience. 

Why this matters to you right now:

• Ads aren’t just media anymore — they’re strategic messaging platforms.

• Contextual relevance (Super Bowl) + a clear point of differentiation = maximized impact.

• Fighting on positioning moves attention and narrative.

Steal this:

You don’t always need a bigger budget — you need a sharper point of view.

Atria
📣 Creator Callout

We’re opening a pilot creator affiliate program at Atria

This month, we’re opening limited seats in Atria’s first creator affiliate pilot. It’s for people who:

• Already use Atria and genuinely like it

• Create content about ads, marketing, AI, or building brands

• Or just want to try the product and document the experience

This isn’t a spray-and-pray creator push. We’re keeping it small on purpose. Fewer creators, better support, tighter feedback loop.

If you’re selected, you’ll get:

• Early access to new features

• A revenue share on referrals

• Direct line to the team building the product

• Freedom to create in your own voice (no scripts, no cringe)

Interested?

Reply to this email with:

• A link to your content (or where you plan to post)

• A sentence on why you want in

We’ll send follow-up details to a small group.

If you’ve been looking for a product you can actually stand behind, this might be it.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
🌎 Trend Watch in AI

3 things we’re paying attention to this week

1) Transparency Is the New Competitive Advantage

Analysts are now saying that in an AI-driven marketing world, being transparent beats being clever. And not just linguistically — in how you show data, pricing, and automation. 

2) AI Isn’t Optional — It’s Unavoidable, But Opinionated Use Wins

Simply using AI will not differentiate you — how you use it will. Marketers are moving from “AI efficiency” to AI with intent (agentic systems that think like you). 

3) Ads in Answer Engines Are the Next Evolution of SEM

Platforms like ChatGPT are testing ad placements in conversational interfaces — meaning your brand could show up before a user even visits a search page. Prepare for answer-engine optimization. 

“Show, don’t code: if a robot can learn your workflow from a video, your process is a product.”

— The Signal

Creative Drop

Graza: Liquid Gold, Literally

We created this for Graza's creative archive—an oil field with liquid gold flowing through the desert.

Most olive oil brands show you a bottle on a white background. We went full National Geographic instead.

Sometimes the best way to sell olive oil is to make people forget they're looking at an ad.

Ad Break of the Week

What we're watching

We found an ad this week that turns product features into visual proof points—no fluff, just clear value mapped directly onto the product.

What works:

  • Clean annotation style that guides the eye

  • Every callout addresses a specific parent pain point (safety, ease, comfort)

  • Soft, trust-building aesthetic that matches the target audience

Key takeaway: Sometimes the best creative isn't clever—it's just ruthlessly clear about why someone should buy.

Quick Hits

Fast insights you should know:

• Social media is now the full funnel for many brands, not just awareness. 

• AI bot traffic is climbing, meaning your content will be indexed and repurposed even before humans see it. 

• Google’s search AI investments just got a massive bump, tightening search + ad loops. 

• Micro-personalization is overtaking macro creativity — one-to-one messaging is a real performance driver. 

👉 Get detailed links if you want full sources.

The Ad Lab

This week’s experiment: 
Answer-Engine Optimization (AEO)

⚡ The insight: ads are moving into conversational AI answers — meaning people may see you before they see search results.

Your test this week:

  1. Publish or update a landing page with structured FAQs.

  2. Add explicit “outcome first” answers (think short, actionable sentences).

  3. Track if AI-powered SERPs or conversational interfaces like chat assistants pull those answers.

Goal:

Win before the click.

Creator prompt: “What can I teach in 5 screenshots that saves someone 5 hours?”

Vibe Check

“People don’t scroll to feel. They scroll to solve.”

- Atria

Forward this to a creative partner.

Screenshot the best parts.

And run that ad experiment.

🤝 BEFORE YOU GO

We’re building something cool.

Vibe Marketing Club is powered by Atria. We’re building AI tools that help brands create better ads, faster. If you’re spending serious money on creative and want to see what’s working across the internet, come say hi.

No hard sell. Just good vibes and better ads.

Peep what we’re building →

That’s a wrap for this week.

If this hit, forward it to that one coworker who “gets it.”
If it missed, reply and roast us. We can take it.

See you next week.
— The VMC Team ✌️

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