Today's thread
Today's news converges on one question: where, and in what shape, are your content and ads being used? Four AI companies said they will follow a shared signal that lets a website state in one line whether it may be used for AI training, while Naver published data on small businesses running their own ads and is changing its search home banner format.
What these stories share is that decisions are moving into the hands of the people doing the work. A settings line once left to developers, a banner once left to an agency, an ad costing 10,000 won a day: these are now things the person in charge decides and checks directly. A survey showing that one in five U.S. adults gets news on TikTok also shows that the places where people meet information have spread beyond the search box.
One robots.txt line to refuse AI training — backed by 4 firms
On October 30, Anthropic's Kevin Kelley submitted an 'AI training preference signal' draft to the IETF, the international body that sets rules for internet communication. If a site adds a 'User-Agent: __usage_ai-training' group to robots.txt, the entry-guide file that sits at the front of every website, and writes 'Disallow: /' under it, that means the whole site should not be used for AI training. On the same day, Google, Microsoft and OpenAI said they would follow the signal.
Until now each company used a different name tag, so blocking training meant listing crawler names one by one, such as OpenAI's GPTBot and Google's Google-Extended. Now one line can send the same message to several companies. Timing differs by company: Microsoft starts on February 1, 2027, Google aims to support it during 2027, OpenAI within the coming months, and Anthropic has already started work but says adding it across its services will take time.
Google said that if a site refuses training with this line and does not name Google-Extended separately, it will treat that as blocking Google-Extended. Microsoft lets sites choose separately between training and 'grounding' (an AI pulling in your page as reference material when it writes an answer), and notes that ordinary search indexing and ranking are not grounding. It is now possible to block training while leaving the door open to being cited in AI answers, which gives website and blog owners a decision to make.
The limits are clear. The draft is an individual submission, not a standard approved by the IETF, and it is a statement of preference rather than a command that stops collection. A site without the line is treated as having expressed no preference. Microsoft stated plainly that the choice does not create licensing payments or guarantee exposure or visitor traffic.
Naver ADVoost Screen: 78.5% of advertisers self-serve
According to the 'Naver Digital Out-of-Home Advertising Report' released on November 2, 78.5% of advertisers on Naver's AI out-of-home ad product ADVoost Screen ran their ads directly without an agency. Digital out-of-home ads are ads shown on screens outside the home, such as in elevators, convenience stores and restaurant ordering kiosks. Average spend per advertiser was 184,542 won per quarter, 41.3% spent under 50,000 won per quarter, and 61.7% of campaigns had a daily budget of 10,000 won or less.
The report was produced by Professor Moon Jang-ho of Sookmyung Women's University and Professor Jung Hye-seung of Inha University, using second-quarter transaction and booking data plus in-depth interviews. Of advertisers active in April, 72.6% kept running ads in May, and 71.2% of May advertisers continued into June. The main customers are neighborhood businesses such as hair salons, beauty shops, fitness centers, private academies and pet groomers.
Out-of-home advertising used to require a large budget and an agency. Since launching in November 2025, ADVoost Screen has let advertisers send ads to 359,000 screens including restaurant ordering kiosks, elevators and convenience stores, and according to reports it will expand to IPTV (TV delivered over an internet line) from the 12th. The setup lets a shop put an ad on neighborhood screens for under 10,000 won a day and stop right away if there is no response.
However, the report comes from Naver, and this release did not include effect figures such as sales or store visits. The specific reach of the IPTV expansion could not yet be confirmed from public material.
Naver search home 750×280 banners: no new uploads from Dec 2
According to industry reports, Naver has announced that from December 2 its existing mobile search home image banners (750×280) can no longer be newly registered or edited. Registration opens instead for a 'native image banner' type, an ad format that blends into the flow of the screen. It combines a 450×450 PNG image with the background removed and a line of text, and the text color switches automatically for light and dark mode.
Until now a search home banner was a single wide image, finished by a designer with the copy already inside. In the new format, the image and the text are submitted separately and Naver assembles them to fit the screen, with the left-right placement of image and text varying at random. Existing creatives keep running until further notice but will be phased out.
For ad managers, this changes the production order. Call-to-action copy such as 'Buy now' that used to be drawn into the image must move into the separate text field, and the layout has to make sense whether the image lands on the left or the right. If you plan to run a December year-end campaign in this slot, it is safer to prepare images in the new format ahead of time.
The exact end date for existing 750×280 creatives, the file-size rules for the new format and any performance difference have not been confirmed yet. Check the original notice in Naver's advertiser center and plan your schedule from there.
20% of U.S. adults get news on TikTok — 39% of 18–29s
In a survey released on October 19, Pew Research Center found that 20% of U.S. adults regularly get news on TikTok. That is up sharply from 3% in 2020 and unchanged from 2025. Among 18- to 29-year-olds the figure was 39%; the survey covered 5,166 U.S. adults from August 24 to 30.
Among TikTok users alone, 53% get news there. The share of each platform's users who get news on it was 57% for Facebook and X, 46% for Instagram and 41% for YouTube. Short-video apps have settled in as an information channel, not just entertainment.
These are not Korean figures, but they signal that the places to reach younger customers are moving beyond search results and articles. Teams that publish announcements and product explanations only as text have more reason to make short-video versions of the same content.
The survey covers U.S. adults, so it cannot be applied directly to Korean users. Because the share matched 2025, only the next survey will show whether growth has stalled or will resume.
Things to try today
Open your company website with /robots.txt added to the end of the address. Check whether names like GPTBot or Google-Extended appear and write down in one line what the site currently says about AI training; that makes clear what you need to decide before next year's rollout.
Decide separately whether to block AI training and whether to stay open to being cited in AI answers. The two choices can now be made separately, and blocking both also reduces the chance of your pages appearing inside AI answers.
If you run mobile search home banners, prepare background-removed 450×450 PNG images and separate copy before December 2, and confirm that the call-to-action text is visible whether the image sits on the left or the right.
If you handle marketing for a neighborhood store, run a one- to two-week test on ADVoost Screen at 10,000 won a day or less, and compare inquiries and visits during that period with the week before the ads.