News in brief: Amazon Ads Improves Transparency and Reporting; YouTube to Introduce Another Paid-Tier; OpenAI Surpasses 400 Million Weekly Users 

Amazon Ads Improves Transparency and Reporting

Amazon intends to improve its ad offering’s transparency tools, reports Digiday. Updates to the service will include new page-level reporting through its Traffic Events API, with the aim of further strengthening its brand safety controls via internal systems and third-party integrations. This follows Amazon facing scrutiny over its demand-side platform was found to be monetising highly problematic content. Amazon is also testing a search feature which allows its search results to show select products it doesn’t sell, with links directing users to brands’ websites. Testing is currently being carried out on a small subset of customers within the US. 

YouTube to Introduce Another Paid-Tier

YouTube is planning to introduce another paid tier, according to Bloomberg. Dubbed “premium lite”, the subscription will be priced lower than its current paid subscription. It will offer customers podcasts and how-to clips with no ads. Following months of testing in various regions, the new tier will reportedly be arriving soon in the US, Australia, Germany, and Thailand. This new tier could have quite an impact on how YouTubers make money via the platform.  

OpenAI Surpasses 400 Million Weekly Users 

OpenAI has surpassed 400 million weekly active users. The ChatGPT developer’s user base has been growing rapidly, having been at 300 million weekly users in December. Its paid business is on the rise too, having crossed the 2 million user milestone in February. The AI company also reported a twofold increase in developer traffic for its reasoning models over the last six months, in addition to a fivefold surge for its o3 model since its launch in late January.