Gaps in the market exist. So do gaps in transit. Makeup and skin-care brand The Ordinary was hoping to fill both.

In May, New Yorkers were surprised with the news that the brand intended to solve a longstanding transit problem in the city: the lack of a direct transit option between Brooklyn’s Williamsburg and Prospect Heights neighborhoods. The Ordinary Bus began running daily between Domino Park and Prospect Park on May 26 with plans to continue through June 9 at no cost to riders.

That dream, however, was cut short when the brand announced on Instagram on May 29 that the route had been suspended until further notice.

“We are sorry for the inconvenience this pause causes,” the post read. “We are working hard to get our bus up and running again soon, fingers crossed.”

According to the New York Times, the city shut the bus down due to a lack of permits. When asked about plans to address any issues or reinstate the service, The Ordinary declined to comment beyond its public post.

Prior to the bus launch, Jesper Rasmussen, global brand president at The Ordinary’s parent company Deciem, told Marketing Brew that the brand, whose bestselling products cost anywhere from $6 to $33, seeks to exhibit accessibility and quality in its marketing. Last spring, when a dozen eggs averaged $8.15, the brand sold $3.37 cartons at its NYC stores.

But unlike selling groceries, it seems transportation issues can be harder to solve.

Continue reading here.—KH

It seems like just last week marketers were only using AI to brainstorm ad copy. But in 2026, despite rising AI costs, they’re using it for a lot more.

Marketers from Anthropic, financial ops platform Ramp, and other brands came together in New York in late May for content engineering platform AirOps’s Next conference to discuss how AI is transforming various aspects of marketing, including AI recommendations, martech, and hiring.

Regarding go-to-market strategy broadly, “what’s also interesting to me is maybe five, six years ago, the focus was on sustainable growth, and now it’s top-line growth at all costs,” Kexin Chen, VP of marketing at the startup Harvey, which is focused on the competitive legal AI field, said onstage.

Stay agile: While many marketers are well aware of SEO’s transformation amid the growing development of answer engine optimization (AEO), that practice, too, is rapidly changing. Some marketers have been focused on getting mentioned organically in Reddit conversations to boost brand visibility in search, but now, YouTube is also a growing factor, Kevin Indig, a growth advisor to brands, told attendees.

Another strategy is adding a “last updated” date to a webpage when new information is added; Indig said that one of his clients, the site Product Hunt, saw a “threefold increase in citations” after doing so.

While getting cited online is important to search ranking, brand trust still beats rank, he said.

“When people see an AI answer, the first filter that they will apply is trust. They will check if they trust the source or the citation, and only then will they ask themselves, ‘Does this actually answer my question?’” he said. “Trust is a scarce resource that is gaining more value in this new AI world.”

Read more here.—JS

Etsy’s ChatGPT strategy is focused on being “bold” and “early,” as the company experiments with new ways to blend conversational AI with online shopping, according to Chief Product and Technology Officer Rafe Colburn.

The company that sells handmade and vintage items and also connects artists to shoppers, is beta testing the Etsy app inside ChatGPT.

After OpenAI’s Instant Checkout feature didn’t quite land, the company appears to be building out its shopping experience more like an app store, and has been partnering with companies like Instacart and Target to test shopping via newly constructed ChatGPT apps directly inside ChatGPT.

The way Colburn described it, the app experience is a true two-way integration. “I think we’re going to understand how people interact with our inventory conversationally in a much richer way through the ChatGPT app,” he said.

Etsy is also testing a conversational agent to assist with gift searches (like Amazon’s Rufus and Walmart’s Sparky) on the platform.

Colburn talked to Retail Brew about how Etsy wants to work with tech companies like OpenAI and the broader AI reset in retail.

Read more on Retail Brew.—VC

Sports, reality programming, movies, and now, the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show—Netflix has it all, and that’s what the streamer emphasized at this year’s upfront presentation. Accompanied by a starry ensemble on stage, learn how executives made the company pitch to advertisers, which centered around bringing brands close to the IP that audiences love.