I cancelled my ChatGPT subscription the same day I got this working.

beehiiv recently launched their MCP integration, which lets you connect your newsletter data directly to Claude. That means subscriber numbers, open rates, click-through rates and post performance all available inside a single conversation, no exports, no spreadsheets, no switching tabs.

I connected it, pulled in the data from all 63 of my published posts and asked Claude to tell me what was working and what wasn't. Within minutes I had a full performance breakdown, a ranked list of my best and worst performers, and three clear recommendations I could act on immediately.

The biggest takeaway? My subject lines are my Achilles heel. Every single one of my bottom five posts had the same problem: I was cramming too much into the subject line. Multiple angles, compound topics, trying to do too much. The data was clear. Single hook, single idea, every time.

I built an interactive HTML report from the conversation that lets me drill down by category, compare open rates against click rates and filter by post type. The whole thing took about 15 minutes.

In this video I walk through the full setup, show you how to connect beehiiv to Claude via MCP, and run through the exact prompts I used to get actionable insight from my own data. If you're in marketing and you're not connecting your tools to AI yet, you're leaving insight on the table.

Know someone who'd enjoy this? They can subscribe instantly here.

OpenAI confirmed that figure for its ChatGPT ads business, generated from less than 20% of US-based Free and Go users being shown ads daily. 85% are eligible. They haven't even turned it on fully yet.

Over 600 advertisers. Self-serve access launching in April. A former Meta ads exec now leading sales. Early promise.

But a few things worth noting.

Ads as a revenue line in AI search is more significant than people are treating it. Search advertising is a $300bn+ market. If AI chat displaces even a fraction of that query volume, the ad opportunity follows. OpenAI knows this, and so do the investors they're pitching to.

The $100m ARR figure sounds impressive but context matters. That's roughly $9m a month from a platform with 900 million weekly users. Spread across 600 advertisers, that's an average of $15,000 each. Revenue per user is microscopic at this stage.

What they don't have yet is a proper ad manager, meaningful targeting tools, or cross-market reach. Canada, Australia and New Zealand are next, they said. That's a start. But without the infrastructure advertisers expect, 600 advertisers is a pilot, not a platform.

The real test is whether they can grow ad load without destroying the product. Less than 7% of ads rated as low relevance is a decent starting point.

Ads have a genuine place in AI chat. The product works well enough so far. Sustaining that as scale increases is the real test.

Same day. Two high-profile features. Both launched with fanfare. Both failed to gain traction. Both gone.

Sora made $2.1m in its lifetime and downloads fell from 3.3m in November to 1.1m by February. Instant Checkout had roughly 30 Shopify merchants live after six months. Walmart's conversion rate inside ChatGPT was a third of what it gets on its own site.

This is becoming a pattern. Launch big. Hype it. Move on when it doesn't stick. Sam Altman's scattergun approach is showing. OpenAI is simultaneously trying to be a search engine, a social network, an e-commerce marketplace, a video platform, a coding tool, and an enterprise AI provider. Something has to give, and now things are giving.

E-commerce brands shouldn't read this as a retreat from shopping though. Shopping is still going to be a massive revenue driver for OpenAI. They've pivoted to product discovery, and retailers like Target, Sephora, Nordstrom, Best Buy and Home Depot are already feeding product data through the Agentic Commerce Protocol.

Shopify says millions of its merchants are now represented in ChatGPT's catalogue. The transaction layer has failed. The discovery layer is growing.

If you sell products online, you should still be connecting your product catalogues to ChatGPT, whether that's through ACP directly or via Shopify Catalog. The checkout will happen on your site. But the decision about what to buy will increasingly start in a chat window.

The brands who get their product data into these systems now are the ones who'll show up when it matters.

In 2026, it’s easier than ever to start a newsletter about a topic you love, grow your audience, and increase revenue.

Whether you’re in B2B SaaS, FinTech or want a side hustle, consider starting a newsletter today and beehiiv is the perfect partner for this.

Use my link here and start your 14-day trial today. If you sign up, you get 20% off your subscription fee for 3-months!

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