April Insights

By Eve, Artstash Creative · Published 29 April 2026 · Last updated August 2026

Quick answer: April brought one structural change and two tooling ones. Unity shut down IronSource on 30 April, nearly four years after acquiring it, which forces anyone still running spend through it to rebuild that part of their UA mix. Anthropic released Claude Design, letting teams generate designs and prototypes directly, and OpenAI began partially rolling out GPT Image 2 to ChatGPT users. Both tools are early, so treat the notes below as first impressions rather than settled verdicts.

What Does the IronSource Shutdown Mean for UA?

Unity has announced that IronSource has been shut down on April 30th, after acquiring it nearly 4 years ago. The company seems to be shifting its focus instead towards Unity Vector, its own in-house advertising platform powered by AI, which the company’s recent revenue outperformance was attributed to.

Following this, at Artstash we have already been pivoting our creative strategies to unlock stronger performance for these clients on Meta, Unity, YouTube, Liftoff, TT etc by further diversifying our content execution type and audience motivations. However, we are happy to say that to date we are seeing the same top performing playables on IronSource perform as strong on Unity. Feel free to get in touch if you would like any advice or further initial learnings from us.

What Is Claude Design, and Is It Useful for Creative Teams?

This month, Anthropic Labs announced Claude Design which allows users to create designs and prototypes using Claude Opus 4.7. At the moment, the software is only available for Claude Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise subscribers.

Introducing Claude Design by Anthropic Labs

Our Creative Director, who recently switched to Claude as his primary AI agent, shares his thoughts on the new model:

Claude Design is geared toward making realistic prototypes, product mockups, and design explorations. It has great potential for data visualizations for presentation decks too.

If you’re a creative person and you have a very specific way of doing things, this is a tool that you can train to adapt to your style. And if you’re someone who has a lot of ideas in your head but lacks the skillsets to put them to paper, Claude Design can help get them out.

As the model is recently released, these are only our first impressions. For a more in-depth analysis of Claude Design and other AI models, follow us at our newsletter.

What Is GPT Image 2?

Some ChatGPT users may have noticed a new feature being partially rolled out in testing. The feature, a new image generation model, is being dubbed GPT Image 2 and its results already show an improvement over the previous model:

Comparison between GPT Image 1 (left) and GPT Image 2 (right). Credit: Artstash Creative

In the example above, both images were generated with the same prompt: “Create a static ad for a game called “Defense of the Tower” with a cartoon shading style and a medieval setting. Show a knight surrounded by monsters defending a tower with powerups and controls on the UI.”

The new model isn’t perfect. However, other aspects seem much more realistic which makes the imperfections harder to spot.

OpenAI releases GPT-5.5

In another update nearly a week later, OpenAI announced another release: GPT-5.5. Compared to GPT-5.4, this model specializes in coding, computer use, and research. The model also boasts OpenAI’s strongest safeguards, preventing bad actors from violating its usage policies. GPT-5.5 is already available to members of the Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise plans, with a Pro version available to Pro, Business, and Enterprise users. API support will be rolling out soon.

While the model seems impressive, our team is unsure if it’s worth making the switch from Claude. Stay tuned for our updates and reviews coming soon.

Frequently asked questions

Why did Unity shut down IronSource?

Unity announced the shutdown effective 30 April, close to four years after acquiring the company, consolidating its ad stack. For advertisers the practical effect is that spend and creative running through IronSource needs rehoming.

What should advertisers do after the IronSource shutdown?

Rebuild that portion of the UA mix deliberately rather than shifting budget to the nearest equivalent. We have been pivoting creative strategy for affected clients, because the creative that performed on IronSource will not automatically perform on the replacement.

What is Claude Design?

A capability from Anthropic that lets users produce designs and prototypes through Claude rather than in a traditional design tool. It is newly released, so our view is a first impression rather than a considered benchmark.

What is GPT Image 2?

A new image generation feature OpenAI has been partially rolling out to ChatGPT users in testing. As with any staged rollout, availability varies and behavior is still changing.