Claude Sonnet 5.5 at the same list price with up to 30% lower cost per task, ChatGPT ad click-through topping 1% in four markets, and WooCommerce making PHP 8.1 mandatory with version 11.6
Today's 3 verified stories: Anthropic introduced Claude Sonnet 5.5, the second model in the Claude 5.5 family, on September 28, 2026, and says it keeps Sonnet 5's prices while generating output more than 30 percent faster and, in its own testing, costing up to 30 percent less per task. According to The State of ChatGPT Ads, a report by growth agency Graphite produced with Similarweb, click-through on ChatGPT ads among Free and Go users is above 1% in Brazil, Mexico, Japan and South Korea, while the U.S. rate is 0.73%. WooCommerce announced on September 29, 2026 that version 11.6, planned for February 2027, will require PHP 8.1 or newer, and stores on PHP 7.4 or 8.0 can keep taking updates up to 11.5. The detailed look at each story, its sources and what it means for your business lives on its own page.
Anthropic ships Claude Sonnet 5.5: the same list price, up to 30% lower cost per task
Anthropic introduced Claude Sonnet 5.5, the second Claude 5.5 model, on September 28, 2026. The company says it generates output more than 30 percent faster than Sonnet 5 and, in its own testing, costs up to 30 percent less per task. Input, output and cache read prices match Sonnet 5; the saving comes from the model typically needing far fewer tokens for the same work. The benchmark table does not point in one direction: Sonnet 5.5 leads Terminal-Bench 4.0 at 70.6 percent, Opus 5.5 leads CursorBench 4.0 at 57.8 percent, and Anthropic says Opus 5.5 remains clearly stronger for complex, open-ended work. The model is available across all platforms, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure among them, with the model ID claude-sonnet-5-5 on the Claude Platform; Anthropic says Claude Haiku 5.5 is due to join the family in the coming weeks.
ChatGPT ad click-through tops 1% in four markets, while the U.S. sits at 0.73%
The State of ChatGPT Ads, a report by growth agency Graphite produced with Similarweb, puts the all-time click-through rate for Free and Go users at 1.91% in Brazil, 1.55% in Mexico, 1.53% in Japan and 1.21% in South Korea. Canada is at 0.75%, the U.K. 0.74%, the U.S. 0.73%, Australia 0.67% and New Zealand 0.6%. Because the rate is counted per ad-bearing exchange and pooled across all advertisers, it is not a target for any single campaign; each market has 5 to 25 weeks of data. B2B SaaS won 19.9% of U.S. impressions between March 30 and August 4. Graphite advises keeping spend experimental and budgeting ChatGPT ads as an addition rather than a swap.
WooCommerce 11.6 makes PHP 8.1 mandatory for stores
On September 29, 2026 WooCommerce announced that version 11.6, planned for February 2027, will require PHP 8.1 or newer. Stores on PHP 7.4 or 8.0 will see a dismissible admin notice from 11.3 and can keep taking updates up to 11.5, the last planned release compatible with those versions. A September 8 proposal had targeted 11.5; community feedback moved the requirement to 11.6, after the peak selling season. The latest published usage figures show roughly 7% of tracked stores on PHP 7.4 and 2% on PHP 8.0. WooCommerce recommends PHP 8.3 or newer and advises taking a backup and trying the switch on a staging copy of the store first, checking checkout, shipping, tax and order management there.
The agenda moves fast, the system stays calm.
Let us talk about what these shifts mean for your business and work out together which step fits you.