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Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy

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Re: Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy

#111

Post by reactordev »

glouwbug wrote: post #99
reactordev wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unplug In all seriousness. Windows is invaded by copilot, OpenAI introducing ads, Google providing Siri for Apple, it’s all just a collusion to keep you buying. Disconnect. From TV, Media, Ads, Social Networks, Predatory subscriptions, all of it. The only way to show these companies that we are not on board with this is to not participate.

Reddit generates its revenue with schadenfreude, YouTube and AAA games with GenAI (see: Ghibli in Call of Duty, and fast growing AI channels like Nick Invests or Bernard with “Why it Sucks to be X”). On my shelf from the corner of my eye I see “Understanding the Linux Kernel”. It’s outdated, but it comes from a time of peer review and subject matter experts. I don’t need to double guess if the author is hallucinating…

Vinyl and Paperbacks…

Re: Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy

#112

Post by herpdyderp »

jadenpeterson wrote: post #106

I can't be the only person completely unconcerned about this state of affairs. They're ads. This is the most straightforward incentive structure in the world - they are paid to supply ads on behalf of other companies, and we consume those ads and are, in turn, provided with their product. I don't know why it is, but people are incapable of evaluating this exchange objectively - there's something inherently detestable…

Ads feel good when they’re for something we’re actively in need of. But they usually aren’t, and they are also often scammy or scummy. I bet we’d feel a lot different about ads if these things changed.

Re: Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy

#113

Post by likium »

Quarrelsome wrote: post #58
OptionOfT wrote: post #16

I remember when Netflix took out a whole page ad for their Orange is the new Black show. John Oliver had a piece on it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_F5GxCwizc This is a natural extension of it. But what is revolutionary is the scale that this is now possible. We have so many people out there who now blindly trust the output of an LLM (how many colleagues have you had proudly telling you: I asked Claude and this i…

> slowly they'll become more part of the text Wouldn't that be quite challenging in terms of engineering? Given these people have been chasing AGI it would be a considerable distraction to pivot into hacking into the guts of the output to dynamically push particular product. Furthermore it would degrade their product. Furthermore you could likely keep prodding the LLM to then diss the product being advertised, especi…

Supposedly Google made their own results worse to improve ad revenue. And I don't see mass migration over to Kagi or Bing.

Re: Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy

#114

Post by MontyCarloHall »

kristianc wrote: post #59
MontyCarloHall wrote: post #6

I think ads will inevitably roll out across all tiers, even the expensive paid ones. Ad revenue isn't uniformly distributed across users, but rather heavily skewed towards the wealthiest users, exactly the users most able to purchase an ad-free experience. The users paying $20 or $200/month for premium tiers of ChatGPT are precisely the ones you don't want to exclude from generating ad revenue. Google realized this a…

No, there's GSuite / Google Workspace instead. OpenAI doesn't have one of those.

Even if you (i.e. your company) pay for the top-tier GSuite subscription, you still don't get an ad-free Google Search. Very curious ...

Re: Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy

#115

Post by KellyCriterion »

barbazoo wrote: post #60
KellyCriterion wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stumbled upon this one as well, but I do not understand it really: Why is my job safe if Ads prove there is no AGI? Because even if there would be AGI, they could (and would?) serve ads anyway?

If AGI was around the corner, they wouldn’t have to resort to what some consider a scummy way to make money. They’d would become the most valuable company on the planet, winning the whole game. Ads show you they don’t know what else to do but they desperately need money.

yes but if AGI is around the corner, with what would they make money then?

Selling this AGI to a state actor? OK - this seems realistic, but for how many billions then? 100b per year?

Thats what I meant.

Re: Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy

#116

Post by clcaev »

Pharma ads as AI health advice will be super profitable. AIs are very engaging and able convince people they have a disease, inadvertently coach them on how to mislead their doctor, and how to fast track diagnosis supporting their specific meds. The only guard is to have detailed manifest of exactly what was used in training. Even that may prove insufficient as "final assembly" has emergent properties. For example, omitting case reports of severe outcomes for a given formulation. Bias can be constructed.

Re: Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy

#117

Post by iugtmkbdfil834 »

I am going to offer an unpopular opinion. This is not a bad thing.

Even now there are viable options for a person to pick up a dedicated ( and reasonably powerful ) local inference machine, where time from setup to working is than few hours ( more if you don't want to use Windows.. which is fair ).

Separately, about the chat sessions. For once, those ads could be more relevant than repeat toaster ads immediately after me buying a toaster. But if one is worried about profiling ( and advertising ), one should not using a commercial solution anyway. Personally, I am taking a.. calculated risk.

There is a concern that openai will follow the same path as google, but they can't ( at least for now ) really afford to make chatgpt not useful as this is their only viable product.

I will end with a more optimistic note. This is HN. There are people here, who are likely working on something that does not depend on openai or any of the big providers anyway. It is going to be ok. And if it won't be. Make it so. After all, this is supposed to be your realm. Own it.

Re: Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy

#118

Post by lo_zamoyski »

"it seems that the pinnacle of human intelligence: the greatest, smartest, brightest minds have all come together to... build us another ad engine"

Putting aside the ridiculous hyperbole, the reason is that consumerism is our culture. Our cult-ure. Everything is oriented toward and reduced to consumption. Our worth as human beings is replaced by consumerist criteria and measures. It's why physicists leave research and work in finance where their training is repurposed in service of all sorts of financial jiggery-pokery.

"The A in AGI stands for Ads! It's all ads!! Ads that you can't even block because they are BAKED into the streamed probabilistic word selector purposefully skewed to output the highest bidder's marketing copy."

But note the implication. Sure, ads weaved into the content, but they still must be targeted. And here's the irony of the online existence. People often refrain from expressing various desires in public for fear of judgement. It's why the vitriol online is so much spicier. The world of social media where you can express repressed opinions, the world of games and other ahem media where you can sublimate all sorts of desires and fantasies - all of this is data for the AI machine. These companies, in some respects, "know" you better than the people in your life do - especially those parts of you that you could be embarrassed to reveal in public - and they use this information to manipulate you, largely for profit, but why not for broader social and psychological control. AI's convenience is already irresistible. It's the go-to in Google search.

Re: Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy

#119

Post by windexh8er »

lkbm wrote: post #65
MontyCarloHall wrote: post #6

I think ads will inevitably roll out across all tiers, even the expensive paid ones. Ad revenue isn't uniformly distributed across users, but rather heavily skewed towards the wealthiest users, exactly the users most able to purchase an ad-free experience. The users paying $20 or $200/month for premium tiers of ChatGPT are precisely the ones you don't want to exclude from generating ad revenue. Google realized this a…

> Google realized this a long time ago; there is no ad-free paid version of Google Search. Ad-free YouTube costs $14 a month (and the creators get a higher payout from premium user views than they do from the free, ad-viewing users).

This isn't really true anymore. Most notable creators have "sponsored" content somewhere and ads in platforms don't have to be an explicit, traditional ad. Product placement for the sake of no other reason than product placement is also advertising.

YT has more angles. That's really the point. And monetization is adjusted accordingly.

Beyond all of this ads are more increasingly invasive due to the cat and mouse game of iteration. Personally, I bounce from sites where I can't get around a blocker. I also pay for content on sites where its worth it. But if I can't ever read anything on your site I'm just skipping it. If I really need / want to see something I'll go one level deeper, but that's a rarity these days. Everything is mostly in reprint somewhere else anyway.

At the end of the day it's still simple sales: you have a product at a price point people can't refuse. That is the 5% of the clear web today and it shows in all the bullshit people are going through to protect their ad revenue.

Re: Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy

#120

Post by KellyCriterion »

clifdweller wrote: post #85
KellyCriterion wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you mean the API response then will contain the Ad display code?

More akin to something like the twitter verified program where companies can bid for relevance in the training set to buy a greater weight so the model will be trained to prefer them. Would be especially applicable for software if azure and aws start bidding on whose platform it should recommend. Or something like when Convex just came out to compete with depth of supabase/firebase training in current model they coul…

But this is upfront, during training?

How does X then change "on the fly" if ad deals are changing? Constantly re-training with whatever advertiser is the current highest paying on?

In google ad times, this was realtime bidding in the background - for AI ads this does not work, if Im right?

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