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Leak confirms OpenAI is preparing ads on ChatGPT for public roll out

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Re: Leak confirms OpenAI is preparing ads on ChatGPT for public roll out

#131

Post by afavour »

aurareturn wrote: post #14

- ~1 billion users in just 3 years - Extremely personal data on users - Novel way of introducing and learning more about sponsored products - Strong branding for non-techie people (most normal people don't know what Claude or Gemini are) - An app that is getting more and more addictive/indispensable I think OpenAI is going to kill it in ads eventually. This is why Meta and Google went all in on AI. Their lucrative di…

> most normal people don't know what Claude or Gemini are

In think the point is that they don’t need to know what Gemini is, they just need to know Google, which they most definitely do.

IMO ads rollout won’t be as simple as you’re describing it. A lot of people have switched from Google search to AI specifically because it isn’t filled with SEO, ad filled nonsense. So they’ll need to tread very, very carefully to introduce it without alienating customers. Not to mention mollifying advertisers who are nervous what their product will be shown alongside and OpenAI will probably struggle to offer iron clad guarantees about it. And people generally speaking don’t like ads. If competitors like Google are able to hold out longer with no ads (they certainly aren’t wanting for ad display surfaces) they might be able to pull users away from OpenAI.

IMO pivoting to ads is a sign of core weakness for OpenAI. Anyone trying to set up their own ad network in 2025 has to reckon with Google and Meta, the two absolute behemoths of online ads. And both also happen to be major competitors of OpenAI. If they need ads that’s a problem.

Re: Leak confirms OpenAI is preparing ads on ChatGPT for public roll out

#132

Post by isodev »

aurareturn wrote: post #14

- ~1 billion users in just 3 years - Extremely personal data on users - Novel way of introducing and learning more about sponsored products - Strong branding for non-techie people (most normal people don't know what Claude or Gemini are) - An app that is getting more and more addictive/indispensable I think OpenAI is going to kill it in ads eventually. This is why Meta and Google went all in on AI. Their lucrative di…

> - Extremely personal data on users - Novel way of introducing and learning more about sponsored products

Doesn’t anyone think this is really, really bad idea? We managed to radicalise people into the rise and fall of entire countries through analog ads, can you imagine how devastating it would be to infuse every digital product with all that?

Re: Leak confirms OpenAI is preparing ads on ChatGPT for public roll out

#133

Post by monooso »

bonsai_spool wrote: post #87
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the 1980s, the American Heart Association listed many contributors to heart disease. A missing one: smoking. At some point, it was revealed that Big Tobacco was a major contributor to the AHA. They now list tobacco as a big risk factor.

> In the 1980s, the American Heart Association listed many contributors to heart disease. > A missing one: smoking. > At some point, it was revealed that Big Tobacco was a major contributor to the AHA. > They now list tobacco as a big risk factor. https://www.heart.org/en/bold-hearts-the-centennial/100-year... Taking on tobacco was no small task at mid-century, when more than half of men and a third of women smoked.…

Not sure why you're being downvoted. At least you provided a source for your comment, unlike GP.

Re: Leak confirms OpenAI is preparing ads on ChatGPT for public roll out

#134

Post by aurareturn »

isodev wrote: post #132
aurareturn wrote: post #14

- ~1 billion users in just 3 years - Extremely personal data on users - Novel way of introducing and learning more about sponsored products - Strong branding for non-techie people (most normal people don't know what Claude or Gemini are) - An app that is getting more and more addictive/indispensable I think OpenAI is going to kill it in ads eventually. This is why Meta and Google went all in on AI. Their lucrative di…

> - Extremely personal data on users - Novel way of introducing and learning more about sponsored products Doesn’t anyone think this is really, really bad idea? We managed to radicalise people into the rise and fall of entire countries through analog ads, can you imagine how devastating it would be to infuse every digital product with all that?

No, I don't think it's really bad. Most of the world doesn't care. Only in a small tech niche on the internet do they care a lot.

Re: Leak confirms OpenAI is preparing ads on ChatGPT for public roll out

#135

Post by Avicebron »

"I'm sorry Dave, your plan doesn't include any more open source examples this month. Please choose which vendor you would like and I'll walk you through setting up an account and we'll get coding! Don't forget to use #GPT20 at checkout for an additional 20% off!"

Re: Leak confirms OpenAI is preparing ads on ChatGPT for public roll out

#136

Post by aurareturn »

logifail wrote: post #101
aurareturn wrote: post #14

- ~1 billion users in just 3 years - Extremely personal data on users - Novel way of introducing and learning more about sponsored products - Strong branding for non-techie people (most normal people don't know what Claude or Gemini are) - An app that is getting more and more addictive/indispensable I think OpenAI is going to kill it in ads eventually. This is why Meta and Google went all in on AI. Their lucrative di…

> I think people who kept saying there is no moat in AI is about to be shocked at how strong of a moat there actually is for ChatGPT Given one can (at least for the moment) export one's entire chat history from ChatGPT, what exactly would stop a ChatGPT user from switching to an alternative if the alternative is either better, or better value?

No one normal will do that. And I'm betting that OpenAI will get rid of that functionality soon.

Re: Leak confirms OpenAI is preparing ads on ChatGPT for public roll out

#137

Post by solumunus »

lenkite wrote: post #57
aurareturn wrote: post #14

- ~1 billion users in just 3 years - Extremely personal data on users - Novel way of introducing and learning more about sponsored products - Strong branding for non-techie people (most normal people don't know what Claude or Gemini are) - An app that is getting more and more addictive/indispensable I think OpenAI is going to kill it in ads eventually. This is why Meta and Google went all in on AI. Their lucrative di…

Only a short matter of time before agentic tools start serving ads too - paying user or not. You want to refactor your codebase ? No issue - taking 30 seconds - please view this ad meanwhile.

I highly doubt this one. These agents are pretty interchangeable, any one of them could decide to not show ads and steal huge market share. Programming is one of the few areas they can actually make gross margin, so ads would be a terrible business decision given the above. The ad revenue from it would be insignificant against the API calls / subscriptions.

Re: Leak confirms OpenAI is preparing ads on ChatGPT for public roll out

#138

Post by mattlondon »

aurareturn wrote: post #32
Andrex wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spinning up an all-new ad network is pretty tough. I would think OpenAI would need to beat Meta/Google on basics like CPM in order for the network effects to make it desirable for ad vendors over Meta/Google. Ad budgets are fixed and zero-sum and vendors (in my head, I don't know) would prefer to spend their money on the best network giving the best results. I don't know if ads in LLM chats can get there.

I'm betting that they can. Here's an idea that just popped into my head: ChatGPT shows a sponsored entry in chat history list with a colorful border around it to get users to click. This product is something that ChatGPT knows the user desperately needs from previous chats. The user can chat directly with the product and learn more about it. The advertiser specifically sent OpenAI information (like a RAG) about their…

But the missing part is "we know they need this!" but they don't have the ad network to have the pixels on the vendor sites to track the conversion (or not for remarketing!). They only have half (at most) of the picture. This is why they tried to create a browser (remember that? Nope me neither) to try and get the full picture.

Advertisers are accustomed to pay for conversions now. If you can't track it, you cant prove it happened.

Open ai will need to spin up the entire infrastructure (Inc sales teams, support teams, servers etc) to run the ad network. Not impossible but it is a big lift and they're already burning money.

Their best bet is probably to just sign up for selling their ad space with Google, like all the other apps and websites do

Re: Leak confirms OpenAI is preparing ads on ChatGPT for public roll out

#139

Post by picardo »

I'm curious how the unit economics actually play out here compared to traditional search. With Google, the compute cost to serve a query is negligible, so even low-CPM ads are profitable.

With an LLM, the inference cost per query is orders of magnitude higher. Unless thy have a way to command significantly higher CPMs -- perhaps by arguing intent signal is stringer in a conversation than a keyword search -- it feels like a difficult margin to sustain.

Re: Leak confirms OpenAI is preparing ads on ChatGPT for public roll out

#140

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

monooso wrote: post #133
bonsai_spool wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the 1980s, the American Heart Association listed many contributors to heart disease. > A missing one: smoking. > At some point, it was revealed that Big Tobacco was a major contributor to the AHA. > They now list tobacco as a big risk factor. https://www.heart.org/en/bold-hearts-the-centennial/100-year... Taking on tobacco was no small task at mid-century, when more than half of men and a third of women smoked.…

Not sure why you're being downvoted. At least you provided a source for your comment, unlike GP.

I agree. My only source was from personal experience. I saw the ads, myself, and remember when it changed. I think that the article may be a bit of "damage control."

Gave it a +1.

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