Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy • Hacker News Board

Re: Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy

#211

Post by Aurornis » Sun, Jan 18, 2026, 4:57 PM UTC

_factor wrote: post #200

Aurornis wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The new business line will cost about $2M in software dev, and $3M for the new facility. The advertising budget? $40,000,000 (annual). The reason the advertising budget is such a high number and a recurring charge is that effective advertising returns an ROI on each dollar spent. If the software budget was increased 10X to $20 million, would the company get 10X as many customers? No. What about the facility? If you…

I doubt the ROI would be so high if organic results stood any chance. The ROI on bribes is very high too, but we haven’t legalized those (officially).

> I doubt the ROI would be so high if organic results stood any chance.

This is just the same fallacy. In what world are people going to organically share ads for this company on their Facebook feeds? Who is going to Google the company name before they know about it?

Every business needs to proactively acquire customers.

Distribution and CAC are top of mind values for any growth business. It has been this way long before Google and Meta existed. Digital advertising actually makes it cheaper and easier than ever to acquire customers at scale.

Re: Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy

#212

Post by malfist » Sun, Jan 18, 2026, 4:57 PM UTC

smikhanov wrote: post #57

mancerayder wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kills me, and you're right - there's no escaping the ads even with a sub. Take online journalism as an example. We're already being double-billed. Expensive subscription news like WSJ, Bloomberg and it's been a while but even FT require ad blockers even if you're subscribed.. If you're not subscribed you don't even see the ads because you can't see the full article. It's wild that we've normalized this. There's…

To be honest, in the pre-internet era, paid paper copy of FT had ads too. The delivery mechanisms for ads in the internet era are trillion times nastier and more annoying, of course. By the standards of today’s web, the print ad for Cartier on the second page of paper FT looks almost classy, interesting to read.

But there's a big difference. The paper copy didn't harvest data from you, didn't infect you, didn't spy on you or steal resources from your computer or internet bandwidth.

All the advertiser knew about you was you were a subscriber to FT, and maybe what the _average_ demographic of an FT subscriber was. Nothing about you personally.

Re: Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy

#213

Post by malfist » Sun, Jan 18, 2026, 5:00 PM UTC

npongratz wrote: post #78

fsflover wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps the actual solution is to ban ads through regulation, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43595269

Regulation is theater, effectively, thanks to regulatory capture.

This is a false argument. Regulations are effective. When was the last time you breathed in second hand smoke while eating dinner? Or inhaled lead from a passing car? Or asbestos from your neighbor's new house?

Defeatism will always be defeated

Re: Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy

#214

Post by pirates » Sun, Jan 18, 2026, 5:00 PM UTC

prmoustache wrote: post #174

Workaccount2 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Google realized this a long time ago; there is no ad-free paid version of Google Search. Google actually experimented with this about a decade ago (I know, I was one of the suckers who paid), but it got canned because why the fuck would you pay google when u-bloc is free? Companies absolutely will offer ad-free experiences. Google has youtube premium, which even compensates creators with half your sub as well. Evenl…

> Companies absolutely will offer ad-free experiences. Google has youtube premium, which even compensates creators with half your sub as well. Evenly distributed too. Youtube premium is not ad-free, you still gets whatever ads are embedded in the actual content.

Several different “premium” tiers have this issue. Why am I purportedly paying for no ads if i continue to get ads? Whether or not they’re “platform ads” or “embedded” doesn’t matter. I paid for no ads and I’m not getting what I paid for, so why keep paying?

Re: Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy

#215

Post by __MatrixMan__ » Sun, Jan 18, 2026, 5:01 PM UTC

usaphp wrote: post #156

tshaddox wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know what the solution is Just spitballing, but how about a total ban on behavioral targeting?

Wouldn’t that increase the ad spend? You will need to show more ads to find your target audience

This would predominantly affect businesses where that audience is not trying to find that business.

Which sort of businesses are those?

Re: Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy

#216

Post by fenwick67 » Sun, Jan 18, 2026, 5:01 PM UTC

skeltoac wrote: post #131

To those who believe ads are evil and must be stopped, I ask how the world will work if we kill the freedom to sell space for commercial messages where people can see them.

I am now imagining a "A Case Of Spring Fever" style educational film about how ads are good actually

Re: Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy

#217

Post by metabagel » Sun, Jan 18, 2026, 5:02 PM UTC

csense wrote: post #209

bearjaws wrote: post #62

There is something to be said about the state of advertising. Increasingly it seems you must go to the almighty Google or Meta in order to launch any business. We're looking to expand into a new business line and have out grown our pharmacy capacity. The new business line will cost about $2M in software dev, and $3M for the new facility. The advertising budget? $40,000,000 (annual). We can build 10 robotic pharmacies…

Advertising spend being too high is a symptom of a supply glut. Too many products in the marketplace, not enough consumers to buy them. In a different world where there are higher wages, more people would have more spending power. Then companies wouldn't have to spend as many dollars on advertising, which they could split between higher wages, higher margins and lower prices. Alas, the short-term single-firm directio…

Stronger unions would help bring wages up.

Re: Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy

#218

Post by mmaunder » Sun, Jan 18, 2026, 5:05 PM UTC

I’m fascinated at how out of touch that NYT article is. It’s as if it was written by someone who just spent 3 years on the moon. “The next big thing will be agents: The models will fill digital shopping baskets and take care of online bills. They will act for you.”

Golly Mr two times Pulitzer nominee, do tell us more!

There is a kind of liberal arts elite that seems to not be using AI very much and not be buying any of their services. Contrast that with those of us in tech who are handing over money as fast as we can and can’t get enough of gpt 5.2 codex on xhigh and similar products that are game changing enablers.

Makes me wonder if we’re seeing a fracture in society beginning to form where the doomsdayers, naysayers, cynics and skeptics will realize their error too late.

My view on AI is that this is the world’s first Unbubble: where the majority view is that we are over invested, but where history will show we actually underestimated future revenue and profitability.

The conditions for the Unbubble are perfect. We have a once in a species level innovation with an economic system where all value accrues to the creators and financiers. And we have just emerged from the housing bubble and the dot com bubble in the last 3 decades, freshly scorched.

We thought connecting everyone would create new value far faster than it did. But really it took a long time to run all that fiber and make it fast, and it was just laying the plumbing for this moment.

Training big foundational models may seem slow, but it’s happening way faster than circling continents and the globe with fiber and developing terabit switching fabric.

I spend 12 hours a day using codex CLI to write extremely fast Rust and cuda code with advanced math that does things I didn’t think were possible. My focus is on creating value from the second and third order effects of AI. These enabling effects are in few conversations. As weirdly innovative products emerge from small shops, they will begin to be discussed.

Re: Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy

#219

Post by aniviacat » Sun, Jan 18, 2026, 5:06 PM UTC

skeltoac wrote: post #131

To those who believe ads are evil and must be stopped, I ask how the world will work if we kill the freedom to sell space for commercial messages where people can see them.

What are you worried will happen? ChatGPT releases and noone will know? Anyone interested in staying up to date with new technology can read a tech newspaper. That newspaper is paid by the readers, so its incentive is to show actually interesting products. It is not paid by some random company whose product might be bad or outright malicious.

Re: Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy

#220

Post by badcryptobitch » Sun, Jan 18, 2026, 5:07 PM UTC

analog31 wrote: post #127

tshaddox wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know what the solution is Just spitballing, but how about a total ban on behavioral targeting?

I'd go further, with a ban on possession of the data, with a provision for statutory damages.

You can still derive a lot of info without having possession of the data through the use of PETs. There's a reason why companies like Google and Tik Tok make heavy use of PETs for their advertising products.