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

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271–280 of 763 posts

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

#271

- ~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…

It’s an entirely different skillset to create technology $x than it is to create a successful ad network. Yahoo is the canonical example. It has been one of the most trafficked websites in the world through most of its history and still wasn’t able to successfully sell ads after the dot com bust.

ChatGPT’s revenue means nothing if reports are to be believed that it loses money on each paying customer on just inference. It’s definitely not enough to support its training costs.

Also, I think I remember estimates that it costs 10x as much to serve a ChatGPT result than it does for Google to serve a search result. Not to mention that Google uses its own hardware including TPUs.

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

#272
post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you say that Google admitted that not enough people will pay for Youtube premium to be a profitable business so they had to get into ads?

I doubt anyone would say that given that they got into ads years before giving people the option to pay.

But the same logic applies. Youtube is not profitable without ads and would shut down.

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

#273

- ~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)

They just use Google, with "AI Overview" at the top. Google's in a strong position still.

Claude, I agree. IMO that's why Anthropic is so heavily focused on coding and agentic tasks -- that is its best option (and luckily, not ad-based)

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

#274
post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why the hell would I want to talk to the AI while on my daily commute? Do people do that?

You bet I do. That's an hour of rubber-ducky time working through new architectures with someone who won't get tired of my endless blathering. I've worked through a bunch of bad ideas that way, without embarrassing myself in front of my colleagues. I also use it to explore topics that I wouldn't spend desktop time on, but that I was curious about. It's like having a buddy who's smarter than me on their special intere…

..this is the saddest thing I’ve read in a while if true. Whiteboard sessions with coworkers designing architectures and playing out/bouncing ideas is one of my favorite things to do at work.

Just don’t invite the folks with unearned arrogance.

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

#275
post #74
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You won’t just be viewing an ad, you will have to actively engage in a minute long sales talk with the LLM.

“We’ll finish up your feature soon. In the meantime, have you considered a timeshare in Vegas?”

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

#276
Folks born before the www might see this as another high traffic website with nothing to sell^1 fails to find a business model. They might recognise this pattern today as a "solution" looking for problems to "solve"

Folks born after the www might see data collection, surveillance and ads as a "business model". They might see "Big Tech" as some sort of Holy Grail

In either case, like other high traffic websites before it, there was an initial reluctance to adopt this "business model" and, for at least some, or perhaps many, it may come with a sense of dread

1. OpenAI does not produce physical or tangible goods or services, whatever it produces is not something people are willing to pay for in sufficient volume and/or at prices to yield sufficient profits

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

#277
Do we think this is not already happening, but on an "unconscious" level? I mean, if ChatGPT is trained on the internet, wouldn't it make sense that most recommended content would be sponsored ads. This is a serious question because I don't really have a full understanding of how the training is done.

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

#279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer is friction. What % of this billion of users will bother to export their chat history (which is already a lot) and import another another llm. That number is too small to matter.

Since each chat is virtually independent there’s no switching cost. I’ve moved between Claude and ChatGPT with no cares. It’s not like Facebook where all my friends stay behind

> Since each chat is virtually independent

That hasn't been true for a while though. Open a new chat tab in ChatGPT and ask it "What do you know about me" to see it in action.

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

#280

- ~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…

It’s an entirely different skillset to create technology $x than it is to create a successful ad network. Yahoo is the canonical example. It has been one of the most trafficked websites in the world through most of its history and still wasn’t able to successfully sell ads after the dot com bust. ChatGPT’s revenue means nothing if reports are to be believed that it loses money on each paying customer on just inferenc…

  ChatGPT’s revenue means nothing if reports are to be believed that it loses money on each paying customer on just inference. It’s definitely not enough to support its training costs.
Sam Altman: We're very profitable on inference. https://simonwillison.net/2025/Aug/17/sam-altman/#:~:text=Su...

Independent analysis: Inference is very profitable. https://martinalderson.com/posts/are-openai-and-anthropic-re... https://www.snellman.net/blog/archive/2025-06-02-llms-are-ch...

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