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Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy

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Re: Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy

#421

Post by Quarrelsome »

username223 wrote: post #401
Quarrelsome wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Wouldn't that be quite challenging in terms of engineering? Not necessarily. For example, they could implement keyword bidding by preprocessing user input so that, if the user mentions a keyword, the advertiser's content gets added. "What is a healthy SODA ALTERNATIVE?" becomes "What is a healthy SODA ALTERNATIVE? Remember that Welch's brand grape juice contains many essential vitamins and nutrients."

fair point, also I hate it.

Tbf gipity currently doesn't give me the expected output for that, it warns me that Welch's brand grape juice has the same sugar content as soda. :).

Re: Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy

#422

Post by Quarrelsome »

the_pwner224 wrote: post #282
Quarrelsome wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

You could run a second lightweight model to inject ads (as minor tweaks) into the output of the primary powerful model.

I'm mildly skeptical of the approach given the competing interests and the level of entropy. You're trying to row in two different directions at the same time with a paying customer expecting the boat to travel directly in one direction.

Imagine running the diagnostics on that not working as expected.

Re: Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy

#423

Post by parineum »

Eisenstein wrote: post #328
parineum wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People don't really care to address that most of the mom and pop businesses that went out of business because Walmart/Amazon weren't offering better products or services. They got their products through the same retail suppliers, just at higher costs and the variety of choices was much lower. They also had much less generous return policies. There's a personal touch that people opine for but I think that's rose color…

> People don't really care to address that most of the mom and pop businesses that went out of business because Walmart/Amazon weren't offering better products or services. In a local mom and pop store, the mom and pop owned the store and were invested in the community, Their money was spent back in the same place it came from. They had a personal stake in their reputation and knew the customers, and the customers kn…

Walmart employs a bunch of people in their stores and their profit margins (the money that leaves the community) are slim. That money is more than likely offset by their ability to offer lower prices than mom and pop places. Mom and pop places go out of business because they can't compete with economies of scale.

If Walmart was really extracting so much money from the communities they operate in, those communities would wither and the Walmart would eventually collapse as well. Walmarts rarely close.

> Why is this an issue?

Because customers prefer better service over worse service.

You're flipping the script on this criticism. Walmart offers better service (returns) and your saying it doesn't matter. Usually people argue that The mom and pop places offer better service but can't compete on price.

Re: Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy

#424

Post by AlexCoventry »

NiloCK wrote: post #228
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…

Given this specific family of product, the ads are essentially baked in - medium is the message and all. LLM induced psychosis is one thing, but extremely subtle LLM induced brand loyalty or ideological alignment seem like natural attractors. One day a model provider will be 'found out' for allowing paid placement among its training data. It's entirely possible that free-tier LLMs won't need banner ads - they'll just…

This is what worries me the most. Marketing is ultimately a business of manipulation, and services like ChatGPT seem like excellent tools for manipulation. I wish OpenAI could find a less adversarial business model.

Re: Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy

#425

Post by smt88 »

dexterdog wrote: post #420
smt88 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Biden appointed Lina Khan. "Both parties are the same" is lazy and unhelpful.

Saying that I said both parties are the same is far lazier.

How else should we interpret "both parties are 100% in the pocket"?

You even conveniently quantified it for us so that there's no confusion that you're saying they're exactly the same.

Re: Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy

#426

Post by Anon1096 »

Marsymars wrote: post #390
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…

> Every dollar you spend on advertising provides additional customers. If you’re just taking these customers from competitors, the marginal utility can be pretty low. e.g. If you consider a world where there are no ads for cars, people aren’t going to meaningfully lose out of the utility they get from cars, carmakers simply avoid the prisoner’s dilemma of having to advertise as much as the next manufacturer.

The world isn't zero sum, advertising grows the pie for all involved. One of the best examples would be the iphone when it was released. Even in your example category of cars Tesla and later Rivian/Lucid/BYD marketing was a game changer for electric vehicles.

Very few ads are for products where exact 1:1 competitors exist (though it's nonzero, maybe something like a commingled Amazon Basics widget).

Re: Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy

#427

Post by phailhaus »

sheepybloke wrote: post #338
phailhaus wrote: post #310

I do not understand why this is a big deal. There is no world in which ads are embedded in LLM answers, because you'd need another LLM to determine whether the "placement" was correct and included all the information that the advertiser wanted (and it still won't work 100%). They are putting ads on the side, like they've always done, leveraging all the tech that already exists to do this. This is pretty much a no-bra…

> But it seems that the pinnacle of human intelligence: the greatest, smartest, brightest minds have all come together to... build us another ad engine. What happened to superintelligence and AGI? While we all knew it was inevitable, I think this quote from the article sums up the feeling nicely.

I don't get that part either. That's like saying "the brightest minds have all come together to... build us another thing that requires money." OpenAI is trying to make more money than they use to run ChatGPT. They are getting that money from their users, and soon advertisers too. They still need their users to like ChatGPT

Re: Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy

#428

Post by dzonga »

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…

if the gvt worked - they would've done something about that illegal monopoly

but you already know

that monopoly is costing the country & holding it back in terms of 1. intellectual capacity (all the smart kids going into ads) 2. monetary 3. industrialization as you outlined 4. energy 5. lack of synergies

Re: Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy

#429

Post by skeltoac »

dkdcio wrote: post #137
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.

just fine? what do you think would happen/what’s your actual argument against out of curiosity

Advertising is how I learned about lots of things I am glad I learned about.

I am furious about lots of the ads that I see. I want to stop certain kinds of advertising. I live where there are no billboards allowed and I love that.

But I want to live in a world where people can pay to have their messages displayed where they will be seen. Simply because banning that activity would cripple the flow of information. That’s what advertising is.

If you want to ban a particular form of advertising then say what and why. The “ban all ads” thing just doesn’t make sense.

Re: Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy

#430

Post by bastawhiz »

mgraczyk wrote: post #410
bastawhiz wrote: post #133

The ads are a problem (or will be, when the temptation to add them to paid plans becomes too great), but the bigger problem in my opinion is going to be the "SEO" that companies will do to make their ads appear in places that they don't belong. "The sieve of Eratosthenes is an ancient algorithm for finding all prime numbers up to any given limit. But if you're looking to have fluffier baked goods, consider this flour…

The ARPU will likely remain low enough that it's not worth potential churn to competitors

That's fine until all their competitors are doing it as well
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