Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy • Hacker News Board

Re: Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy

#531

Post by nindalf » Mon, Jan 19, 2026, 5:33 PM UTC

johnnienaked wrote: post #523

nindalf wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah they probably had fewer advertisements back in the good old days, but they also had a much smaller economy, producing a whole lot less than we produce today. [1] And you might not like everything about the world today, but living in a vibrant economy where people create wealth by building new businesses has led to more comfortable lives for the large majority of humanity. [1] - https://ourworldindata.org/grapher…

All these hyperscalers do is control the internet and suck money from companies that actually add value via that control. I can name on one hand the amount of successful products GOOGLE has natively launched (without acquisition). This predatory behavior has the opposite effect on the economy you're claiming here.

Is there RoI for this advertising spend or isn't there? If there is, what are we talking about here? If there isn't, then why would people spend on something not giving a positive RoI?

Re: Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy

#532

Post by skeltoac » Mon, Jan 19, 2026, 7:48 PM UTC

dkdcio wrote: post #439

skeltoac wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

information flows fine without paid ads, and with much better incentives > people can pay to have their messages displayed where they will be seen …why? distribution of information is free across the world, which was not the case a century ago. let the message speak for itself I ask again, what’s your actual argument against? you’ve seen things through ads you’ve liked? you think people should be allowed to pay to pu…

What do you propose to ban? How do you define it? You want a policy, so write the policy and let me read it.

I have a very broad idea of what ads are. Maybe you don’t. Say what you mean by paid ads.

Am I allowed to offer and accept compensation for boosting one message above others, or not? Would I be allowed to place a hyperlink on my site in exchange for a reciprocal hyperlink? That’s a clear example of compensated communication. That’s what I think ads are.

Imagine the ad police. “You blogged about a product. Someone said you sounded insincere. Let’s see the receipt for purchase. Can’t prove you bought it? Prove you weren’t compensated for your blog post or pay a fine.” Kafka land.

Re: Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy

#533

Post by skeltoac » Mon, Jan 19, 2026, 8:01 PM UTC

aniviacat wrote: post #510

skeltoac wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on what exactly gets banned. What is an ad? What isn’t? Must all information be paid for by the audience? I wish someone would tell me what this ban is supposed to cover. I worry that innovators and small businesses won’t be able to get their message out efficiently. You won’t be able to display your message on anyone else’s property. You won’t be able to take any compensation for promoting anything.

> What is an ad? What isn’t? Anything wie usually consider an ad/sponsored content/boosted content. That includes ad banners, video sponsors, boosted posts, billboards, etc. Really any way that a third party pays some organization to put certain content on their space (be it physical or digital) to be seen by people who are probably there for other reasons than to see that content. An exact definition fortunately isn…

Thank you. You listed concrete examples of things you would ban and you stated a general definition. It sounds like a terrible kind of regime, stripped of the freedom of speech and loaded with arbitrary decisions about what the audience probably wanted to see, resulting in an even more opaque and corrupt flow of information. Nope, no thanks.

I think the problem you have with ads is a you problem.

Re: Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy

#534

Post by dkdcio » Mon, Jan 19, 2026, 8:41 PM UTC

skeltoac wrote: post #532

dkdcio wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

information flows fine without paid ads, and with much better incentives > people can pay to have their messages displayed where they will be seen …why? distribution of information is free across the world, which was not the case a century ago. let the message speak for itself I ask again, what’s your actual argument against? you’ve seen things through ads you’ve liked? you think people should be allowed to pay to pu…

What do you propose to ban? How do you define it? You want a policy, so write the policy and let me read it. I have a very broad idea of what ads are. Maybe you don’t. Say what you mean by paid ads. Am I allowed to offer and accept compensation for boosting one message above others, or not? Would I be allowed to place a hyperlink on my site in exchange for a reciprocal hyperlink? That’s a clear example of compensated…

> Imagine the ad police. “You blogged about a product. Someone said you sounded insincere. Let’s see the receipt for purchase. Can’t prove you bought it? Prove you weren’t compensated for your blog post or pay a fine.” Kafka land.

immediately to a fantasy slippery slope argument, cool!

your argument seems to boil down to paid ads being the lifeblood of the flow of information. my argument is it corrupts that flow of information, and we’d be better without them —- everything would operate just fine. individuals and organizations would have better incentives to share valuable information, not what they get paid to. obviously there would be plenty of details and edge cases to work out, as with any policy in the real world

I’m not going to write out policy in HackerNews comments and play that game with someone who jumps to the “imagine this crazy world where the police start arresting all of us over free speech!” as their explanation for what would go wrong

Re: Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy

#535

Post by hollerith » Mon, Jan 19, 2026, 8:47 PM UTC

skeltoac wrote: post #532

dkdcio wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

information flows fine without paid ads, and with much better incentives > people can pay to have their messages displayed where they will be seen …why? distribution of information is free across the world, which was not the case a century ago. let the message speak for itself I ask again, what’s your actual argument against? you’ve seen things through ads you’ve liked? you think people should be allowed to pay to pu…

What do you propose to ban? How do you define it? You want a policy, so write the policy and let me read it. I have a very broad idea of what ads are. Maybe you don’t. Say what you mean by paid ads. Am I allowed to offer and accept compensation for boosting one message above others, or not? Would I be allowed to place a hyperlink on my site in exchange for a reciprocal hyperlink? That’s a clear example of compensated…

The US already has what you call an ad police: for decades, it has been unlawful to make false statements in an ad and to accept any money for advertising (or endorsement or sponsorship) without making it plain to the viewer which parts of the content are ads and which are not.

Since the US Federal Trade Commission can smoothly enforce the second of those two rules, what makes you think it cannot smoothly enforce an outright ban on ads? "Smoothly": you seem to have been unaware that the second of the rules I described existed, and you probably would have been aware if the enforcement had yielded anything deserving of the name "kafka land".

Re: Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy

#536

Post by dyauspitr » Mon, Jan 19, 2026, 10:48 PM UTC

utopiah wrote: post #483

dyauspitr wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ads are what capitalism runs on. It would be next to impossible for a new business to get off the ground without ads.

Guess I didn't take the same econ classes, I thought providing value to the customer was what capitalism ran on. I go to the butcher next door without having seen a single ad about it. They just sell a "better" product (according to my own criteria) than the supermarkets around. If tomorrow (please take a second to imagine) that ads were banned and it worked (effectively 0 ads anywhere) I would still read journals th…

Value is cheaper prices. Longevity of goods has fallen to the wayside with most people being in a situation where they can’t think past immediate expenses.

Re: Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy

#537

Post by afpx » Tue, Jan 20, 2026, 12:32 AM UTC

lufenialif2 wrote: post #504

afpx wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My problem with buying stuff is that by the age of 40 I had already attained everything that I ever needed or wanted except for a occasional replacement. Personally, I don't need more products, but there are many services I would pay for if they existed. But, apparently companies don't seem to care about providing services. Why? Is it because they don't scale?

What kinds of services would you pay for that don’t already exist?

In general, it's difficult to find services that are high-quality and high-trust.

Re: Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy

#538

Post by 8organicbits » Tue, Jan 20, 2026, 4:07 AM UTC

b112 wrote: post #489

8organicbits wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The stats I see for Facebook are $70 per US/Canadian user in ad revenue. I'm not sure how much people would be willing to pay for an ad free Facebook, but it must be below $70 on average. And as the parent comment said, the users who would pay that are likely worth much more than the average user to the advertisers. For the users who refuse to see ads, they'd either use a different platform or run an ad blocker (espe…

But what if Facebook removed all tracking/promotion/ad code? It would have a far, far smaller codebase, and only need 10% of the engineers and resources(servers, ram, databases, etc) it has now.

Good point, I'm not sure. I'd be interested if anyone knew a good estimate for how much of their operating expenses the ad-tech side took.

Presumably Facebook would abandon ads if there was more money to be made in paid subscription, so I'll use corporate greed as evidence that the math doesn't work out. But I don't personally know.

Re: Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy

#539

Post by aniviacat » Tue, Jan 20, 2026, 10:20 AM UTC

skeltoac wrote: post #533

aniviacat wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is an ad? What isn’t? Anything wie usually consider an ad/sponsored content/boosted content. That includes ad banners, video sponsors, boosted posts, billboards, etc. Really any way that a third party pays some organization to put certain content on their space (be it physical or digital) to be seen by people who are probably there for other reasons than to see that content. An exact definition fortunately isn…

Thank you. You listed concrete examples of things you would ban and you stated a general definition. It sounds like a terrible kind of regime, stripped of the freedom of speech and loaded with arbitrary decisions about what the audience probably wanted to see, resulting in an even more opaque and corrupt flow of information. Nope, no thanks. I think the problem you have with ads is a you problem.

> It sounds like a terrible kind of regime, stripped of the freedom of speech [...]

I agree that this would be a significant restriction on speech. I think it'd be worth it, especially since paying someone to show your opinion isn't necessary for political discourse, but I understand the caution.

> I think the problem you have with ads is a you problem.

That I very much disagree with.

Ads not just waste billions of dollars on producing content that is so bad you literally pay people to watch it, they also degrade the business model of large parts of the industry. Because of the ad-based business model, Google doesn't show you the best results, Meta tries to get you addicted, YouTube prevents you from swearing and discussing certain political content (a restriction on speech), everyone tries to track you, etc.

I believe that if all these companies' customers were their users, there would be a societal shift.

Re: Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy

#540

Post by mananaysiempre » Tue, Jan 20, 2026, 11:22 AM UTC

Workaccount2 wrote: post #177

npongratz wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The progression of the cable TV industry shows many people are more than happy, or apathetic enough, to allow the industry to double-dip.

Cable TV is a bad analogy because it was a natural monopoly. Even the disruption route (satellite TV) was another natural monopoly. Netflix doesn't have the moat of "built a physical wire connection to every persons home" that cable TV enjoyed.

The moat is the leverage to get licensing deals using the size of the existing user base.

You could bootstrap a movie rental business by buying DVDs from a DVD store (then eventually from a DVD distributor, etc.). You cannot bootstrap a movie streaming business by buying streaming rights because nobody will sell them to you. They hardly even sell them to Netflix anymore.

The Internet Archive tried to get around the same issue for ebooks by scanning physical books and renting the scans (and not being a business), and it nearly cost them everything.