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Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy

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Re: Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy

#71

Post by MontyCarloHall »

lkbm wrote: post #65
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…

> Google realized this a long time ago; there is no ad-free paid version of Google Search. Ad-free YouTube costs $14 a month (and the creators get a higher payout from premium user views than they do from the free, ad-viewing users).

Video ads are less lucrative than ads alongside search, which can be a lot more closely tailored to both the user and the search results at hand. The existence of YouTube Premium shows that Google is indeed willing to provide paid ad-free experiences so long as it nets them more revenue, and is strong evidence that the same is not true for search.

Re: Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy

#72

Post by fsflover »

mancerayder wrote: post #44
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…

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…

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

Re: Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy

#73

Post by npongratz »

Quarrelsome wrote: post #48
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…

> 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. but they're already paying you. While I appreciate the greed can be there, surely they'd be shooting themselves in the foot. There's many people who would pay who find advertising toxic and they have such huge volumes at free level that they'd be able to make a lot off a low i…

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

Re: Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy

#74

Post by mancerayder »

nathan_compton wrote: post #47
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…

This is why we need to ban targeted advertising. In fact, I think ads should be 100% opt-in. The user has to accept them or it is illegal to show them to the user.

That's what a generic semi-forced opt in via JavaScript is for, as we learn from the cookie opt in nonsense of EU sites. It's compliance for compliance sake.

Re: Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy

#75

Post by bonesss »

nickphx wrote: post #37

[flagged]

I think having mixed economic interests is great when an advertising company is asking you, you execs, your engineers, and consultants to dump whole copies of project planning, business practices, and internal dynamics on their servers…

If I’m looking at ads for your shizz a) why can’t we just pay as a business expense, inline ads and B2B are an odd combo, and b) if this isn’t fully local tech I think there is a real challenge trusting MS or OpenAI to respect their contracts.

We’re not too far past these same dudes running around, violating NDAs, and launching product clones to eat partner businesses. Now ads? … trust? … scorpions and frogs, scorpions and frogs.

Re: Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy

#76

Post by iamnothere »

philipwhiuk wrote: post #8
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…

> I think ads will inevitably roll out across all tiers, even the expensive paid ones. The counter for this is that people hate being double-billed like this.

The ads may not be announced. If ads can be subtly inserted “organically” through crafted weights then AI companies may try to claim that it isn’t advertising, if it’s even possible to catch them doing this. For instance, advertisers could pay to have their product embedded as the “best” in a category during training. If this is done as a fine-tuning step then it could be re-run later as advertisers and base models change.

Re: Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy

#77

Post by likium »

Quarrelsome wrote: post #48
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…

> 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. but they're already paying you. While I appreciate the greed can be there, surely they'd be shooting themselves in the foot. There's many people who would pay who find advertising toxic and they have such huge volumes at free level that they'd be able to make a lot off a low i…

Go plans at $8 are getting ads too. Netflix introduced a paid plan with ads, and it is more profitable.

Re: Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy

#78

Post by npongratz »

fsflover wrote: post #72
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…

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.

Re: Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy

#79

Post by woeirua »

techblueberry wrote: post #56
woeirua wrote: post #13

People are a bit too eager to jump on the emergence of ads as an indicator that things are slowing down. I view it as the opposite, mostly because of my experience with Codex 5.2 and Opus 4.5. These models are incredible. I think by some definitions they’re already AGI. So why bake in ads? My hunch is that raising funds privately can only take you so far. To keep scaling, they need more capital and have to go public.…

“Have you tried the new models, bro?”

I’m convinced that there will be people declaring that this isn’t AGI all the way up to the moment that they become permanently unemployed.

Re: Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy

#80

Post by ben_w »

KellyCriterion wrote: post #31
loloquwowndueo wrote: post #10

> Look on the bright side, if they're turning to ads it likely means AGI is not on the horizon. Your job is safe! I like this quote from TFA :)

I stumbled upon this one as well, but I do not understand it really: Why is my job safe if Ads prove there is no AGI? Because even if there would be AGI, they could (and would?) serve ads anyway?

If your job is gone forever, with what money are you going to buy the thing in the advert? If nobody can buy the thing in the advert, the value of the ad slot itself is zero.
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