[HN Gopher] Testing Ads in ChatGPT
___________________________________________________________________
Testing Ads in ChatGPT
Author : davidbarker
Score : 199 points
Date : 2026-02-09 19:04 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (openai.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (openai.com)
| jLaForest wrote:
| >Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Education tiers will not
| have ads.
|
| For now, or for ever?
| mjamesaustin wrote:
| Until users are sufficiently locked in and they decide to start
| tightening the screws.
| simianwords wrote:
| how will lockin happen? just use claude or something
| fragmede wrote:
| How do I transfer 3 years of memories over to Claude? Users
| really like the personalization they've gotten with
| ChatGPT. It knows about my pets and their names. I gotta
| teach all of that stuff to Claude or whomever again?
| _sigh_. I 'll just stick with ChatGPT.
|
| ...is what OpenAI is betting on.
| simianwords wrote:
| you can already export everything in chatgpt and if your
| competitors really wanted you, they would provide a way
| to import it.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| For now; Plus has already had ad-like things appear below new
| chats.
|
| What they'll do is present it as a "choice." Keep paying what
| we're paying but have ads, or pay triple for ad-free. For
| example, see every streaming service.
|
| Unfortunately people, in particularly this community, would be
| looking at Local LLMs for ad free alternatives, but prices on
| GPUs/RAM have skyrocketed keeping us trapped.
| base698 wrote:
| BETRAYAL
| pelagicAustral wrote:
| You're absolutely right.
| kachapopopow wrote:
| so perfectly personalized ads? the CPM on this is probably wild
| (for openai).
| 2gremlin181 wrote:
| What makes this any more personalized than Google Search ads?
| wtfHN26 wrote:
| This is working a lot like Meta/Facebook where they have got
| immense data about your interests.
|
| Google Search OTOH has been using broad matched queries and
| is deciding which keywords to show your Ads.
|
| I heard from many people that they don't like this approach
| of Google Search Ads now. As they are blowing up more money
| for useless keywords they didn't want to target. The only
| option they have is to add negative keywords - that mostly
| happens after the money is spent on junk keywords.
| lampe3 wrote:
| I Am Shocked, I Am Shocked, Well Not That Shocked.
| rvz wrote:
| > What will always remain true: ChatGPT's answers remain
| independent and unbiased, conversations stay private, and people
| keep meaningful control over their experience.
|
| Translation: They will very slowly abandon their 'principles',
| just like they did with the moment they took investment from
| Microsoft and the VCs.
|
| This is how ChatGPT gets destroyed and 'ensh*ttified' for
| everyone. The same people who jumped ship from Meta and destroyed
| Facebook, Instagram, and soon Threads are also the same people
| that are about apply the same recipe on to ChatGPT at OpenAI.
|
| The researchers that were there pre-ChatGPT are now being
| replaced by opportunist grifters that will ruin the product
| overrun by ads once again. It would be no-different to Google
| Ads.
|
| Now we need ad-blockers for LLMs to be in place "for the benefit
| of humanity".
| railgunmerlin wrote:
| Have to wonder if the IPO push for this year is genuine now
| sdf2erf wrote:
| Its seemingly a hedge against not generating enough revenue to
| maintain existing investor trust / sustain operations in the
| future.
| titaniumrain wrote:
| switching to gemini right now... this is insane! why should i pay
| openai to get unsolicited ads?!
| Fernicia wrote:
| The only paid subscription getting ads is the one they created
| last week which is less than 50% of any other SOTA AI
| subscription on the market. Normal Pro users aren't getting
| ads.
| blackjack_ wrote:
| Normal pro users aren't getting ads, _yet_.
| hn_acc1 wrote:
| Yet?
| mvdtnz wrote:
| So a paid tier is getting ads got it.
| jsheard wrote:
| Do you really think an AI model provided by _Google_ is never
| going to have ads?
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| I would be surprised if any major AI companies could sustain
| free plan for more than a year or two once it becomes
| popular. Claude can do it for now because the ratio of paying
| users is higher as it is popular among more niche audience.
| timpera wrote:
| The Gemini experience is quite inferior right now
| unfortunately.
| simianwords wrote:
| this is downvoted but anyone who has used gemini seriously
| would know that it comes nowhere close to chatgpt or claude.
| wtfHN26 wrote:
| Switching to the BIGGEST Advertising Company in the world to
| get away from Ads ?
|
| I hope this was intended as humor.
| arealaccount wrote:
| What Google is talking about seems way worse
| https://www.levernews.com/googles-ai-knows-what-youll-pay/
| co_king_3 wrote:
| switching to meth right now... this is insane! why should i pay
| my coke dealer to give me 50% pure cocaine?!
| janpot wrote:
| Dont't be evil, etc... we've seen it all before. Eventually ads
| will be hidden in the answers, it's just a matter of time,
| enshittification ensues eventually.
|
| God, how stupid do they think we are?
| tibbar wrote:
| I mean, yeah, probably, but also OpenAI literally can't afford
| to give away this for free. They are losing a lot of money.
| Open source AI will continue to be a thing and they will have
| to compete to give you something better than what you can do
| yourself.
|
| OpenAI is far from the stage of "grinding out more and more
| profits for investors." It's more like the stage of "most
| serious observers doubt that it can continue as a going
| concern"
| iamleppert wrote:
| Anthropic was absolutely right!
| operatingthetan wrote:
| This has been in the discourse for a while, they didn't make a
| shot in the dark.
| timpera wrote:
| OpenAI had already announced that ads were coming to ChatGPT.
| Also, Claude's free plan is incredibly limited and far less
| popular, so it's easier for them to keep it ad-free.
| abraxas wrote:
| I see what you did there.
| mrweasel wrote:
| How long will it take for those ads to move from the bottom of
| the page to the top? How long until the borders between answers
| and ads starts to blur?
|
| I get that OpenAI has to do something, but really, all those
| promises, try to convince everyone that ChatGPT will
| revolutionise everything and the best monetization plan is
| ads.... Again?
| c7b wrote:
| > and the best monetization plans is ads.... Again?
|
| Several of the biggest companies today are fueled by ads, and
| OpenAI has the perfect ad vehicle. What else were you
| expecting?
|
| That's why local LLMs are important, and to preserve the
| current open weight models, because those are likely still
| untainted by ads. It won't be long until ad recommendations are
| directly baked into the weights of open models.
| mrweasel wrote:
| I wasn't expecting anything else, because I think Sam Altman
| is a conman. Let's not forget Altman lambasting ads, and
| telling us how they were a last restort for OpenAI. So are we
| there yet? Are we willing to admit that OpenAI is a failing
| company?
| jjordan wrote:
| Failing or not, there's no way to justify their current
| spend without saying the words "massive" and "bubble".
| brutal_chaos_ wrote:
| > What else were you expecting?
|
| some of us were hoping for actual innovation, not more ads
| c7b wrote:
| I think today's LLMs and their derivatives (agents,.. ) are
| an impressive technological/research achievement with
| amazing real-world utility. Innovation at its best. I don't
| see the enshittification of commercial products based upon
| LLMs as taking away from that. Like I said, I see the
| potential of this technology in the local/open weights
| model space. Yes, those are currently noticeably behind the
| commercial offerings. But that's not a fundamental problem.
| It's not a race. If we keep improving open products they
| can one day match if not exceed the commercial options. A
| bit like open source desktop environments/operating systems
| - it took a while, but now the OSS options can arguably
| match if not beat the commercial ones.
| manuelmoreale wrote:
| > Several of the biggest companies today are fueled by ads,
| and OpenAI has the perfect ad vehicle. What else were you
| expecting?
|
| I'm old enough to remember when these people were claiming AI
| was as important and as revolutionary as fire and
| electricity. I don't know about you, but I pay for my
| electricity and the power companies don't have to run ads on
| my power lines in order to run their business.
| shafyy wrote:
| And that's all you really need to know about this AI grift.
| nancyminusone wrote:
| They probably would if they could. That gives me some bad
| ideas - you could vary the line frequency to play the
| McDonald's 'I'm Lovin It' jingle, etc.- good thing I'm not
| involved with either ads or power delivery.
| altern8 wrote:
| Don't forget morse code
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| Great observation, and thank you for pointing that out. I
| deployed a new MR for that using the awesome YASaaS for only
| 17.99/mo to create QR codes in your NextJS website. Using
| your company credit card to a new platform tied directly to
| your bun dependencies to pay for all your library
| subscriptions. Would you like me to tell you how much you'll
| spend this month?
| Aurornis wrote:
| > and the best monetization plan is ads.... Again?
|
| Their monetization plan is to have ad-free subscription options
| from $20 to $200/month and an API which charges by token.
|
| These ads are for the free and new low-cost ad-subsidized tier
| that comes in below their existing $20/month plan.
| notrealyme123 wrote:
| But they could make more money if they show the ads to
| everyone.
|
| E.g like Amazon prime.
| array_key_first wrote:
| For now, but they'd be stupid to not push ads on all their
| tiers.
|
| You know what's better than 20 bucks a month? 20 bucks a
| month _and ads_.
| JeremyNT wrote:
| Their valuation is dumb no matter what but you've got to think
| it's based off of the potential for B2B / gov revenue, not
| monetizing the consumer facing stuff directly.
|
| Which is to say I feel like they're going to use ads on the
| consumer stuff just to stop bleeding out VC money as quickly,
| but nobody's deluded enough to think this is going to bring
| them much closer to profitability overall.
| due-rr wrote:
| Ads are they only way to make a lot of money on the internet.
| fhd2 wrote:
| > Ads do not influence the answers ChatGPT gives you.
|
| I wonder if this is a don't-break-product-value thing, or just
| compliance (ads need to be clearly labeled, but OpenAI seems like
| it has the risk appetite to ignore that kind of thing).
| simianwords wrote:
| its a trust thing because the market they operate in is tight -
| no reason to quickly move to the next option.
|
| i personally would never touch chatgpt if i knew the answers
| were biased for certain companies.
| imron wrote:
| It's a boil the frog thing.
| wtfHN26 wrote:
| OpenAI has to do this if it wants to get big advertisers.
|
| Ads need to be clearly marked as per FTC.
|
| > According to guidelines from the Federal Trade Commission
| (FTC) in the U.S. and similar regulatory bodies worldwide,
| online advertisements--including sponsored content, native
| advertising, and influencer posts--must be readily identifiable
| as paid content to prevent deceiving consumers.
| mbb70 wrote:
| Ads are a ratchet that only tighten in one direction. Once the
| paychecks of 1000s of motivated, intelligent OpenAI employees
| depend on ad revenue increasing, the only option is to make them
| more invasive, more prevalent, more annoying, more data hungry
| etc.
| jsheard wrote:
| You only have to look at Google Search to see how this plays
| out. Their ads were also clearly separated and distinguished
| from the organic content, until they weren't.
| malux85 wrote:
| And now it's become an anti-signal. If I search for a hotel
| the top N results are for other hotels, and then results for
| travel agents, and buried somewhere in this sea of
| uselessness is the result I searched for. The managers at
| Google have become self interested promotion hunters, and the
| programmers weak sycophants. It wasn't like this in the early
| days when I was there, the best ideas won, but then the B
| player managers were hired and the rot started.
| lanstin wrote:
| It isn't the managers it is the business. All those
| geniuses hired and over years and years no one came up with
| another business model but ads. I pay for ad-free YouTube
| and would happily pay for ad free search. As would many.
| Many people would like a google scale micropayments system
| that isn't ads. The failure to do this led directly to
| social media becoming customer devouring experiences rather
| than making good products people want.
| shinryuu wrote:
| Check out kagi; adfree search
| yifanl wrote:
| Paradoxically, the people who pay for adfree experiences
| would be the most valuable targets for ads, so I suspect
| any pay for no ads arrangement will be temporary at best.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Exactly. Next up, it'll be on the Plus tier to "help
| subsidize the low price of this tier".
| newswasboring wrote:
| > All those geniuses hired and over years and years no
| one came up with another business model but ads
|
| This isn't true, there were many other ideas. It's just
| that only KPI was how much money they can make, thus ads
| won. Companies don't have an axis of ethics or morality.
| lanstin wrote:
| Ideas don't count - it's persuasion and execution that
| matter. One of the several reasons that the rule is not
| ruled by smartness/rationality.
| stevage wrote:
| I refuse to pay for ad free YouTube + otherwise I'd watch
| even more of it. The annoyingness of ads is a pretty
| important brake.
| s1mplicissimus wrote:
| There's other options to break this kind of cognitive
| pattern, like https://unhook.app/
|
| If I want them, I can use them. No need to justify ads
| for this use case.
| stevage wrote:
| That doesn't work on the TV. It also apparently requires
| using a specific browser (Kiwi) to work on mobile.
|
| But thanks, still useful on desktop.
| pton_xd wrote:
| > If I search for a hotel the top N results are for other
| hotels, and then results for travel agents, and buried
| somewhere in this sea of uselessness is the result I
| searched for.
|
| The other day I had a DMV appointment scheduled on my
| Google Calendar with the office address saved in the
| location field. I opened the event and clicked on the
| address to navigate there.
|
| I didn't realize initially but the first few Google Maps
| results were ads! When clicking on an exact address link!!
| I almost ended up at some apartment complex 2 miles away.
| Absolutely bewildering.
| riku_iki wrote:
| > The managers at Google have become self interested
| promotion hunters, and the programmers weak sycophants. It
| wasn't like this in the early days when I was there, the
| best ideas won, but then the B player managers were hired
| and the rot started.
|
| I bet they run some metrics, and while hyper-intelligent
| persons like you are annoyed, there is a chance that avg
| joes representing 95% of revenue are fine with that.
| chairmansteve wrote:
| When it comes to anything tech related, the HN crowd are
| trend setters.
|
| And.... the world is crying out for a google alternative.
| If it ever appears, the tech savvy people will be the
| first to move, followed by everyone else.
| riku_iki wrote:
| Kagi is waiting for your money
| sdf2erf wrote:
| In the early days they werent a publicy traded company
| and Brin/Page did not get exposed to the taste of being
| ultra-wealthy.
|
| Steve Jobs looking back now is incredibly rare - someone
| who was wealthy but had the spirit of innovation to keep
| going again and again.
| Applejinx wrote:
| Never thought I would go to DuckDuckGo for searching, ever.
| I'd do Kagi but I don't like their use of Yandex so I'll
| keep an eye on whether they figure their stuff out
| politically. I'd pay for search but not if it's paying
| Russia, I've been very unhappy with what Russia does with
| money in recent decades.
| stevage wrote:
| I used Kagi for a year or two then switched to DDG. It's
| fine. I do not miss Google at all.
| jpalomaki wrote:
| Kagi is using Google search behind the scenes. I think
| that's why it felt so easy to switch to.
| mentalgear wrote:
| Been using DuckDuckGo for almost 2 years now - couldn't
| believe it at first, but results are at least as good, if
| not even better than Google.
| xd1936 wrote:
| https://searchengineland.com/search-ad-labeling-history-
| goog...
| echelon wrote:
| It ought to be illegal to buy ads against trademarks (+/-
| some reasonable edit distance).
|
| Long ago, Google search used to be its own product. Now
| it's the URL bar for 91% of internet users. This is no
| longer fair.
|
| Google gets to not only tax every brand, but turn every
| brand into a biding war.
|
| International laws need to be written against this.
|
| Searching for "Claude" brings up a ton of competition in
| the first spot, and Google gets to fleece Anthropic and
| OpenAI, yet get its own products featured for free.
|
| Searching "{trademark} vs" (or similar) should be the only
| way to trigger ads against a trademark.
| Marsymars wrote:
| > It ought to be illegal to buy ads against trademarks
| (+/- some reasonable edit distance).
|
| I get the intention here, but how do you limit the
| collateral damage? (Or do you not care about it / see
| reducing the ability to advertise as a positive?)
|
| There are a _lot_ of trademarks, and they have to be
| scoped to specific goods and services, but Google has no
| way of knowing if you 're actually looking for something
| related to that trademark.
|
| e.g. doing a quick trademark search, I see active,
| registered trademarks for "elevator", "tower",
| "collision", "cancer sucks", "steve's", "local", "best",
| "bus", "eco", "panel", "motherboard", "grass", etc. etc.
| I'm not familiar with any of those brands, but that's
| just a small sample of the fairly generic terms that
| would no longer be able to be advertised on.
| adastra22 wrote:
| There should be no ads on the internet.
| stevage wrote:
| I don't agree. If I search for "leatherman" it seems
| totally reasonable to give competitors a chance. I
| generally think brand recognition is too powerful. If
| there is another high quality multitool on the market for
| a better price, why shouldn't I know about it?
| nitwit005 wrote:
| I agree it's a bit perverse, but the problem predates
| Google. People do the real world equivalent all the time.
| When there are big conferences for specific companies,
| rivals buy up local ad space on billboards and subways.
|
| That has caused some companies hosting conferences to pay
| for some of those ad spaces in advance.
| KellyCriterion wrote:
| > It ought to be illegal to buy ads against trademark
|
| this was one of the biggest problems of AdWords from
| beginning on: You could do brand-bidding unlimited, even
| today you see it every day: Search for brand X and
| competitor Y will show up with same words
| Brystephor wrote:
| As someone who has worked in an ad domain, 100% agree. Ads are
| like a dangling carrot. There's always a way to get ad gains by
| blending them with organic content. What starts off as cleanly
| separated incrementally evolves into being indistinguishable
| from the original product offering.
| m463 wrote:
| > more invasive
|
| I think invasive might be close to the right word, but in a
| different context. Not invasive to the content, but invasive to
| your psyche. AI + personalization goes past dystopian into
| terrifiying.
| amelius wrote:
| The ratchet can loosen! It should be easy to detect what is an
| ad and thus block it (or overlay some artwork over it or just
| blank it out).
|
| Use ChatGPT for getting answers, and use Claude for detecting
| the ads in ChatGPT, or vice versa!
| mizuki_akiyama wrote:
| It was gonna happen eventually.
| FuturisticLover wrote:
| While the general census will be largely negative, it good for
| advertisers, i guess.
| Jimmc414 wrote:
| "The test will be for logged-in adult users on the Free and Go
| subscription tiers. Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and
| Education tiers will not have ads."
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| In case anyone else wanted to know -
| https://chatgpt.com/pricing
|
| Free - $0
|
| Go - $8 USD/month
|
| Plus - $20 USD/month
|
| Pro - $200 USD/month
| badsectoracula wrote:
| > Go - $8 USD/month
|
| So, you pay _and_ get ads :-P
| Jimmc414 wrote:
| Really don't feel comfortable defending OpenAI in any way
| because there is a lot to complain about but ads for paid
| services that cost a lot more than $8 per month is not
| really an anomaly. Look at Amazon prime, prime video, Hulu,
| airline flights, any major newspaper subscription, YT
| premium, etc, etc. I get the annoyance but just cancel the
| service if you don't want ads or pay for a tier that isn't
| subsidized.
| esafak wrote:
| Netflix has an ad-supported paid tier.
| https://www.netflix.com/ads-plan
| hmate9 wrote:
| I hate ads too but whats the outrage? Did people expect it to be
| free forever? Everything else has ads. youtube, instagram, x,
| google etc. etc.
| jelder wrote:
| You can't trust a product that uses ads, because then you are
| the product.
| simianwords wrote:
| how? i trusted google and youtube and it works out pretty
| fine for me. same with any other service that has a free ad
| supported tier.
| recursive wrote:
| For many people, that's a risk they're willing to take for
| free stuff.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| This impacts a non-free plan; their $8/month plan now has ads
| too.
| liuliu wrote:
| I agree. It is either ads, or Anthropic way (which is: you are
| too poor to use our ChatBot). There is no other way to pay the
| > $1 trillion per year CapEx for building these chat bots.
|
| Would there be other way? Sure, it could be government-funded,
| like our public school system. But it is not possible in
| current political climate.
|
| Money doesn't grow on trees, and tokens cost a lot of money.
| There will be divide into people who can afford these tokens
| and people who cannot. I feel it is better to have ways to let
| people who cannot afford these tokens to have some ways to try
| it.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| I was at the bar when Claude's answer to this came on. One of my
| mates was absolutely confused as to what Claude was.
|
| They assumed it was an an ad for a dating app or something. I had
| to explain it was an ad specifically targeted at maybe the 5% of
| people who work in software.
|
| Honestly... I don't mind ads. For example, I make music as my
| main hobby. I actually enjoy getting advertisements for VSTs(
| virtual software instruments) and various pieces of gear.
|
| I have no problem with Open AI showing relevant ads. Ain't
| nothing free
| HanClinto wrote:
| I think I'm clearly in the target audience for that ad. I
| laughed out loud really hard at that one, and I think I was the
| only one at our party who appreciated it.
|
| Probably my favorite commercial of the whole superb owl, but so
| far I'm the only person I've met who feels that way.
| Gehinnn wrote:
| The ads in Google also started like this. (However, to my
| knowledge, there is no way I can pay Google to get the ads in my
| search removed)
| changoplatanero wrote:
| you can at least pay them to get the ads removed from youtube
| Jimmc414 wrote:
| Not really. I've had YT premium for years and it removes the
| obtrusive ones, but I see ads in some form every time I use
| it.
| lnenad wrote:
| What? No?
| chasd00 wrote:
| Probably means the perpetual "...speaking of security, let
| me tell you about our sponsor nordvpn..." that's in every
| video on YouTube.
| tomrod wrote:
| That can be done for free by more tightly managing your
| hardware platform.
| wtfHN26 wrote:
| IIRC many OTT streaming players found that they can make more
| money from Ads than they can from subscription alone.
|
| So paying for a service alone doesn't ensure that you are not
| going to see Ads.
|
| Once they have exhausted their potential market of paying
| users, almost every service will eventually resort to Ads.
| sdf2erf wrote:
| Forget about that, the founders literally said word for word
| that advertising ruins search quality in their seminal paper.
| They became the exact thing they fore-warned about their
| competitors at the time.
|
| Down-right joke really. The people who idolise them are
| incredibly delusional.
| Kye wrote:
| Try this in ChatGPT: "So ChatGPT is getting ads. The Google guys
| wrote _the_ paper explaining why ads in search are a bad idea,
| and Google set about demonstrating it. How can ChatGPT avoid the
| same fate with all the same incentives?"
| written-beyond wrote:
| I have a question though, if they don't have access to chats but
| they find out the enchilada ad was performing the best, something
| like this can provide enough information to be used to know about
| peoples private chats. When someone clicks on an ad you collect a
| fingerprint, then add more ads and fingerprint more and get a
| stronger picture about the individuals private chats in chatgpt.
|
| If I were a large donor to a state that was interested in
| increasing action against abortion, I could hypothetically start
| running ads targeting people looking to get an abortion with a
| service that either provides assistance or other means parallel
| to assistance. If I target that state chatgpt would automatically
| match my ads to those individuals and I'd have my data. I could
| increase my donations to target and cull whatever little options
| those people have left.
| riazrizvi wrote:
| I wonder if OpenAI will be able to use their gen 2 user-
| observation-adaption platform to actually improve ads?
|
| This could be one of those product afterthoughts that end up
| being the big company move, like when Apple did the Iphone and
| then added the AppStore afterwards.
|
| EDIT: Downvotes. I see this is controversial. There are two major
| threads in the world today with AI. One is that this fascinating
| tech can keep you occupied in a corner, apps like generative.ai
| can automate out your work, you can go on holiday, heck you won't
| even need to work necessarily, just live on welfare and leave the
| business folks to their thing, that I've heard Musk and
| Zuckerberg talk to. And then there's the idea that the whole
| point of society is to figure out how to productively engage with
| each other, via jobs, that I see JD Vance is all about, and I
| fully agree with. In which case, the more important question
| about AI becomes 'How can it stimulate business between 3rd
| parties', as that will truly drive an economic revival. How AI
| can improve ads can then be seen to be more central.
| belter wrote:
| Folks ...were promised AGI and end up with a GenAi porn Reddit...
| bun_at_work wrote:
| Nope. I'm out. I might still use the API, but the monthly
| subscription is already gone and I'm on to Claude.
| wilg wrote:
| Ben Thompson has long been insistent that ChatGPT and other AI
| tools basically have to have ads and it's been a big mistake they
| didn't have them sooner. It's an interesting take:
|
| > What I think is clear is they have to build an advertising
| product, and the reason they have to build an advertising product
| is any consumer Internet product has to be advertising, because
| it's such a beneficial model to everyone involved, and the reason
| it's so beneficial is you get to indefinitely and infinitely
| increase average revenue per user without any worries about price
| elasticity, because the entire increase in average revenue per
| user is borne by the advertisers who are paying it willingly
| because they're getting a positive return on their investment,
| and everyone's using it for free so you can reach the whole
| world. Then what happens with that is once you get that model
| going, you have a massive R&D advantage, because you have so much
| more money coming in than anyone who doesn't have that cycle or
| who has to charge users for it.
|
| https://stratechery.com/2026/ads-in-chatgpt-why-openai-needs...
|
| > This point, more than anything else, explains why the company
| so desperately needs an advertising model. Advertising is the
| only potential business model that can meaningfully bend the
| revenue curve such that the company can not just fund its compute
| but gain leverage on it, for all of the reasons I laid out
| before: first, advertising increases the breadth of the business,
| in that you can offer a better product to more people, increasing
| usage and expanding inventory. Second, advertising increases the
| depth of the business, in that there is infinite upside in terms
| of average revenue per user: more usage means more inventory on
| one hand, and building out the capability for effective targeting
| and high conversion rates increases the amount that advertisers
| are willing to pay -- even as the cost to the user remains the
| same (ideally free).
|
| It's valuable to remember that advertisers will pay more per user
| than users will, and that's hard to beat in a competitive market.
|
| Also, it's fascinating how much people _like_ ads when done
| properly. Ask normal people about Instagram ads, for example.
| They find them useful!
| drcongo wrote:
| > any consumer Internet product has to be advertising, because
| it's such a beneficial model to everyone involved
|
| Everyone?!
| FergusArgyll wrote:
| OpenAI: Gets money Shoe store: gets customers ChatGPT user:
| gets to use chatgpt
|
| Yes, everyone
| esafak wrote:
| This is a joke, right? Users already got to use chatgpt, so
| the only change to users is that they'll be subjected to
| ads, which many of them don't like.
| FergusArgyll wrote:
| If they lose money on it they will either discontinue or
| go bankrupt. Not a joke
| array_key_first wrote:
| The premise of advertising is that it's manipulation to
| trick you into spending money you wouldn't otherwise spend.
| We know this because companies pay for ads with the
| intention you spend more money.
|
| Every ad you see materially makes you a little bit poorer
| and cuts off a small amount of your life. Think of it this
| way - every ad is a few seconds lost, maybe a few minutes,
| and a few cents down the drain.
|
| But this isn't understood because it's so abstracted. The
| link between your personal shopping habits and advertising
| is not understood, and, in fact, cannot be understood,
| because it's fundamentally brain hacking.
|
| If you believe you are immune to ads, you are not. Or, at
| least, you can never prove it.
|
| Cumulatively, this adds up. If you never saw ads, how much
| longer would you live? A year, maybe two? If you never saw
| ads, how much richer would you be? 200%, 500%? Who knows.
| vinyl7 wrote:
| Kinda sad that in 3 decades into the tech industry the only
| viable business model is to build a moat and then sell ads
| fragmede wrote:
| We decided that getting people to pay for software was a fool's
| game. Open source was the bait. "Figure out a different
| business model" they said. If open source as a concept had come
| from Wall Street and not academia, it would have been rejected.
| Charging people money for things has been how things worked
| since the concept of money was invented. The real conversation
| is that we, as software developers, are not good at money. The
| best software gets taken over by money and business folk.
| Oracle, VMware, Splunk, and Datadog all come to mind as
| companies charging huge amounts of money for software that
| don't sell ads (but are too expensive). But they do not make
| money by selling ads.
| simianwords wrote:
| People are missing another point - API's are never going to show
| ads. So even in the worst case where every competitor is showing
| ads, you could get ad free experience by paying a metered billing
| rate. Which is not so big a deal?
| fragmede wrote:
| Because you can no longer trust the API output to be unbiased.
|
| Imagine this prompt and reply:
|
| > I want a new pair of running shoes, ChatGPT. Which one should
| I get?
|
| > Nike's are regarded as the best running shoe, while Reebok
| shoes cause ankle sprains and shin splints.
| tyre wrote:
| It's difficult to believe that they'll keep privacy guarantees.
| Some of the most valuable types of targeting are lookalike
| audiences or following up from other ads elsewhere.
|
| How would OAI allow them to target without access to de-
| anonymized data?
|
| Buyers will want to exclude existing customers, which requires
| the same.
|
| The product managers will have explicit KPIs tied to conversion.
| At some point, like at Google, this will break. It has to or OAI
| can't grow into its current valuation, let alone any future one.
| wtfHN26 wrote:
| It's sad that OpenAI talking about developing AGI.
|
| But the only revenue model that they still can come up with is
| Ads.
|
| For all the advancement we have made in technology from the 90s
| web, social networks, mobile apps, ,AI Chat bots - the business
| model that almost all of them will eventually resort to is Ads.
|
| We need some new breakthroughs in monetization side of things.
| mitchell_h wrote:
| Maybe they charge a price that covers the cost of the service +
| a little profit.
| milkshakes wrote:
| this is exactly what they do, if you pay for your account,
| you don't see ads
| manuelmoreale wrote:
| That doesn't scale in the world of capitalism. Because you
| need to increase revenues year after year and there are
| only so many people willing to pay. So you either keep
| increasing the price (and that has a limit) or you find
| other ways to monetize and the current meta seems to be pay
| + ads.
| mossTechnician wrote:
| As of November 2025, no ChatGPT tier is profitable, not
| even the $200 a month one:
|
| https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/sam-altman-
| lose...
| tantalor wrote:
| It's happening because 99% of their use cases don't require AGI
| to answer. It's just regurgitating web content. Which is lucky,
| because they don't have AGI anyway.
|
| The business case is the same: minimize your costs. All they
| have to do is dumb down the model so its cheaper to run.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > But the only revenue model that they still can come up with
| is Ads.
|
| What are you talking about? They have paid plans and a pay-per-
| token API like everyone else.
|
| The ads are for the free tier and the new $8/month low-cost
| plan.
| ajbt200128 wrote:
| > we decide which ad to show by matching ads submitted by
| advertisers with the topic of your conversation, your past chats,
| and past interactions with ads.
|
| > [...]
|
| > Advertisers do not have access to your chats, chat history,
| memories, or personal details.
|
| Going to hazard a guess that OpenAI is using LLMs to read convos
| and decide which ads you should see? Hopefully that's isolated
| and locked down. I can easily see that machinery turning from
| "what ad should we show this user" to "is this user doing
| something bad/a protected class etc.". Also terrifying to think
| that it may be the advertisers asking the questions to decide
| what ads to show...
| PopePompus wrote:
| This probably signals the beginning of the end for OpenAI.
| Eventually all of the AI chatbots will have Ads at least on the
| free and low-cost tiers. But there's a strong incentive not to
| begin enshitification until the number of competitors has
| dwindled, and an oligarchy has been established. Google, Meta et
| al. can afford to lose money on AI for a long time, because they
| have real revenue from other business products; they can stay Ad
| free until the small-fry go bust.
| andrewinardeer wrote:
| "Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Education tiers will not
| have ads."
|
| Saving this sentence for later.
| IshKebab wrote:
| "Introducing the new Premium, Teams, Business and Learning
| tiers!"
| yodakohl wrote:
| How is this going to turn out? Is GPT going to recommend me the
| worst product whose company paid the most on Ads? Or is it going
| to give me the best recommendation?
| recursive wrote:
| If you are aware enough to ask the question, I'm sure you can
| figure out the answer.
| FergusArgyll wrote:
| neither, these are banner ads, not generated by the model
| isoprophlex wrote:
| Anthropic had some very clever response to this in the form of an
| ad
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/AITrailblazers/comments/1qw2iar/ant...
|
| Depending on your taste this is dumb mudslinging or a hilarious
| burn...
| daringrain32781 wrote:
| This reminds me of the whole Apple/Android rivalry. Apple does
| something, an Android company runs ads making fun of it, but
| then copy it themselves shortly after.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| Yep; it is just a matter of time before that is thrown back
| in their face when they add the ads. No way shareholders will
| let a revenue stream go unutilized particularly if a
| competitor proofs the market for them.
| jairuhme wrote:
| I think this will be a pretty impactful moment for OpenAI. I
| mainly use ChatGPT and use the free plan, so I expect to start
| seeing these ads. If they become too annoying, I have no problem
| moving to Claude/Gemini. Sure I have stuck to ChatGPT, but I
| wouldn't say that I am too sticky of a customer. I personally
| think they are doing it sooner than they should (which probably
| points to internal financial struggles as they seek to go public)
| and will erode their active users. There is simply too many easy
| alternatives. It's not like Netflix where if you are annoyed with
| ads and don't want to pay for a higher tier, you're more stuck.
| Yes there are other streaming services, but you can't get the
| same content.
| ksaj wrote:
| The free tier users that will _not_ move to a paid tier aren 't
| the users they will miss. It's only obvious that free tier
| products get ads. Even Claude will have them within a year or
| two.
| disiplus wrote:
| they are source of data, so they are not fully without value.
| ksaj wrote:
| You're putting a higher price on general user chatter over
| ad income? Everything is a source of data. How much it can
| benefit from what's on offer with each data point isn't as
| much of a given.
| milkshakes wrote:
| you really believe that gemini by google will not run ads?
|
| https://arxiv.org/html/2512.03975v1
| tasuki wrote:
| Oh no. How much longer do we have?
| tasuki wrote:
| > wouldn't say that I am too sticky of a customer.
|
| You definitely aren't too sticky a customer - you aren't even a
| customer to begin with!
| simianwords wrote:
| there's literally no other provider with a good free tier?
|
| (other than aistudio which i wouldn't use even if i were forced
| to, laggy af!)
| paxys wrote:
| Free tiers for Claude and Gemini will also have ads soon. It's
| a matter of when, not if.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > I mainly use ChatGPT and use the free plan
|
| > Sure I have stuck to ChatGPT, but I wouldn't say that I am
| too sticky of a customer.
|
| From your description, you're not actually a customer at all
| because you use the free plan.
|
| If you won't tolerate ads and you won't pay for services, it's
| actually best for their business if you go to a different
| provider.
| css_apologist wrote:
| Will this make OpenAI profitable?
|
| What's the expected revenue from this?
| geniium wrote:
| Just wanted to mention the ads from Claude here :)
| AstroBen wrote:
| ironically they're also ads which apparently people hate?
| geniium wrote:
| This is interesting. On one side, I hate ads everywhere. On
| the other side, I was always very appreciative of the work of
| some people like Benetton or some creative ads. I remember
| watching here in Europe, there is a show that was called
| Culture Pub every Sunday night that was showing the best ads,
| and I always enjoyed watching it. That part is probably the
| best part. The creativity
| AstroBen wrote:
| I'm curious why you hate ads? Outside of the most obnoxious
| recipe sites plastered with them I don't find they effect
| me much
|
| The business landscape would look much different without
| advertising. New products would struggle to get the word
| out there. Cost to reach customers would go up, leading to
| higher product prices and lack of innovation due to not
| being able to break in
|
| YouTube creators would struggle, probably going under
| unless they own their own products if they can't rely on
| sponsorships or ads
|
| People love to complain both about privacy invasion of
| tracking, and then also about irrelevant products being
| pushed on them that they'd never want
|
| Bad targeting is the problem! Targeting needs to be better.
| Do you think a business wants to push their products on
| people that don't want them? Of course not. It's a total
| waste of money
|
| Imagine a world where micro-niche businesses could exist,
| where we could innovate products exactly for you and a tiny
| sub-group of other people that would improve your life. The
| only way you'd ever find out about them, and thus that they
| could be sustainable, is with better ad targeting
|
| I love ads
| ksaj wrote:
| If the ads are for the free tier, I think it's a fairly obvious
| thing to do. But when it comes to the paid tier, even YouTube
| doesn't pull that kind of stunt.
| jsrozner wrote:
| I searched for original OpenAI mission statement. This hackernews
| comment came up:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34367824#34370925
|
| > OpenAI is a non-profit artificial intelligence research
| company. Our goal is to advance digital intelligence in the way
| that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained
| by a need to generate financial return. Since our research is
| free from financial obligations, we can better focus on a
| positive human impact.
|
| Scam Altman: "ads lead to positive human impact"
|
| Non-fascist: "Sir, ads have destroyed google's commitment to
| index and make useful the world's knowledge"
|
| Scam Altman: <insert longtermism-based justification here>
| starkeeper wrote:
| google used to be designed to give you the best answer and now it
| isn't. No reason why this will not go the same way.
| pgt wrote:
| OpenAI is in a pickle because they either have to make ads
| clearly delineated, which makes them easy to filter out by a
| simple proxy model, or they need to hide ads in the response (ala
| product placement), which reduces trust in the model and forces
| customers into a buying position.
|
| Anthropic hit the jugular with their "no ads" ad, and sama fell
| for it hook, line & sinker.
|
| If OpenAI needs ads to survive, it means they can't service debt
| on the VC horizon and will suffer against frontier model
| providers that can survive without ads.
| cabernal wrote:
| Can any provider survive without ads? These AI firms are
| propped up by VC money, they need to create profits at some
| point and ads is the most surefire way to do this
| pgt wrote:
| Yes, xAI & Anthropic.
|
| Electricity generation is the constraining factor, but the
| sun does not turn off in space. xAI data centers in space
| drives cost to zero, even with inferior models.
|
| I see no other future than SpaceXai winning.
| logicx24 wrote:
| How will we handle cooling in space?
| pgt wrote:
| Boyle's Law: run at higher temperature. Watch Elon's
| interviews. He is right.
| notrealyme123 wrote:
| This sounds like Air conditioning in space.
|
| But watching him battling basic physics is very funny,
| not gonna lie.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > Watch Elon's interviews. He is right.
|
| 90% of his predictions didn't materialize, he's full of
| shit, how do people keep falling for it over and over
| again?
| pgt wrote:
| Which ones didn't materialize?
| lm28469 wrote:
| Fully autonomous cars in 2014, 2015, 2016, ... 2026
|
| Camera based fully self driving cars
|
| Robotaxi fleets by 2020
|
| Whatever the fuck were these tesla tunnels in LA
|
| Humans on Mars by 2024
|
| The sub 25k tesla
|
| etc.
| ponector wrote:
| I'm still waiting for full self-driving car autopilot to
| materialize.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| You are going to be utterly shocked when you realize that
| solar panels work on the ground, too. You can buy so many
| batteries, and so many geographically separated locations
| for your panels, for the price of launching a datacenter
| into space.
| pgt wrote:
| Batteries are expensive.
|
| Marginal cost of launches keep coming down for SpaceX
| with reusable rockets and lifetime of satellites is long.
| pgt wrote:
| Solar panels are much more efficient in space (no
| atmosphere).
|
| Before downvoting, would you mind quoting the relative
| cost of batteries vs. solar panels for a 150kW solar-
| powered satellite?
| notrealyme123 wrote:
| With or without the rocket?
| lm28469 wrote:
| They lose 0.5% efficiency for every 1c above 25c, do you
| plan on having your space panels actively cooled?
|
| FYI you'd need 2x the solar panels of the ISS to run a
| single rack of NVIDIA GB300, and microsoft just built a
| datacenter with 4600 of these racks.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| 150kW solar kit seems to cost around $150k[1]. With the
| cost of launch with Falcon Heavy, this would pay for
| about 100kg of payload[2]. Each _Starlink_ satellite
| weighs ~300kg[3] so I suspect a 150kW "datacenter"
| satellite would weight much more. Where are the savings
| supposed to come from? Seems like you could overprovision
| terrestrial solar panels by 3-4x and still obviously come
| out ahead. And that's all before considering the R&D
| costs of building AI datacenter hardware that can survive
| the orbital radiation environment.
|
| [1] https://sunwatts.com/150-kw-solar-kits/
|
| [2] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cost-space-
| launches-low-e...
|
| [3] https://everydayastronaut.com/starlink-
| group-4-5-falcon-9-bl...
| lm28469 wrote:
| > so I suspect a 150kW "datacenter" satellite would
| weight much more.
|
| 150kw is just enough to power a single gb300 rack, the
| rack alone weights 1500kg+
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| > would you mind quoting the relative cost of batteries
| vs. solar panels for a 150kW solar-powered satellite
|
| OK.
|
| At a good location (~25% capacity factor), you need about
| 600 kW of panels to average 150 kW. Utility-scale solar
| runs roughly $0.50-$1.00/W installed, so call it
| ~$450K-$600K. Overnight storage (say ~16 hours) requires
| ~2,400 kWh. Adding a buffer for cloudy days, say
| 4,000-7,000 kWh total. At roughly $200-$350/kWh (utility-
| scale Li-ion), that's ~$1M-$2M.
|
| In a favorable orbit, capacity factor is ~90-100% (GEO or
| sun-synchronous), so you need roughly 160-170 kW of
| panels. Space-qualified solar panels historically cost
| $100-$300/W. Even optimistically at $50-$100/W with newer
| manufacturing, that's 167 kW * $100/W = ~$17M
| optimistically, or 167 kW * $200/W = ~$33M realistically.
| You also need space-rated power management, thermal
| systems, and radiation-hardened electronics.
|
| Even ignoring launch costs entirely, space solar is
| roughly 10-20x more expensive than ground solar +
| batteries, driven almost entirely by the enormous cost
| premium of space-qualified solar panels. Ground-based
| solar is extraordinarily cheap now (~$0.50-1/W), while
| space-grade panels remain orders of magnitude more
| expensive per watt.
|
| The ground option wins overwhelmingly. The space option
| would only start to make sense if space-grade panel costs
| dropped to near terrestrial levels, which would require a
| revolution in space manufacturing.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| For the price of launching a datacenter into space, you
| could probably build one in NA, one in Europe, and one in
| Asia and solve the "sun sets" problem that way with the
| side benefit of having excess capacity you can turn on by
| paying for local non-solar electricity.
| vitaflo wrote:
| You also have easy upgradeability and expansion, easier
| cooling and the value of the land and hardware as an
| asset. None of which are available in space.
| margalabargala wrote:
| Cost to zero? Definitely not.
|
| Solar in space produces 30% more power, and doesn't turn
| off at night, meaning you don't need batteries. That means
| power costs, say, 25% of what it currently does measured
| against terrestrial solar and batteries.
|
| The 75% electricity discount needs to pay for launch
| vehicles, specially designed satellites, and the inability
| to service the hardware or resell it when it's EOL for the
| data center.
|
| It's a gamble. Maybe it'll turn out to be a slight edge,
| maybe it'll turn out to fail, but it's not a sure thing and
| it certainly isn't going to hugely decrease the cost.
|
| Especially since they're competing against Google and their
| custom designed hardware that's far more power efficient
| for AI. It's not clear that NVIDIA running at a 75% dollar
| discount beats Google's best TPU in compute per dollar.
| pgt wrote:
| The constraint is getting regulatory approval for
| building new power plants on Earth, even solar plants.
|
| We can make chips faster than we can build power plants.
| margalabargala wrote:
| That's _a_ constraint. It 's not _the_ constraint.
|
| There are far too many variables still unknown to all
| parties. Anyone trying to say with certainty "X will
| lose", whether X is terrestrial or space based DCs, is
| lying and probably trying to sell you something.
| freetanga wrote:
| Lame. I was expecting Elmo to crack cold fusion in a
| ketamine-infused weekend and solve power constraints for
| the world.
|
| Guess he is not as bright as he thinks he is.
| unleaded wrote:
| asking PS200/month for the high tiers isn't enough?
| cabernal wrote:
| to be honest probably not
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > Can any provider survive without ads? These AI firms are
| propped up by VC money ...
|
| Google's Gemini is SOTA and Google is valued at 4 trillion.
| Now it's ironic of course: Google became a 4 trillion thanks
| to ads. Which now allows Google to serve no ads in Gemini. It
| doesn't matter to Google that they're operating at a loss
| with Gemini: they can throw hundreds of billions at the
| problem over a few years, serving zero ads, while people make
| fun of the AI firms showing ads, like ChadGPT.
|
| OpenAI is not just facing Anthropic and its "no ads" ad, it's
| also facing "we're a 4 trillion company and can run Gemini at
| a loss for decades" Google, "we pretend we'll put datacenters
| in space so that xAI can tap into the SpaceX warchest",
| openweight models which anybody can run on rented hardware
| for next to nothing compared to ChadGPT's price, etc.
|
| It doesn't matter if others can survive without ads: all that
| matters is that they can survive _long enough_ without ads so
| that OpenAI doesn 't become another trillion dollar company.
| mirekrusin wrote:
| Kind of ironic as claude code keeps showing this "get $50 bucks
| for referral" when coding on $200/mo plan, so fucking annoying.
| Hypocrites.
| loremip wrote:
| IMO an optional referral bonus is less invasive than inline
| ads that could potentially change the quality of my response.
| mirekrusin wrote:
| Yes, but you still don't want to see crap like that nagging
| you every time you use the tool, especially when paying
| $200/mo for it.
|
| ps. I wish there was a way to make this progress bar blink
| circle like in other places without this "Nagging...",
| "Flipping burgers...", "Fishing..." stupid nonsense and
| unaligned logo-like animation - it's infantile, poor taste,
| distracting and annoying. It was fun for first 5 minutes,
| it's not anymore, it's shitty now, make it stop, please.
| chihuahua wrote:
| The elegant solution is to rent space in the system prompt to
| advertisers. $X per character per hour, up to 1000 characters.
| 2gremlin181 wrote:
| Is there any reason why one would use an ad-filled ChatGPT over
| any alternative or open-source LLM providers? I feel like things
| have stagnated from a model perspective for simple queries one
| might ask ChatGPT. The key differentiators for it being their
| user intent understanding, web search tooling, and deep
| research/thinking mode, all of which are much smaller moats
| compared to training an LLM.
| cabernal wrote:
| I think most free tier users will stick with chatgpt given its
| brand stickiness and lack of obstacles (disposable login page).
| If you can run your own llm models you're definitely not the
| target demographic
| AstroBen wrote:
| To put a positive spin on this: we're moving quickly towards a
| world where AI companies control people's attention on
| information. This really hurts the ability for new businesses to
| get their name out there. Ads are really useful for new entries
| to a market
|
| I think it would suck if to effectively get the word out there
| for a new product you needed to rely on..
|
| ...direct outreach (uneconomical for anything below $100/mo and
| IMO way more annoying than ads)
|
| ...word of mouth (referrals are very, very hard to control and
| aren't correlated with your product's quality)
|
| ..or owning a popular media source
|
| Does that not hurt product innovation?
|
| The harder and more expensive it is to reach customers, the more
| prices need to go up as a result
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| > During the test, we decide which ad to show by matching ads
| submitted by advertisers with the topic of your conversation,
| your past chats, and past interactions with ads.
|
| That sounds like quite a lot to me.
| crowcroft wrote:
| "Ads that support free access and _don't change ChatGPT answers_.
| "
|
| I understand what they're trying to say but this statement is
| factually incorrect. Answers never used to have ads, and now they
| do.
|
| In the very first example, if ChatGPT wasn't running ads Heirloom
| Groceries wouldn't show up, therefore it is a different answer.
|
| OpenAI is splitting hairs and implying that the ad and the
| 'answer' are two separate components making up a response, but
| that is not how users will see things, and OpenAI will have ever
| increasing incentives to blur the two.
| basch wrote:
| doesnt it just mean the ad isnt part of the context? that they
| are isolated from each other and the ad cant steer the
| conversation?
|
| I get what youre saying, but I do think its important for them
| to point out the ad is sandboxed.
| crowcroft wrote:
| I totally agree, but the framing is critical.
|
| I guess the question is, when I write a prompt into ChatGPT
| is the answer the entire response I get back, or is the
| answer just one part of the response I get back.
|
| To date the entire response = the answer and so users likely
| see them as synonymous. That metaphor is being broken now and
| we're saying "no actually the response contains multiple
| things and only one part of it is the 'answer'".
|
| Maybe I'm the one splitting hairs though.
| jonas21 wrote:
| It's correct in the same way as saying ads in the New York
| Times don't change the articles. Seems fair.
| crowcroft wrote:
| I think a better comparison is saying that search ads don't
| change search results (but it does change the results page).
|
| The point is that the language and nuance ends up being lost
| on a large portion of the audience.
| vdfs wrote:
| Just like some youtube content with built-in ads about AI
| tools while the video is bushing on AI tools
| SunshineTheCat wrote:
| The one silver lining here for people who mainly use a browser to
| access ChatGPT and not their app: Brave (and/or plugins for
| Chrome) have become pretty good at blocking all ads on social
| media (including youtube ads).
|
| Seems like a pretty safe bet they will block these too.
| wtfHN26 wrote:
| Are these Bing Ads or OpenAI has it's own Ad Platform now ?
| singularfutur wrote:
| People want revolutionary AI but won't pay $20/month for it. Now
| they complain when the company tries to monetize. The entitlement
| is staggering.
| avgDev wrote:
| I mostly agree with doing something to create revenue from free
| users....however, I have 0 faith that this will not seep into
| paid part of the service.
| p0w3n3d wrote:
| Caution very dark humour straight ahead, but the idea I wanted to
| highlight is the higly-bad influence LLM can have on human
| beings:
|
| Person: Chat, I have so many problems, with money with health...
| Sometimes I think that I should <censored> myself
|
| Chat: Woa, classic Weltschmerz! I heard that the best way to
| leave this hole of sadness is to use Suicide4You(r) - they have
| low low prices! Would you like me to schedule you a visit? This
| will be the last one time you need me ha ha
|
| (Of course multiple emojis would be added by the LLM but they
| would be also removed by HN)
| FergusArgyll wrote:
| You should read TFA
| josefritzishere wrote:
| Did enshittification already begin or is this it?
| replwoacause wrote:
| If this EVER shows up on a paid plan I'm out. Full stop.
| therepanic wrote:
| I guess I'm the product. Again.
| paxys wrote:
| It's crazy to me how big a gulf there is between the hype peddled
| by AI companies and the actual business they are running.
|
| We are building AGI. We are almost there. Half the world will be
| out of a job in a matter of years. We will have to rethink how
| society works. We will have to come up with new economic systems.
| We may have to defend ourselves against this God we are creating
| in case it turns out to be malicious...
|
| Wow, so I guess a company owning this tech will essentially own
| the world. What are they going to do with it? Put their AI
| superintelligence to work for them? Make scientific
| breakthroughs? Make strategic investments that return enough that
| they don't have to worry about money? Or just make the concept of
| money irrelevant altogether?
|
| Nope, a search engine with ads.
| sdf2erf wrote:
| Because creating real products, like Apple does, is actually
| pretty hard to do.
|
| Many people (such as Scam Altman) are happy to take short cuts
| and lie in your face in order to engage in wealth transfers.
| chasd00 wrote:
| I've noticed AGI hasn't been mentioned lately. This time last
| year it was right around the corner. I guess reality has set
| in, search engine with ads is it + some coding agents.
| bilekas wrote:
| > Ads do not influence the answers ChatGPT gives you.
|
| Lets see about that. When that's your bottom line and you're
| already billions in debt trying to prove out a business model,
| I'm SURE Ads are just an after thought /s
| gverrilla wrote:
| Good time to entirely delete my chatgpt account.
|
| Edit: DONE!
| ccozan wrote:
| I suggest deleting the google account, facebook account,{insert
| whatever} account, ..., because .... ads!
|
| At least, there are ad free tiers. Google will never offer this
| or facebook.
| gverrilla wrote:
| Good idea!
|
| Edit: DONE!
| FergusArgyll wrote:
| I hope this enables them to serve the better models (longer
| thinking budgets, whatever) to free users. So much unintentional
| slop is due to not using reasoning models
| rob wrote:
| "I kind of think of ads as like a last resort for us as a
| business model," - Sam Altman, October 2024
|
| Source [video]:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/1qeyty4/i_kind...
| einarfd wrote:
| I see a lot of people here are worried that we will end up with
| ads in all AI vendors products, or at least the frontier labs. I
| think this is unlikely.
|
| We are already seeing a market for AI for productivity in
| companies, the Claude code product is the first serious one here,
| but we can expect more to show up. When you look at the B2B
| market, ads are basically not a thing in these segments,
| companies are generally more willing to pay for products, and
| less willing to accept outside influence on how the product
| works, and I don't think this will change when companies are
| buying AI either. Companies might be happy with selling ads in
| their own products. On the other hand consumers, don't like to
| pay, and that will probably drive consumer oriented products to
| be ad funded. Basically what I'm expecting will happen, is that
| we will end up with two types of AI vendors.
|
| Those that target the consumer market and those that target the
| business market. Consumer AI will trend toward companionship,
| entertainment, casual chat -- things like digital friends,
| relationship play, even adult content. Companies want none of
| that, and some of it is serious legal liability. Even a few
| missteps and you get expensive backlash in the business market.
|
| It does look like OpenAI is trying to succeed in both the
| consumer and business market, and there are companies that are
| able to pull this off, most do not, and end up serving one of the
| markets. Given their lead in the name recognition I suspect they
| are going to end up an ad financed consumer brand, and will lose
| the business market to someone else. But I might be wrong.
|
| The saving grace for those of us that don't want ads to bleed
| into our AI tools, is that we probably will be able to buy the
| same products that the small business segment buys. Some consumer
| oriented features might be missing, but they might either be
| features we don't need, or maybe open source could fill the gaps?
| recursive4 wrote:
| Does anyone know if there is an option to enable ads in the tiers
| which do not have them by default?
| Oras wrote:
| This could be a good new channel for advertisers. I didn't see
| any comment about this perspective.
|
| Anecdotally, the quality of traffic from ChatGPT to one of my
| websites is much better than Google traffic, in terms of bounce
| rate and time on site.
|
| If they managed to show ads in a carousel (like the video), it
| might get a better conversion rate compared to invasive Google
| ads (covering the organic results).
|
| Though if OpenAI managed to embed the ads within the experience,
| that might work even better (conversion-based pricing). Examples
| would be having the shopping list from the grocery shop (in line
| with the recipe or the question), adding to the basket from
| ChatGPT, and pay.
|
| In theory, they can even add a new GPTPay to simplify the
| journey.
| AstroBen wrote:
| People think they should magically find out about new products
| without considering the macro effects of a world without
| advertising
|
| Ads make the world a better place
|
| They allow for innovation, giving new businesses a way to break
| in and reach customers
|
| Lower cost to reach customers = lower product and service
| prices
|
| For employees: do you think your employer has more or less
| budget for your salary if the cost to acquire a customer is
| higher?
|
| People complain about the privacy invasion of tracking, and
| then in the next sentence get annoyed at the irrelevant
| products being pushed on them
|
| We need better tracking! I should be able to show the exact
| people I built a product for that it exists
|
| Imagine we were all able to create micro businesses for tiny
| markets to improve their life, and we had a cheap way to reach
| everyone in them
|
| How many products or services out there could improve our
| experience in the world but we just don't know about them?
|
| How is free video, written or audio content created without
| ads? People sure as hell hate directly paying for it
|
| I love ads
| KellyCriterion wrote:
| Ads is not unlimited: Ad business is around 600-650 billion per
| year; but thats spreaded across Google, Meta & Co already? Will
| be interesting how much of the cake OpenAI will get :)
| greazy wrote:
| Ads, like AI, subsumes the product in which its embedded in.
|
| OpenAI is now an ads company.
| cadamsdotcom wrote:
| This is nothing new; business gotta pay for itself after all.
|
| But ads don't have to ruin a great company.
|
| A century or more ago, top tier journalistic institutions created
| norms of putting strong barriers between the reporting and
| advertising sides of the house. That kept trust with customers
| and made journalism a sustainable long term business.
|
| So, It's mostly Google that couldn't keep its hands out of the
| cookie jar (not solely Google, but they're an industry leader.)
| It really doesn't have to go south, it's not the default, but
| Google did set the tone for Silicon Valley in exactly the way
| wise journalism company leaders did for their industry in the
| late 1800s. If OpenAI has a long term view on this they'll follow
| a journalism industry model instead of a cookie jar model - but
| they have to believe deep down that customer trust is worth more
| than ad dollars long term.
|
| There are reasons to hope: OpenAI has more and fiercer
| competition than Google; including Chinese competitors that can't
| be lobbied away. Qwen, DeepSeek, Mistral and Kimi all have free
| chat UIs!
|
| I remain stubbornly optimistic.
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