The advertising game
Rolling out this February a small number of advertisers will be given the ability to run ads across the ChatGPT platform, just like Boris loves Chat GPT, soon so will small, medium and large businesses who are seeking an alternative to Google Advertising. The small selection of companies offered this chance need to commit a minimum of $1 million each. This means for the short term only large players will be able to enter the realm of ChatGPT ads.
How will ads appear? OpenAI is expected to subtly integrate advertising for products or services into the responses given, and over time incorporate ads into following sections and side bar. According to OpenAI blogs the system is going to take contextual cues from users conversations, in the aim to create a profile/understanding of the user itself. This can be based on the questions you ask, searches you run and the takes you perform within ChatGPT. OpenAI stores all responses and will be able to filter this to create profiles on individuals, combining this with billing profiles. Remember this the next time you tell ChatGPT about your day and ask it for advice!
A familiar slippery slope
How will ads affect user experience of ChatGPT? Great question! The increase need for ad revenue through Google Ads has over the last few years decreased the user experience of Google Search. Google lowered its ability to match broader searches, causing users to run multiple searches, allowing more opportunities for ads to be shown. Will this happen to ChatGPT? Most likely! As ad revenue becomes the only real option to justify OpenAI’s share price, and the ever increasing cost of running AI services, the responses will need to become slower and more woven into advertising.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was cited in an interview at Harvard University saying he felt Ads were a “last resort”. The main aim seems to be to continue to grow monthly subscriptions, especially with the release of ChatGPT Go, its lower-cost subscription plan. However, advertising is always an inevitability for platforms such as this.
In a world where everyone is big on in-private browsing, VPNs to hide traffic and denying cookies so your personal data cannot be tracked, are we now willingly opening up to being fully profiles, with every thought and emotion we express being exploited for advertisement?
Funny what we are willing to trade in return for a quick fix.
