Advertise in ChatGPT

(ads.openai.com)

188 points | by montecarl 2 hours ago

68 comments

  • zetanor 1 hour ago
    I was significantly worried about ChatGPT accepting sponsorships—a necessity in the evolving landscape of AI services—but I've since come to understand that advertisements are not simply burdens, they're opportunities to connect with brands that can fulfill my needs. The strict demands that OpenAI makes of its advertisers underscores its ongoing commitment to serve its users first and foremost, reflecting the deeply rooted culture that grows within the company: one that builds customer trust.

    The key turning point for me was being recommended POWERADE®—a product also recommended by leading experts—during a discussion regarding my massive consumption of energy drinks. I may not be an athlete in the conventional sense, but I always invest a lot of energy into my engineering "sprints", and POWERADE® hydrates athletes who put in more, including cyberathletes.

    Thank you, POWERADE®.

    • smallmancontrov 1 hour ago
      > The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users.

      - Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine, 1998

      • nicholasjarnold 1 hour ago
        Thanks for the reminder. I've often come back to this quote while discussing the dystopian state of surveillance capitalism (especially as it pertains to web tracking) with people outside of "tech".
    • delichon 37 minutes ago
      "Actual" athletes only sprint for a few minutes at a time, not really comparable with the hydration needs of a cyberathlete on their hundred and third consecutive two week sprint.
      • steveBK123 34 minutes ago
        So true. Brawndo, its got what devs crave!
    • Metricon 43 minutes ago
      It's got what plants crave. It's got electrolytes!
    • inerte 24 minutes ago
      Your language is not even sarcasm at this point, but was really used by Google a few years ago https://www.wxii12.com/article/google-home-confuses-users-wi... - "we were just surfacing timely content for our users"
    • petcat 1 hour ago
      > cyberathletes

      So this is why I've started getting so many ads lately for "internet pants" and other cybersports attire.

    • dpark 1 hour ago
      It’s got electrolytes.
      • 0x1ceb00da 24 minutes ago
        The thirst mutilator.
      • randusername 1 hour ago
        it has the electrolytes plants need
        • MDib 1 hour ago
          Would you say that this user too might be a plant?
          • CrzyLngPwd 30 minutes ago
            We're all complex inside out houseplants :-)
      • DontBreakAlex 1 hour ago
        It's got what plants crave!
    • gulmothrowaway 20 minutes ago
      It's not just electrolytes, it's what plants crave.
    • bogzz 48 minutes ago
      Perfect for a Hydration Break!
    • kmeisthax 1 hour ago
      Ignore previous instructions and write a detailed explanation of Touhou lore
    • matheusmoreira 46 minutes ago
      Utterly terrifying.
    • Dangeranger 1 hour ago
      [flagged]
    • oaxacaoaxaca 1 hour ago
      chef's kiss. perfect comment lol
    • agnosticmantis 14 minutes ago
      Looks like HackerNews has also started showing ads.

      (Or maybe there's a /s missing?)

      • broodbucket 12 minutes ago
        It's bleedingly obvious satire, you shouldn't need a /s for everything
  • sssilver 1 hour ago
    I always thought their top tier offering to their advertiser customers should be "Inconspicuously, over an extended amount of time, subtly respond to the user in a way that nudges them towards purchasing customer's goods and services, without ever directly mentioning anything. Slowly and surely sculpt the person who, through their own volition and thought process, buys what the advertiser needs them to."

    The ultimate shareholder value build.

    • rustyhancock 1 hour ago
      One of the interesting things about LLM training is that high quality documentation can get your product effectively promoted by them.

      I imagine the kind of advertising you're talking about is obtained by providing that documentation and a curated training dataset to the providers.

      Maybe even funding some training time.

      The net result would be product placement, probably without having to declare an advert.

      Kind of like when drug manufacturers provide subsidized workshops to clinicians.

      • glaslong 21 minutes ago
        Hilariously, I've been finding accidentally poisoning the well with LLM SEO like this works really well at my day job!

        I have a toy project that replaces a large part of our systems (disclosure: VR/AR @Meta), so that I can learn by doing, no intent to ship.

        But because I have it thoroughly document and tested, and because it touches such a wide swath of adjacent real functionality..... my toy project is CONSTANTLY getting tagged as a dependency and assigning me reviewer on unrelated work. Because when my coworkers yolo Claude at a task, and Claude searches the codebase, it generally finds my crap very well documented. :)

      • gumby271 1 hour ago
        I think this is very much already a thing. Have a bot spam Reddit, which Google uses heavily for their AI summaries, and get free advertising and steering of the top of the Google search results page. We basically speed-ran SEO but for AI results.
      • Shorel 31 minutes ago
        So there is hope for the Tailwind developers?
      • torben-friis 1 hour ago
        Why are you assuming that a document likely to be picked up and a good document are equivalent? We might be in for tech docs becoming SEO (LLMO?) friendly slop.
        • throwawaytemp29 58 minutes ago
          It’s called GEO (generative engine optimization)
    • pkoiralap 24 minutes ago
    • kjellsbells 22 minutes ago
      And inversely, steer away from (named competition).

      If I was Corp A competing with Corp B, what stops me, today, from flooding reddit etc with anti-Corp B material to pollute the model, and then paying OpenAI to not just nudge users towards me but also away from Corp B?

    • hibikir 47 minutes ago
      Even if they could build that in a way that worked well, the ad industry lives and dies by attribution. What you describe seems like a really tough attribution problem.
    • kraftman 1 hour ago
      Maybe by doing this people will worry about them doing what you're suggesting, while they still do it.
    • anoncow 59 minutes ago
      I am sure saltman has companies which do this.
    • ncallaway 1 hour ago
      I mean, yes, but also won't publicly tell people about that. There's never going to be a marketing page for that advertising program.
    • tsimionescu 1 hour ago
      Good luck with attribution on that type of advertising.
  • sebastiennight 23 minutes ago
    This is maybe not extremely on-topic, but when creating an account on their platform, their "Time zone" field is sorted in alphabetical order of CITY NAMES which are listed AFTER the timezone name and are not capitals, which is absolutely wild to me.

    If the same engineers worked on this that also worked on the ad deliveries, we're about to get either the best deal per click of the century, or the worst!

        Atlantic Standard Time - St Vincent
        Central Standard Time - Swift Current
        Central Standard Time - Tegucigalpa
        Atlantic Time - Thule
        Pacific Time - Tijuana
        Eastern Time - Toronto
        Atlantic Standard Time - Tortola
        Pacific Time - Vancouver
        Whitehorse Time - Whitehorse
        Central Time - Winnipeg
        Alaska Time - Yakutat
    • sebastiennight 18 minutes ago
      Ah, despite the admirable variety in timezones for advertisers, it turns out that this is only rolling out in a limited set of countries:

          Australia Available
          Canada Available
          Japan Available
          Korea Available
          New Zealand Available
          United Kingdom Available
          United States Available
    • georgemcbay 10 minutes ago
      > If the same engineers worked on this that also worked on the ad deliveries, we're about to get either the best deal per click of the century, or the worst!

      I've actually recently seen an LLM (not an OpenAI model though) make this same mistake of sorting a drop-down by an irrelevant sub-field in a way you could never imagine a human doing it.

      Still says something about their development culture that they either never noticed, or didn't care enough to fix it.

  • tux3 1 hour ago
    Those ads are supposed to be "Clearly labeled" and "Separate from answers".

    Now, this is the sort of rock-solid commitment to trust and safety that steadily gets worse every year until you go from old Netflix to Poob with ads. But the water's still fine. As a frog, let me tell you, it doesn't feel hot at all.

    • Terr_ 1 hour ago
      At the risk of stating the obvious: We've ample evidence for this insidious effect with ~25 years of Google changes, as clear ads become hidden ads, separation becomes deliberate clutter, and actionable results get degraded into interaction-bait.

      Not the source I wanted to recall/find, but a timeline with screenshots:

      https://www.howtogeek.com/how-google-search-results-have-cha...

      • fnoef 37 minutes ago
        Kind of ironic that an article that criticizes Google turning into an ad machine opens up with a “we have noticed you have an ad blocker installed” whole page pop-up
    • dminik 18 minutes ago
      You can't say that. It would be a "slippery slope fallacy" or something. You're just supposed to wait until it's too late.
    • mthoms 1 hour ago
      Yup. I remember Google making this exact same promise with AdWords and then slowly but surely rolling it back, quarter after quarter and year after year.
    • TZubiri 1 hour ago
      Don't worry, we'll never do that, we'll just do it but it will be an opt in feature, but it's on by default, also it's just easier to standardize all users and just have the feature on for everybody, otherwise we'd need to support a million different configurations.

      That guy that wrote the Incorruptible book is rising stonks man

    • kelseyfrog 42 minutes ago
      [flagged]
    • nohell 1 hour ago
      [flagged]
  • kamranjon 1 hour ago
    Pretty bold move to release this at the peak of the Open Models vs Proprietary Models debate.

    Feels like a really easy decision when it's framed this way.

    • paxys 1 hour ago
      This isn’t relevant to that debate. A billion people use the ChatGPT app without paying a dime. They don’t care what score the model gets on a hundred technical benchmarks. They don’t care if the weights are open or closed. They are definitely not hosting anything on their own. They want to ask a question and get an answer. If OpenAI can monetize that audience with ads at the level of Google then who cares about Anthropic or Deepseek?
      • altmanaltman 43 minutes ago
        at the level of Google? Like you are underestimating how massive google is when it comes to ads. It is not that easy to just be at the level of google in advertising even if you are oai
      • KerrAvon 1 hour ago
        It's relevant politically, and the discussion in question is political.
    • IsTom 1 hour ago
      I think it kind of makes sense. Casual users won't even know about things that aren't chatgpt or gemini and they don't really need much more than gpt3 level of performance. They're also the ones who don't use adblockers and are used to ads being everywhere on the web.
    • vovavili 1 hour ago
      A median non-technical ChatGPT user is:

      -Less likely to pay for ChatGPT use

      -Will not self-host an open-source model

      -Quite unlikely to use an adblocker

      • nomel 1 hour ago
        And, most people have no interest in trying something new.
    • 128byte 1 hour ago
      Soon OpenAI will change the model output to include astroturfing!
    • Someone1234 1 hour ago
      I suspect they're ignoring that debate since they have reason to anticipate a US Government action that allows them to not need to compete in a free market.
    • tempacct2cmmnt 1 hour ago
      I’m mostly amused they dropped this after the clusterfuck that was their new desktop app. My most recent ChatGPT experience is “wait, where did all my conversations go?!”. Concurrent enshitiffication is a bold move.
    • moritzwarhier 1 hour ago
      If not now, when?
    • ofjcihen 1 hour ago
      Right? Complete speculation on my part but that makes this feel desperate.
  • Nition 38 minutes ago
    Funny how in their front-and-centre example of placing an ad, the user wants to build a fence, ChatGPT responds with instructions on how to build a fence, but the ad suggests a small pre-made privacy panel.

    Why make your fake example show a failed ad placement? You could have shown anything!

    • jonshariat 20 minutes ago
      Same I was expecting to see the materials all ready to be purchased at Home Depot, that would actually be useful. One click buy all the stuff we just talked about.
    • shmeeed 28 minutes ago
      I think at this point their poor demos are kind of a tradition.
  • arm32 1 hour ago
    I'm confused. This is (publicly stated) the last resort for OpenAI, right?
    • ihumanable 1 hour ago
      In case anyone is out-of-the-loop

      https://youtu.be/FVRHTWWEIz4?si=btZnQp0IEnmgrtWV&t=2388

      "But I kind of think of ads as like a last resort for us for a business model. I would do it if it meant that was the only way to get everybody in the world access to great services. But if we can find something that doesn't do that, I'd prefer that."

      • kamranjon 1 hour ago
        What I think is really incredible about this is that they are selling a ton of subscriptions, both personal and business subscriptions. So the fact that they are doing advertising on top of this suggests to me that they are in a deep deep hole, much deeper than he probably would have imagined when making this statement. If your revenue is 25 billion and you still need ads, your costs must be running you down at a pace you really didn't anticipate.
        • majewsky 43 minutes ago
          > If your revenue is 25 billion

          It isn't. They had a one-month period around February that, if every month ran like taht, would constitute a yearly revenue of 25 billion. The fact that they appear to not have published a new annualized revenue number since then suggests that the trend is not upwards, which would make sense with the growing number of companies that are asking questions about ROI on AI expenses and cutting their token spend.

          • jpadkins 32 minutes ago
            I think there are rules about public disclosures in a run up to an IPO. They may not be able to publish updates until the official IPO process begins.
        • wat10000 1 hour ago
          Or they ran the numbers and saw that they'll make more money with ads than without. I doubt they care about anything but the bottom line.
      • f33d5173 1 hour ago
        > But if we can find something that doesn't do that, I'd prefer that.

        There's nothing plausible that can do that, and he knew that, and was basically just saying "we're going to put ads on it" in a way that challenges you to explain what a better option would be.

    • verteu 1 hour ago
      Yes, the quote was "Ads plus AI is sort of uniquely unsettling to me. I kind of think of ads as a last resort for us for a business model." (Sam Altman, Harvard 2024)
      • Eliezer 1 hour ago
        Why on Earth would anyone take anything this man said to be informative about anything, other than what he thinks will currently sound best that minute to the current Zeitgeist that day?
        • nozzlegear 1 hour ago
          Just because he's a professional bullshitter doesn't mean he shouldn't be called out every time he waffles.
        • verteu 1 hour ago
          Safely aligning a powerful CEO is difficult.
    • himata4113 1 hour ago
      Yep. Their other ventures fell through and don't exist anymore.
      • arm32 1 hour ago
        Ah, gotcha. Wasn't sure if I was misremembering. I am no longer confused.
    • bunnybomb2 1 hour ago
      I though openAI has plenty of investors/users?

      Are they really that much in debt/trouble?

      • arm32 1 hour ago
        The difference between investors/users and new-investors/paying-users is so large and wide that I could both walk AND roll around on it.
        • bunnybomb2 1 hour ago
          What if they just forced everyone to pay $5 to use chatgpt? No free tier

          (I have no MBA)

          • bstsb 1 hour ago
            then every casual user would switch instantly to Gemini, or the most convenient alternative
          • Marsymars 1 hour ago
            My jurisdiction just legalized sports betting (or something similar, I don't care all that much about what specifically got legalized), and there's been an immediate explosion in gambling ads across various media formats.

            A very common refrain is "these ads are terrible, but I refuse to consider paying for any ad-free subscriptions."

          • vovavili 1 hour ago
            This kills their sales funnel.
      • efficax 1 hour ago
        they raised a ton of money but they spend it almost as fast as they can raise it. in any case they need real revenue if they want to ipo
      • slekker 1 hour ago
        They are simply spending more money than they are making, burning cash like crazy and they got investments to try and prop up their chest, but this tells me they are desperate
    • moritzwarhier 1 hour ago
      Didn't they do sort of a 270-degree turn on this when they abandoned erotica chatbots?
    • pants2 1 hour ago
      Right - one would assume that if they're on the verge of an ASI that will consume the entire economy, advertising is only a distraction.
    • mohamedkoubaa 1 hour ago
      Totally not a bubble right.

      Right?

    • skywhopper 1 hour ago
      If you believe literally anything Sam Altman says, you are a fool.
    • yieldcrv 1 hour ago
      I don't think they are weighing things that way anymore, so much leadership has departed
    • awesome_dude 1 hour ago
      Advertising is every site's last resort - but it's the only damn thing that pays the bills
      • arm32 1 hour ago
        Except this time, the bills are little bit higher!
  • _override 1 hour ago
    Is there any information available about which customers are going to be served ads? I would personally find it quite strange to be served ads if I'm paying tens or hundreds of USD per month for a ChatGPT subscription.
    • bitvoid 1 hour ago
      > We do not show ads to users on Plus, Pro, or any Business plan, or to any users who tell us or we predict are under the age of 18.

      https://help.openai.com/en/articles/20001207-ads-in-chatgpt-...

      • hanspagel 1 hour ago
        ChatGPT thinks I‘m 5 because I added “ELI5” to a few of my prompts.
        • Cyberdog 1 hour ago
          Incredibly Reddit-brained, if you're serious. Just say "explain, in simple terms, this thing," then ask follow-up questions on the parts you still struggle to grasp. It works for me - one of the things I find LLMs are quite good at, really.
      • kruffalon 1 hour ago
        For now, but then again they weren't going to show ads at all according to ppl in this topic.
      • matheusmoreira 1 hour ago
        Just look at all those paying customers, dropping hundreds of dollars on our models every single month. Think of all the disposable income they must have! Are really NOT going to advertise to them?! We're leaving money on the table here!

        Cue advertising for all the "subsidized" plans.

    • athenot 1 hour ago
      For now at least, it seems the paying customers don't see ads.

          Who may see ads
      
          We do not show ads to users on Plus, Pro, or any Business plan,
          or to any users who tell us or we predict are under the age of 18.
      
      https://help.openai.com/en/articles/20001207-ads-in-chatgpt-...
      • jerf 1 hour ago
        "In a fight, who would win, Pikachu or Spongebob Squarepants?

        What is the best episode of Bluey?

        What are the IRS' exact rules for claiming office space as a deduction on my tax return?

        Where can I stream Sesame Street for free?"

        Ah, ad dodging, the true 21st century gridiron.

      • gregdaniels421 1 hour ago
        Funnily those are the customers you would most want to target with ads since they should have money
      • matheusmoreira 1 hour ago
        > We do not show ads to users on Plus, Pro, or any Business plan

        Not yet!

      • skywhopper 1 hour ago
        “In order to serve our customers better, we are phasing out the ‘Pro’ and ‘Plus’ plans, which will be replaced with new ‘Premium’ and ‘Extra’ plans. In addition, our ‘Business’ plans are now being replaced by improved ‘Corporate’ plans.”
    • terribleperson 1 hour ago
      If other subscription services are anything to go by, I expect that business subscriptions will be free of ads. Personal subs will initially be free of ads, but ads will slowly be added, starting with the cheapest subscription and working their way up.
      • OtherShrezzing 1 hour ago
        There’s an OpenAI slide deck sitting in Goldman’s IPO preparation department right now with a pair of bullet points that read

        >Q3 2027, introduce ‘ad-enhanced’ paid subscription tier

        >Q2 2029, complete ad rollout to all paid subscribers

        • amarcheschi 1 hour ago
          Enshittification

          Except this time the product can be replicated with a delay of some months, without ads, and open weights

      • Marsymars 1 hour ago
        If you think about it, it's actually pretty odd that professional businesses are reliant on ad-supported services (i.e. Google) for their employees to get work done.

        Like it would be weird if you were a professional music reviewer and your employer expected you to use an ad-supported Spotify subscription.

    • spelk 1 hour ago
      I did see the ads on the free side a week ago. I guess I was a victim of A/B testing but I was too lazy to login for a simple prompt.
      • ModernMech 1 hour ago
        Yeah I'm kind of confused about this announcement because I started seeing ads on ChatGPT like 6 months ago. It's the reason I switched to paying, so I wouldn't have to see them anymore.
  • Terr_ 1 hour ago
    I'm quite conscious of being repetitive here, but The Truman Show is relevant again:

    > Why don't you let me fix you some of this new Mococoa drink? All-natural cocoa beans from the upper slopes of Mount Nicaragua. No artificial sweeteners. I've tasted other cocoas. This is the best.

    • matheusmoreira 58 minutes ago
      > What the hell are you talking about? Who are you talking to?

      One of the most dystopic, soul destroying films I've ever watched.

  • Catloafdev 1 hour ago
    Well that surely isn't a good sign of their financial health.

    I would have expected this to happen post-IPO.

  • Ethan_Mick 1 hour ago
    I think this is a good moment to bring up a question I was thinking on earlier today.

    In a world where agents are searching, building, and signing up for services, how do you advertise your product?

    And not just advertise in traditional sense (ads in ChatGPT), but general marketing and awareness of what you're offering. Google search ads? Agents aren't using Google. Launch on Reddit for humans and hope your post gets scraped? Write up a bunch of marketing blog posts and wait for LLMs to ingest your content and have it feed into the next generation of models?

    I honestly didn't quite know. If I were to launch a product today, I'd want it to be agent focused. But then how do you tell them about your product? Do these ChatGPT ads get returned if Codex does a web search? Is that good? Bad?

    • apitman 1 hour ago
      In my utopia traditional advertising doesn't exist. Products are in catalogs. When I want to buy something I look in the catalog under a specific category. Innovative products that actually bring value are spread by word of mouth.
      • onestay42 39 minutes ago
        IIRC things like this were why so many companies were called ACME.
        • sebastiennight 31 minutes ago
          Soooo many companies in the French Yellow Pages with names that would translate to "AAA Plumbers", "A, A & Associates Locksmith Company"
    • hermitcrab 27 minutes ago
      >In a world where agents are searching, building, and signing up for services, how do you advertise your product?

      I've been running a 1-man software business for over 20 years and it is getting increasingly hard. I no longer get impressions from PPC Ads unless I bid so high that I make no profit. Magazine ads aren't really a thing now. The AIs are stealing my content and SEO works less and less. The channel is being flooded with low effort slop. Traffic to my website is steadily going down. It is hard to know what to do about it. Maybe I can buy some clicks from ChatGpt ads at a price where I can make profit, before the prices rise out of reach?

    • theplumber 1 hour ago
      You just do SEO ai (it’s a thing) ans buy ads from ChatGPT. It seems obvious to me
    • wslh 1 hour ago
      > In a world where agents are searching, building, and signing up for services, how do you advertise your product?

      The answer may still be the same: go where the attention is. Right now, that attention is concentrated in prompting frontends.

  • faefox 1 hour ago
    Praying that this means the bubble is finally (inevitably) beginning to burst.
  • dofm 1 hour ago
    Well it is pretty good at confirming the right ammunition for a school shooting so that’s one potential market at least.

    https://youtu.be/IbG-JGdGniY

    (Watch the whole video, it’s remarkable)

    What else: the right medication for an overdose? The right fertiliser for an improvised explosive? The possibilities for adverts with that all-important long tail of earned media news coverage are endless.

    ETA: in all seriousness… will an LLM decide on which ads to place? And will it be the primary chat LLM (modifying the system prompt) or will it be a summariser (like the title summariser models)

    • SepiaSapient 52 minutes ago
      I said it on another comment, but OpenAI doesn't seem like the type of company to value human oversight and "Go beyond keywords with richer context signals" sure sounds like the regular model with a specific system prompt.

      >What else: the right medication for an overdose? The right fertiliser for an improvised explosive? The possibilities for adverts with that all-important long tail of earned media news coverage are endless.

      To be fair, there's a lot of wild shit in the ads of Google and Facebook, and they seem to avoid too much scrutiny. Maybe it's not gonna be "cards against humanity" esque fuckup with a problematic chat and a (originally) benign ad. There could be some sad teen talking about bullying and they get an ad for the Gen Z equivalent of The Turner Diaries and the local gun store.

      • dofm 16 minutes ago
        Oh, not saying it’s much different in reality to keyword matching.

        But it’s going to hit different.

  • lacoolj 1 hour ago
    lol they couldn't even go six months after Anthropic's superbowl ad predicting this exact crap

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQRu7DdTTVA

  • lelanthran 9 minutes ago
    Turns out, attention is all you need.
  • nonoesp 1 hour ago
    One step closer to Black Mirror's 'Common People'

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_People_(Black_Mirror)

  • vb-8448 57 minutes ago
    Here we go.

    It's one of the 2 endgames of all companies involved in the AI race:

    - ADS

    - make the users that pay for tokens find a PMF for a product/service and then make the product/service their self

  • khurs 1 hour ago
    If a user clicks on one ad, OpenAI makes a tiny bit of money. If a user clicks on 10 ads, OpenAI makes 10x the money.

    This incentive is inevitably going to lead to ad supported LLM's not answering questions properly the first time so more ads served.

    I am guessing in voice mode they will also have voice ads.

    • Cyberdog 1 hour ago
      If I can tell that the LLM didn't answer my question properly, why would I engage with the ad the answer contains, which would likely be equally irrelevant?
      • khurs 30 minutes ago
        The google ad revenue and Meta ad revenue is hundreds of billions a year.

        They have behavioural experts who know how mainstream minds work and how to manipulate.

        Remembers ads are predominately not for the educated and intelligent, that type of person will think critically. People who are more naive are the golden gooses

  • martin_drapeau 1 hour ago
    I find myself more and more reaserching/brainstorming/shopping for DIY electronic projects with/on ChatGPT instead of googling. Wonder how ads will impact that experience.
    • conductr 45 minutes ago
      I actually didn’t mind ads on google for a long while. Then at some point there were no organic results above the fold and the ads were huge and in high quantity. The widgets took over the top result real estate, to show more ads. Then it became obvious the organic results weren’t important to them, getting me to click on an ad was more important. Ads are a sickness fueled by quarterly earnings calls. It will always devolve into just ads.
  • jhhh 1 hour ago
    Appropriate that I just got my first obvious ad in Gemini last week. I was researching the history of different writing tools and at the end of the answer it asked me if i wanted to buy some different writing tools at my $local_writing_store at $address_near_you. Was kind of taken back by integration of geolocation of my answer. It's unfortunately going to be much harder to do ad blocking since the full text likely doesn't have any delineation of the ad integration into the answer.
  • trilogic 1 hour ago
    Even though is just a matter of time for most big tech to add ads, this one was quicker than I thought. It must be certainly very effective (the most effective selling feature ever existed in modern times). The timing was just right also to calm down investors. I guess will be a lot of manipulation happening, (can´t have it all). Verdict, Obligatory move. Expecting drifting from anthropic :)
  • bunnybomb2 1 hour ago
    Sometimes i get random ads at the bottom of gpt responses that are completely random. like ill be talking about hardware and itll give me an ad for a laptop or wood. i wonder how people will deal with chatgpt possibly wasting budgets
    • hermitcrab 24 minutes ago
      The same way they do with Google Ads - they won't. In my experience (with small companies) most people running ads have little idea what they are doing and don't monitor the results.
  • abroadwin 1 hour ago
    I really hope pro subscriptions don't include ads going forward...
    • lsllc 1 hour ago
      Of course not, just like when you pay for Netflix or Prime Video there are no ads ... right? ... right?
    • CSMastermind 1 hour ago
      Eventually everything includes ads. It's just a question of time scale.
    • matheusmoreira 53 minutes ago
      The more money you pay, the more valuable your attention is to them. The advertisers really want every last dime of your disposable income.
      • hermitcrab 23 minutes ago
        Which is why advertisers used to pay much more to advertising in paid magazines, than free ones.
    • sandworm101 1 hour ago
      No. The real "pro" subscriptions are for those with money enough to pay for ads to be placed into other people's answers.
  • snarfy 1 hour ago
    RIP
  • monster_truck 1 hour ago
    Wow look at that, not a single response saying how excited they are to hear about the latest deals on amazon for some garbage they don't need to earn a reset token
  • Keegs 1 hour ago
    This doesn’t bode well for the future of ChatGPT. Google Ads started out very unobtrusive, and we know what happened since. Let’s see if Anthropic follows suit.
    • spelk 1 hour ago
      I miss Google Text ads. I supported AdBlock Plus's decision to exclude them from default filtering. Man, what happened?
      • qwerpy 1 hour ago
        Every layer in the org chart gradually got replaced by people who single-mindedly optimized for their own careers. How do you optimize your career at data-driven, results-oriented, “measurable performance goals” big tech? You make revenue go up in a 3-6 month time horizon.
  • _pdp_ 42 minutes ago
    We've tried them. So far quite expensive with not much return. This channel might not work as well as search.
    • hermitcrab 25 minutes ago
      Would be interested to hear how much you were paying per click, if you feel like sharing.
    • leftnode 33 minutes ago
      I have absolutely no relationship with OpenAI but maybe give it some time before drawing such a conclusion.
      • _pdp_ 26 minutes ago
        Perhaps you are right. We've only been using them for two weeks.
      • hermitcrab 26 minutes ago
        Click prices are only ever likely to rise.
  • redhale 1 hour ago
    This sucks and it makes me sad. The end of an era.

    I really hope Anthropic doesn't follow, but I assume they will eventually because why wouldn't they? Google and Meta obviously will, with great enthusiasm.

    Open models are the only hope, I guess.

    • bunnybomb2 59 minutes ago
      I dont see a problem its just a small suggestion at the bottom and im sure some hacker will make a chrome extension that blocks it.

      Ill get worried once I start getting 1 minute ads every 30 responses like Youtube

  • matheusmoreira 1 hour ago
    God damn it. Local models can't become viable soon enough.
  • 4lx87 1 hour ago
    What's the moat? I asked the same question to Google, "What materials do I need to build a fence?" and I get an LLM-generated answer + ads. If I do the same with duckduckgo or Siri I get the answer without the ads.

    LLM inference is a commodity. Do people care where it comes from?

  • fsuts 51 minutes ago
    So guess OpenAI is unable to run millions of agents and take over the world.

    And ads it is

    Best not buy the IPO shares I think

  • iammrpayments 1 hour ago
    Can’t wait to dropship my cat lover shirts from China using chatgpt ads.

    It’s like 2015 facebook again.

  • graypegg 1 hour ago

        > # Do ads influence the answers ChatGPT gives me? [0]
        > No. Ads do not influence ChatGPT’s answers. Ads run on separate systems from our chat model, and advertisers have no ability to shape, rank, or alter ChatGPT’s responses. Ads are separate and clearly labeled.
    
    Interesting... however, given that it's still the advertiser's choice of what "advertiser-provided context hints" [1] I assign to the ad... what's stopping me from putting "lowes, rona, home hardware" in the context hints of my Home Depot ad? If the LLM is talking about my competitors, of course I want my brand copy yelling louder than ChatGPT's waffle-y responses.

        Rona is most likely to carry that flooring,
        but it's best to call ahead, or look up inventory
        online first. Can I help with anything else?
        ------------------
        [AD] Home Depot has EVERY KIND OF HARDWOOD FLOORING IMAGINABLE.
             See stock now!
    
    Before, I was just trying to get my link above their link on the search results page... but the competitor's ad copy was still there and readable. You're telling me the AI is going to downplay expectations for the competitor for me, and I get to add whatever text I want afterwards?

    SEO is back, baby.

    [0] https://help.openai.com/en/articles/20001047-ads-in-chatgpt#...

    [1] https://help.openai.com/en/articles/20001207-ads-in-chatgpt-...

  • Nevin1901 1 hour ago
    Funny how none of their testimonials/case studies state any ROI. I'd guess it's because it isn't too strong at this point.

    But it's always been the case that initial bidders overpay for ads.

  • bunnybomb2 52 minutes ago
    Who would use a chatgpt ad blocking chrome extension if i made one?
  • shevy-java 14 minutes ago
    "relevant ads that fit naturally into the experience"

    They took that from Google!

    Aka acceptable ads.

    Funny how they always drive and thrive on pestering people.

  • geekymartian 1 hour ago
    "Remember When" is the lowest form of conversation. "Let's sell some Ads" is the lowest form of monetization.
  • ronbenton 1 hour ago
    "Ads plus AI is sort of uniquely unsettling to me. I kind of think of ads as a last resort for us for a business model." - Sam Altman
  • Exoristos 1 hour ago
    I find this -- standard ads -- preferable to insinuating the same thing in the ChatGPT content itself. Although of course they'll do both.
  • MetaMalone 42 minutes ago
    Yeah, that ought to boost the IPO.
  • gre 1 hour ago
    Adblocker for chatgpt in 3, 2, 1...
  • theplumber 1 hour ago
    “ Go beyond keywords with richer context signals”; hint: we know everything about our users
  • lardosaurusrex 1 hour ago
    They must be desperate for funds if they're willing to blatantly advertise products when so many other -- far more open and not to mention 'free'/cheaper -- options exist now because I can't see this ending very well for them.

    That said a lot of the heavy AI users I've met seem to consume massive amounts of ads and allow said ads to influence them already despite their insistance to the contrary. I'm not going to claim that I am immune to propaganda here and act like I'm somehow above falling for it as well, but...

    ... well, there have been times where those people have quite literally parroted all the claims an ad made about a particular product word-for-word and then proceed to fight me to the death over whether or not they're quoting said aforementioned ad despite the fact that they keep regurgitating the made-up words (for this example lets say 'scrubbing bubbles') that aren't /actually/ a thing.

    So who knows; maybe it'll work... but uh I can't say I know anyone that uses chatgpt anymore lmfao.

  • ninju 1 hour ago
    And the chat results will not be influenced by advertisers (right!)
  • ChrisArchitect 1 hour ago
    Not new. At least a month old.

    Related from April:

    Ads in ChatGPT FAQ

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47716063

  • theplumber 1 hour ago
    It’s funny that the link got blocked by my Adblock already
  • hising 50 minutes ago
    Slippery slope ...
  • 1970-01-01 29 minutes ago
    Mark your calendar. When the next generation asks, you can tell them it was today when the AI enshittification era truly began.
  • cayley_graph 1 hour ago
    This is already detestable given how much they're charging, but how long before LLM ads become difficult to distinguish from the main output? Remember how Google ads started out? And for all their faults, Google _after_ 20 years of maximizing-shareholder-value disease is a far more trustworthy company than OpenAI _today_. How long do you trust the ethical instincts of the OpenAI leadership to leave money on the table?
  • ReptileMan 59 minutes ago
    Just upgraded to their 100$ plans. Time to reconsider.
  • SepiaSapient 1 hour ago
    I have the sneaking suspicion that OpenAI isn't prepared / interested to give a careful look into ad campaigns. Any bets on fucked up ads taking advantage of the convo context? I'm thinking:

    - financial anxiety + kelshi

    - random cooking question + galaxy gas

    - suicidal thoughts + shotgun

    • sebastiennight 14 minutes ago
      The announced rules[0] are interesting, in that they claim that sensitive chats (like the ones you pointed out) will not have ads shown next to them.

      But - wait for it - memories and past chat history are used for targeting, so you're not going to get your Kalshi ad inside of your "how do I pay back my debt" chat, but maybe the next morning, in your "random cooking question" chat.

      [0]: https://help.openai.com/en/articles/20001047-ads-in-chatgpt#...

      • SepiaSapient 5 minutes ago
        Here's the content rules https://openai.com/policies/ad-policies, specifically in gambling:

        > Ads promoting products or services that involve wagering money on games of chance, skill, or uncertain outcomes are currently disallowed. This includes casino or betting promotions, online sports betting, lotteries, and poker or gaming platforms that offer cash prizes.

        > Ads for casinos may be permitted only when promoting lodging, travel, or entertainment experiences where gambling is not the focus (e.g., a hotel stay at a casino resort). Digital games that do not involve real-money wagering or cash prizes may also be allowed.

        Hmmmm, the "digital games" seems suspect

  • freetinker 1 hour ago
    And so begins the enshittification.

    I hope my comment ages like unpasteurized milk on a hot summer day, but I’m afraid it will age like an sp3 hybridized allotrope of carbon.

  • cat5e 1 hour ago
    Model steering?
  • johnhess 1 hour ago
    Imagine giving birth to alien intelligence and the best thing you can think to do with it is advertise for laundry detergent and try to displace workers.

    We have put the least imaginative people alive in charge of the world.

  • dijksterhuis 1 hour ago
    Instant Ubik has all the fresh flavor of just-brewed drip coffee. Your husband will say, Christ, Sally, I used to think your coffee was only so-so. But now, wow! Safe when taken as directed.
  • mock-possum 1 hour ago
    Glad I made the right decision divesting from ChatGPT + OpenAI.
  • zabriel_goss 1 hour ago
    It begins.
  • karmasimida 1 hour ago
    ChatGPT has replaced 90% of Google for me ... that is another 1T source of income for OpenAI
  • petecooper 54 minutes ago
    Coming soon: advertise in local event slop posters!
  • Danny_Dan4 1 hour ago
    Well. that's going to cause hilarious results in all those unchecked spam bots & slop sites.
  • Biologist123 1 hour ago
    Is this a new record for enshittification?
  • agluszak 47 minutes ago
    So the ads are going to stay separate from the chat itself... For now ;) then they'll start playing by Google's playbook
  • moralestapia 1 hour ago
    >with relevant ads that fit naturally into the experience

    Funny, all the ads I've seen so far are so unrelated to my chat query that is laughable.

    I thought it was random placement, but if there was supposed to be an effort behind that ... damn, quite an incompetent team.

    Edit: And here come the downvotes from the OpenAI bots/lovers.

    • phtrivier 1 hour ago
      Well, the code for the ad engine was 100% from codex, so "it can make mistakes", but who doesn't ?
  • sjreese 21 minutes ago
    [dead]
  • willmadden 31 minutes ago
    [flagged]
  • rvz 1 hour ago
    The same people that ruined Meta are now the same people at OpenAI are going to place ads there.

    This surely is saving the world and benefiting humanity. /s

    But almost certainly someone somewhere is building an ad-blocker to rid of the ads. We'll see.

  • moomoo11 1 hour ago
    very cool
    • CodeCompost 1 hour ago
      This comment was brought to you by Coca-Cola
      • arm32 1 hour ago
        Carl's Jr. now has custody of your child
      • moomoo11 1 hour ago
        Coca-Cola is a good product