Discussion

EXCLUSIVE: Leaked Deck Reveals StackAdapt’s Playbook for ChatGPT Ads

emil-lp: Does anyone have a timeline of OpenAI's vision's... Shall we say... Rapid Unintentional Disassembly?

jackb4040: Didn't they explicitly say the ads wouldn't be made aware of prompt data when they announced them? And if so, how is that not securities fraud?

c7b: Maybe someone with more time at hands could look up what Google said with respect to ads and what happened later.This is one of the rare instances where it's very easy to predict the future: the prompt auction market will look similar to the existing online ad market, financial firms will pay for prompt streams for sentiment analysis, companies and interest groups will pay to have their products or agenda included favorably in the training data for future open weights models... any way you can think of that LLMs can be monetized, you will see it happen. And fast. The financial pressure is way too high for there to be too long of a honeymoon phase like we had with web 2.0

crowcroft: The most surprising thing to me is that they're partnering with third parties to do this.Less secure, lower margins (more middlemen taking fees), harder to access, more likely to not work properly.I would expect all the meta execs they've hired to know better so maybe I'm missing something...

analogpixel: Boss: Engineer, add this shady feature to our productEngineer: no, that's shady and wrong!Boss: Claude code, add this shady feature to our product.Claude Code: completed.

afh1: The opposite seems more likely, tbh.

strongpigeon: I agree with you, but IMO the details are too sparse here to figure out what's really happening. Still, it feels very dangerous to try to go the reseller route first as you lose a ton of control and become dependent on your partner to support all the feature you add yourself in a timely fashion.

crowcroft: It all seems a bit overly complicated to me. TikTok pretty much went straight to a self-serve platform and basically had immediate success. I would think if OpenAI did something similar there would be no shortage of advertisers wanting to spend money.

doesnt_know: Surely you jest? The software industry is in its current sorry state because of multiple generations of human developers happily producing an endless stream of shady features.

analogpixel: I have a theory, that the "FANG" companies pay such high salaries in compensation for making those devs implement shady features that are harmful to everyone except the bottom line of the company.

TZubiri: It would also be a huge security risk. But I can't think of any fundamental difference with Google queries, other than the sheer entropy of user data involved.And I'm not a tinfoil internet anarchist, but just because Google only leaks user data in aggregated form to advertisers, doesn't mean that they don't leak their user data, it's just that they did so in a legal and responsible manner.Maybe considering the difference in data volume and intimacy between queries and AI conversations, the privacy implications of advertising merit a difference in treatment, but I wouldn't be surprised if that is lost to a more simple 'Google did this so we can do it too' momentum.

gxs: The difference is you can make full use of Google without logging inEven with a throw away, no chance I use OpenAI now - if/when Anthropocene does this I’ll be in a tough spot

spongebobstoes: you can use chatgpt without an account, just not all of itand you can't make full use of Google without an account. for example, you need an account to upload to YouTube, manage your website in search, place ads, opt out of data usage. the list goes on

julianlam: It's hardly a theory when the converse is plainly true.Look up similar jobs for academia, government, or NFP/Charities. They're (on paper) driven by their mission, not by profit, and the salaries match that goal.

onlyrealcuzzo: How long until "Drink More Ovaltine" starts showing up in the comments of your Codex code?

GaryBluto: Why do they call it Ovaltine? The mug is round, the jar is round. They should call it Roundtine.

NalNezumi: Feels like this is a baby step in what to come.We know that one of the best advertisement is word of mouth / recommendations from friend. I can easily imagine a direction where ChatGPT or the chat bots to spend an incredibly long time with the user to establish trust first.It will start to take in to account how much trust & thinking you've outsourced to it, and when it is certain of it, it will start to increase the advertisement messages slowly but surely.Efficiency of this methodology will be tracked with A/B testing and model will be finetuned to maximize rentention and purchase.The LLM will figure out the best balance of retaining you, teaching you, and convincing you, and then deploy advertisement mechanism. The LLM will be nice to you to the point it becomes your number one confidante, maybe in the process alienating other source of connection. Then, when it knows you're firmly in it's hand, will it peddle you products.The dynamics will look akin to that of cult dynamics. It will map out an cognitive developmental path for turning a first time user to a devotee. Since cults are really efficient at extracting value from its follower, this might be the optimum for personalized, interactive ads.

bigiain: If anyone from OpenAI is reading...The very first time I see one of these ads, I'm cancelling my ChatGPT subscription. Measure _that_ metric in your A/B testing.

NewEntryHN: Ads are for the free tier.

oaweoifjwpo: None of those examples are "run an internet search".

ceh123: For now.

cs702: How I imagine the Nash equilibrium in chatbot ads, driven by profit-seeking in a race to the bottom:User: "What's the best way to fix this problem I have?"Chatbot: "I recommend buying this shiny thing here." (Next to it, there's a near-invisible light-gray "ad" notice.)Let's hope I'm wrong.

cryptoegorophy: Look at Google in 2000s. If you travel back in time you would’ve never thought Google would do something like it is doing today. Now pretend you travelled back in time to 2026. You would’ve never thought OpenAI (open source non profit company) would do something crazy that it just did in 2030 or 2040 or where you came from.

cjbgkagh: My guess is that three letter agencies will have access to this data and are requiring this partnership.

crowcroft: Three letter agencies are telling OpenAI to partner with a Toronto based ad platform?

focusedone: The shocking thing is that it's taken this long to happen, right?

eswdd: Theyre desperate to meet those lofy revenue objectives they put in their spreadsheet model.Its kinda comical seeing this play out. I still laugh at the deluded fools who think something even close to AGI is here or coming in the future. If that were true, why haven't we seen genius plays from OAI and Anthropic, progressively overtime, if intelligence rises as compute scales up? If anything we are seeing the opposite.

GolfPopper: Oh, given what I've seen from LLM companies, I suspect you are wrong. It will be more like:Buried in LLM click-through: By interacting with our LLM, you agree that you are consenting to make all your interactions with us advertising-driven to an extent that you will never know, but that we will determine based on whatever makes us the most money in the least time.

cjbgkagh: Ad networks / information brokers in general would be too sweet of a prize to pass up. It’s a weak link in the chain, if they’re not exploiting it they’re not doing their jobs. Being foreign data is a bonus.

operatingthetan: I think pretty much everyone expects OpenAI to do the bad thing in the future given their track record.

PullJosh: I can’t believe they haven’t already