Comment by celestialcheese
2 days ago
> Like, I've seen no sign of OpenAI building an ads team or product
You just haven't been paying attention. They hired Fidji Simo to lead applications in may, she led monetization/ads at facebook for a decade and have been staffing up aggressively with pros.
Reading between the lines in interview with wired last week[0], they're about to go all in with ads across the board, not just the free version. Start with free, expand everywhere. The monetization opportunities in chatgpt are going to make what google offers with adwords look quaint, and every CMO/performance marketer is going to go in head first. 2% is tiny IMO.
[0] - https://archive.is/n4DxY
I have indeed being paying attention, thanks. One executive does not an ads product make, though.
I think that ads are definitely a plausible way to make money, but it's legally required that they be clearly marked as such, and inline ads in the responses are at least 1-2 versions away.
The other option is either top ads or bottom ads. It's not clear to me if this will actually work (the precedents in messaging apps are not encouraging) but LLM chat boxes may be perceived differently.
And just because you have a good ad product doesn't mean you'll get loads of budget. You also need targeting options, brand safety, attribution and a massive sales team. It's a lot of work and I still maintain it will take till 2030 at least.