It wasn't really AI. Fundamentally, building a website the "traditional" way (hosting agreement, apache install, your favorite way to convert data formats that don't hate you into HTML, CSS, and JavaScript) was always a learned and quite technical skill; most people weren't doing it for fun, they were doing it because it was the only way to be on the web.
What killed the open web was Facebook, Twitter, and their ilk replacing that whole mess with social media profiles, networking connections, and templated, pre-fabricated organization home pages. When social networks became dominant enough that businesses could use it to get their info out there without having to author a webpage, the balance tipped (at least for business-motivated web content).
- Build FAQ section (LLM can help write a lot of it, if you let it load the content of your site)
- Write news on your site (LLM can help you to find ideas what to write about)
There are other networks as well: X, Meta, YouTube, LinkedIn, Amazon ads. It depends what’s your target group. But all networks have targeting tools so you can test them with minimum budget just to see what works and what doesn’t.
For sure, you have some personalized landing pages with CTA (Posthog script included so you can see what works).
good riddance seriously i used to pay like $1~2 a click back in 2010s and remember feeling like a total scam. no way of knowing if those clicks were bots and any campaigns would always have inflation somehow even long tail words that shouldn't.
AI should equal the playing field and promote businesses based on merit and capacity not how much they can spend.
I will say I have no experience in the ad space, but surely the SEO/ad companies will figure out how to game LLMs to make their sites more likely to be picked up by it, no? Or OpenAI would just directly sell ads themselves.
Yes - we're in what I like to call the Socialist Phase of AI (user acquisition). We were once in this phase with Google. Eventually we'll move into the as-yet-unnamed-by-me phase that Google (and search in General, also the internet) have been in for quite some time, where they try and squeeze out all the money that they put in during the Socialist Phase.
I don't even think this golden age actually exists today. Aask Google AI mode for the best product in some category - say, the best kitchen range - and it cites... a bunch of spammy "review" websites and a YouTube video.
If you're shopping around, an LLM you control can work for stuff like summarizing customer reviews or compiling a list of products with specific features (if you don't mind them being randomly wrong). But for general shopping advice / "plan my vacation" kind of queries, it's already firmly in the land of SEO-garbage-in-SEO-garbage-out.
they won't be in a separate panel you can ignore, either
the product promotion text will be integrated into the responses
'your prompt is insightful and refreshing. reminds me of the refreshing taste of organic coconut-cinnamon water. here's a QR code coupon for $1 off a 48-ct pack you can use at your local HoleFoods.'
> AI should equal the playing field and promote businesses based on merit and capacity not how much they can spend.
Wasn't that pretty much also the promise of Google as a search engine originally? For the longest time Google actively fought SEO, while running a minimal set of ads, then they bought DoubleClick and everything went to to shit.
AI should equal the playing field, but it won't. The current generation have our bias built in and it's not in a good place financially. It's only a matter of time because it becomes infested with ads. You think OpenAI aren't going to promote shitty products or companies, because the algorithm says they shouldn't? No, they might charge that customer more, but they aren't saying no.
This is a multi facet problem. There's a generation of advertisers who believe that advertising is clicking around in the AdWords interface, maybe sprinkle in a little ad spend on Meta and boom, you're done. The reality is that they can't advertising anything, they don't have the skills required to sell a product.
If they can't rely on Google, where can they go? Social media, AI? Nope, because many of us have been burnt by the major online platforms and won't trust any of them. I'm never signing up for another social media platform, hell, I'm reluctant to sign up for ANYTHING. The current generation of marketing has sacrificed the future for a quick profit now. Many aren't on social media, we use adblockers, we pay for services to ensure no ads, we don't watch TV, newspapers are dead, we don't go out much, so where are you going to advertise exactly? Even if you find a venue, many see so few ads that your attempt at marketing is going to feel like an assault, because you're so desperate that you don't dare tone it down enough.
Advertisement needs to reinvent itself, and it needs to stop funding the entire online services industry, because it can't, not without cannibalizing its own future.
I would be that Openai and Google will find a way to boost the embedded ad in the llm result to you based on an auction on how valuable you and your query are
AI is built with content from the open web, but it has also killed the open web. The death of Adwords is only one symptom of that.
I don't know what comes next, I just know it will be worse.
It wasn't really AI. Fundamentally, building a website the "traditional" way (hosting agreement, apache install, your favorite way to convert data formats that don't hate you into HTML, CSS, and JavaScript) was always a learned and quite technical skill; most people weren't doing it for fun, they were doing it because it was the only way to be on the web.
What killed the open web was Facebook, Twitter, and their ilk replacing that whole mess with social media profiles, networking connections, and templated, pre-fabricated organization home pages. When social networks became dominant enough that businesses could use it to get their info out there without having to author a webpage, the balance tipped (at least for business-motivated web content).
No, google search has stopped being useful years before "AI".
Is that why it kept it's market share and usage numbers?
2 replies →
It was still useful to advertisers and publishers.
- Build FAQ section (LLM can help write a lot of it, if you let it load the content of your site) - Write news on your site (LLM can help you to find ideas what to write about)
There are other networks as well: X, Meta, YouTube, LinkedIn, Amazon ads. It depends what’s your target group. But all networks have targeting tools so you can test them with minimum budget just to see what works and what doesn’t.
For sure, you have some personalized landing pages with CTA (Posthog script included so you can see what works).
good riddance seriously i used to pay like $1~2 a click back in 2010s and remember feeling like a total scam. no way of knowing if those clicks were bots and any campaigns would always have inflation somehow even long tail words that shouldn't.
AI should equal the playing field and promote businesses based on merit and capacity not how much they can spend.
I will say I have no experience in the ad space, but surely the SEO/ad companies will figure out how to game LLMs to make their sites more likely to be picked up by it, no? Or OpenAI would just directly sell ads themselves.
Yes - we're in what I like to call the Socialist Phase of AI (user acquisition). We were once in this phase with Google. Eventually we'll move into the as-yet-unnamed-by-me phase that Google (and search in General, also the internet) have been in for quite some time, where they try and squeeze out all the money that they put in during the Socialist Phase.
4 replies →
For now.
I give it maybe 12-18 months before AI results are polluted by advertising.
I don't even think this golden age actually exists today. Aask Google AI mode for the best product in some category - say, the best kitchen range - and it cites... a bunch of spammy "review" websites and a YouTube video.
If you're shopping around, an LLM you control can work for stuff like summarizing customer reviews or compiling a list of products with specific features (if you don't mind them being randomly wrong). But for general shopping advice / "plan my vacation" kind of queries, it's already firmly in the land of SEO-garbage-in-SEO-garbage-out.
exactly, enjoy the Golden age people, like the Internet had once...
> I give it maybe 12-18 months before AI results are polluted by advertising.
Have you been on amazon lately? We're already there. :-/
they won't be in a separate panel you can ignore, either
the product promotion text will be integrated into the responses
'your prompt is insightful and refreshing. reminds me of the refreshing taste of organic coconut-cinnamon water. here's a QR code coupon for $1 off a 48-ct pack you can use at your local HoleFoods.'
2 replies →
> AI should equal the playing field and promote businesses based on merit and capacity not how much they can spend.
Wasn't that pretty much also the promise of Google as a search engine originally? For the longest time Google actively fought SEO, while running a minimal set of ads, then they bought DoubleClick and everything went to to shit.
AI should equal the playing field, but it won't. The current generation have our bias built in and it's not in a good place financially. It's only a matter of time because it becomes infested with ads. You think OpenAI aren't going to promote shitty products or companies, because the algorithm says they shouldn't? No, they might charge that customer more, but they aren't saying no.
This is a multi facet problem. There's a generation of advertisers who believe that advertising is clicking around in the AdWords interface, maybe sprinkle in a little ad spend on Meta and boom, you're done. The reality is that they can't advertising anything, they don't have the skills required to sell a product.
If they can't rely on Google, where can they go? Social media, AI? Nope, because many of us have been burnt by the major online platforms and won't trust any of them. I'm never signing up for another social media platform, hell, I'm reluctant to sign up for ANYTHING. The current generation of marketing has sacrificed the future for a quick profit now. Many aren't on social media, we use adblockers, we pay for services to ensure no ads, we don't watch TV, newspapers are dead, we don't go out much, so where are you going to advertise exactly? Even if you find a venue, many see so few ads that your attempt at marketing is going to feel like an assault, because you're so desperate that you don't dare tone it down enough.
Advertisement needs to reinvent itself, and it needs to stop funding the entire online services industry, because it can't, not without cannibalizing its own future.
I would be that Openai and Google will find a way to boost the embedded ad in the llm result to you based on an auction on how valuable you and your query are
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