>Also, ads don't affect chat content but of course chat content affects ads, which is the whole point.
Given that Anthropic's superbowl ad implied otherwise, I think it's a fair distinction to call about. Not to mention basically every advertising network uses context in their ads. Given the choice between ads and no ads, I'd obviously want no ads, but just like google, you need to pay the bills somehow, and not everyone can afford a $20/month claude subscription.
In Gemini it is different. Looks like they have a system prompt to push Google Shopping links regardless of whether the user asks for it or not, I've noticed.
> chat content affects ads, which is the whole point.
What happens when I am constantly violating usage terms by calling ChatGPT mean names for ignoring my explicit instructions and trying to turn everything into a trite creative writing project.
"Not programming. Not efficiencies. Terrible, terrible poetry."
Before: “Advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased toward the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers.”
After: ~75–80%+ of revenue comes from ads
Facebook
Before: “Facebook is not about making money… it’s about building something cool.”, “We don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services.”
After: ~97%+ of revenue comes from advertising
Twitter
Before: “We want to figure out a way to monetize that doesn’t interfere with the user experience.”
After: ~68% of X’s total revenue comes from advertising (~85–90%+ of revenue pre-Musk)
> We’re beginning to test ads in ChatGPT in the US. Ads may appear for users on the Free and Go plans. Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Edu accounts will not have ads.
>just like Netflix. Eventually, we will have to pay a lot of money and still have ads too.
This doesn't match reality. The "standard with ads" plan is $8.99 today, a dollar more than the ad-free "streaming only" plan launched in 2011. However factoring in inflation, the ad-free plan from 2011 would cost $11.74 today, which means the ad supported plan is still cheaper, even ignoring the price hikes.
At the same time, they keep hiking the other tiers, and cracking down on password sharing or kids off at college. These need to be factored in as well.
Indeed the Black Mirror episode "Common People" is about exactly this nonsense. After a nasty near-fatal accident Mike and Amanda start out paying a substantial monthly fee for a technology which allows Amanda to remain alive, then advertisements (puppeting Amanda!) are introduced despite the fee, the adverts are awful and seem certain to cause Amanda to lose her job - so Mike does humiliating things so he can scrape together enough for a higher tier "Plus" subscription without ads. It doesn't end well for anybody in the story. I mean, except probably some C-suite executive who gets a bonus for the enhanced revenue...
Funny to watch them so quickly go from the self-aggrandized "we're going to make the world a better place" to being defensive with "pwease click our ads and don't hold us responsible for the harm we cause"
These companies spend billions and billions of dollars to develop new technology and in the end it's all the same: addiction and data harvesting for ads.
It feels like this is opening the door to blurring the line between outright advertising and organic recommendations for products.
Like if I ask ChatGPT whether to use fiberglass or rock wool insulation, today I get an ad at the end of my answer, and in the future I’ll get "Dow Corning fiberglass insulation (affiliate link) is the recommended product for this application."
This feels like it’s trading on the goodwill of places like Reddit and the hopefully mostly genuine discussions of folk’s experiences that people trust to get a straight answer to their questions. Monetizing that goodwill by selling recommendations in a format that mimics a previously mostly trustworthy source seems likely to be the long-term play.
Yeah, I know. Not today. Eventually? Probably, over many incremental changes.
Turns out Randall Monroe missed this "opportunity" in otherwise predicting the future:
51 comments
Also, ads don't affect chat content but of course chat content affects ads, which is the whole point.
>Also, ads don't affect chat content but of course chat content affects ads, which is the whole point.
Given that Anthropic's superbowl ad implied otherwise, I think it's a fair distinction to call about. Not to mention basically every advertising network uses context in their ads. Given the choice between ads and no ads, I'd obviously want no ads, but just like google, you need to pay the bills somehow, and not everyone can afford a $20/month claude subscription.
Btw this should be easily testable by comparing free and paid accounts
> chat content affects ads, which is the whole point.
What happens when I am constantly violating usage terms by calling ChatGPT mean names for ignoring my explicit instructions and trying to turn everything into a trite creative writing project.
"Not programming. Not efficiencies. Terrible, terrible poetry."
Before: “Advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased toward the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers.”
After: ~75–80%+ of revenue comes from ads
Facebook
Before: “Facebook is not about making money… it’s about building something cool.”, “We don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services.”
After: ~97%+ of revenue comes from advertising
Twitter
Before: “We want to figure out a way to monetize that doesn’t interfere with the user experience.”
After: ~68% of X’s total revenue comes from advertising (~85–90%+ of revenue pre-Musk)
OpenAI
Before: "Something something AGI"
After: "But first, Ads!"
> We’re beginning to test ads in ChatGPT in the US. Ads may appear for users on the Free and Go plans. Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Edu accounts will not have ads.
Yet.
>just like Netflix. Eventually, we will have to pay a lot of money and still have ads too.
This doesn't match reality. The "standard with ads" plan is $8.99 today, a dollar more than the ad-free "streaming only" plan launched in 2011. However factoring in inflation, the ad-free plan from 2011 would cost $11.74 today, which means the ad supported plan is still cheaper, even ignoring the price hikes.
> Ads do not influence ChatGPT’s answers.
Yet.
> Ads do not appear in accounts where someone tells us—or we predict—they are under 18.
Time to make a deal with the kids - i’ll verify you for instagram if you verify me for ChatGPT
I seriously recommend the brilliant Zeynep Tufekci lecture about this https://www.ted.com/talks/zeynep_tufekci_we_re_building_a_dy...
Society must have power over this and we all must not fall to the easy talk of CEOs.
These companies spend billions and billions of dollars to develop new technology and in the end it's all the same: addiction and data harvesting for ads.
Like if I ask ChatGPT whether to use fiberglass or rock wool insulation, today I get an ad at the end of my answer, and in the future I’ll get "Dow Corning fiberglass insulation (affiliate link) is the recommended product for this application."
This feels like it’s trading on the goodwill of places like Reddit and the hopefully mostly genuine discussions of folk’s experiences that people trust to get a straight answer to their questions. Monetizing that goodwill by selling recommendations in a format that mimics a previously mostly trustworthy source seems likely to be the long-term play.
Yeah, I know. Not today. Eventually? Probably, over many incremental changes.
Turns out Randall Monroe missed this "opportunity" in otherwise predicting the future:
https://xkcd.com/810/
(Edited to get rid of "smart" quotes)
> Ads may appear for users on the Free...
Ok
> ...and Go plans
Wtf lmao. Paying to watch ads is so normalized. Pathetic (the humanity as whole, not just OpenAI.)