Ben Thompson has long been insistent that ChatGPT and other AI tools basically have to have ads and it's been a big mistake they didn't have them sooner. It's an interesting take:
> What I think is clear is they have to build an advertising product, and the reason they have to build an advertising product is any consumer Internet product has to be advertising, because it’s such a beneficial model to everyone involved, and the reason it’s so beneficial is you get to indefinitely and infinitely increase average revenue per user without any worries about price elasticity, because the entire increase in average revenue per user is borne by the advertisers who are paying it willingly because they’re getting a positive return on their investment, and everyone’s using it for free so you can reach the whole world. Then what happens with that is once you get that model going, you have a massive R&D advantage, because you have so much more money coming in than anyone who doesn’t have that cycle or who has to charge users for it.
https://stratechery.com/2026/ads-in-chatgpt-why-openai-needs...
> This point, more than anything else, explains why the company so desperately needs an advertising model. Advertising is the only potential business model that can meaningfully bend the revenue curve such that the company can not just fund its compute but gain leverage on it, for all of the reasons I laid out before: first, advertising increases the breadth of the business, in that you can offer a better product to more people, increasing usage and expanding inventory. Second, advertising increases the depth of the business, in that there is infinite upside in terms of average revenue per user: more usage means more inventory on one hand, and building out the capability for effective targeting and high conversion rates increases the amount that advertisers are willing to pay — even as the cost to the user remains the same (ideally free).
It's valuable to remember that advertisers will pay more per user than users will, and that's hard to beat in a competitive market.
Also, it's fascinating how much people _like_ ads when done properly. Ask normal people about Instagram ads, for example. They find them useful!
> any consumer Internet product has to be advertising, because it’s such a beneficial model to everyone involved
Everyone?!
OpenAI: Gets money Shoe store: gets customers ChatGPT user: gets to use chatgpt
Yes, everyone
The premise of advertising is that it's manipulation to trick you into spending money you wouldn't otherwise spend. We know this because companies pay for ads with the intention you spend more money.
Every ad you see materially makes you a little bit poorer and cuts off a small amount of your life. Think of it this way - every ad is a few seconds lost, maybe a few minutes, and a few cents down the drain.
But this isn't understood because it's so abstracted. The link between your personal shopping habits and advertising is not understood, and, in fact, cannot be understood, because it's fundamentally brain hacking.
If you believe you are immune to ads, you are not. Or, at least, you can never prove it.
Cumulatively, this adds up. If you never saw ads, how much longer would you live? A year, maybe two? If you never saw ads, how much richer would you be? 200%, 500%? Who knows.
Why does it have to be "manipulation"? If you don't know about something that you might want to buy, learning about it isn't being manipulated.
Also, the lifespan thing is crazy - what if you learned about something that improved your health, like an exercise machine or something? You can't just ignore the upsides. What if you bought something that saved you money in the long run, like a quality tool?
This is a joke, right? Users already got to use chatgpt, so the only change to users is that they'll be subjected to ads, which many of them don't like.
If they lose money on it they will either discontinue or go bankrupt. Not a joke