Multimodal AI will lead to an interesting arms race in ad detection vs ad insertion. I played around with AI ad removal with older Gemini models, but it seems like this would be even more powerful to instantly identify ads (and potentially mute or strip them out).
Nice article. I saw someone depicting the future of web search with AI. The conclusion was not the bright future. Simply put, ads will never go away. Either AI providers will get paid for whitelisting ads, or even worse these AI will directly promote advertised products.
People could collectively decide to start paying for stuff and most of our gripes could at least switch to providers not accommodating their customers.
Collective action is not our strong suit.
To which I'd say to the advertiser, "Good luck paying off the AI adblocker running in my closet at home."
Then again, let's not be too hasty here. Let's see what you're willing to offer. I can sell you the eyeballs of the AI ad-watcher running in my closet for $10/impression. Or, for $1000/impression, you can bring your message to the attention of myself, an actual human. A bargain at any price!