Probably not long, some users already got A/B'ed into testing "sponsored results"

https://i.imgur.com/UpAptFL.png

The response on the left references specific products, but where's the evidence that it's sponsored?

Aside from the marketing-ish tone and specific deeplinks to product purchase pages, the prominent Amazon logo and product description headline implied some degree of affiliation to my eyes. It seems like the evidence is that it would be foolish not to take the money for presenting such an obvious referral of a motivated buyer.

Frankly the example they posted seems like a fairly happy one, where the user is explicitly implying that they’re seeking a specific physical product to introduce to their life. We’ve all seen where those monetization incentives lead over time though.

But you’re right—not even so much as a tiny word “Ad” like Google does…

It could just be affiliate links? Wow billions of dollars poured into AI so it can serve up referral links. A boring dystopia indeed.

This is not a sponsored result. If I search about my username that I use on my Mastodon account, it show a result like that...

Basically, this means the answer is based on a main webpage.

It shows the cute Mastodon logo and all :D

It's already happened in a subtle way via who got to partner with them to be displayed in results vs not.

I'd be happy to have another Google clone, that doesn't have a login and is not a chat session. Go to https://search.ai , type my search query and look through the results, with ads on the side.

Why would they ever want to sell ads?

They did not get addicted to selling ads, have billions in revenue from paying subscribers, and don't have to wean themselves off of ads (as Google and Meta would love to do).

Because they are massively structurally unprofitable right now?

Why make $1 when you can make $100?

Because Sam Altman needs to buy another Greubel Forsey, of course.

I hope very quickly. The sooner they start competing with Google for ads the better.

Are ads what people want?

No but once ChatGPT starts threatening Google's revenue model, maybe they will start putting effort into improving their drastically deteriorating search engine.

But why is that good for me?

Why do I care if Google succeeds or dies?

If anything I want them to die for ad infested they've made the internet. I don't want ads in either chatGPT or Google Search.

they need to win search share to threaten Google's revenue model: take traffic from google.com, so google will sell ads. Going to ads busyness is not necessary for this.

Or search, Youtube, chrome and android could all see their enshittification ramped up, which might not be the outcome you want.

I don't want ads. But I can't deny that ads are the only business model with a chance of scaling to compete with Google.

If that's what they want to do in this space, which is not a given.

People want whatever they searched for. If the ads provide that, then sure. That's why Google and Meta are the size that they are...

Most of the time I don’t search for products so there is nothing I want to buy.

I don't want ads when I search.

Google is the size it is due to monopoly power.

Plenty of times the answer is yes.

2 years for ads, 6 years to remove the yellow background.

I think you’re being very generous with these 2 years.

Yeah, I suppose OpenAI also speedran the "make noble promises to not become evil / become evil" pipeline too.

I guess we're just calling any company that crosses some vague threshold of size/wealth "evil" these days.

Honestly, if I can disable ads by paying them, then I'm ok with it.

Google will suck all your data even if you pay, and link the entire earth of services to your identity.

For now, chatgpt doesn't care, and I already pay for what they provide.

May they kill Google.

20 years old me would freak out hearing me that, they used to be my heroes.

You are thinking you can pay them to not use your data? Think again. They will sneakily use your data anyway. If not yours, then the data of people who do not change setting xyz. Oops, the last update must have reset that option for some users.

You either die a hero or mumble mumble

So the issue is if you let people opt out by paying you’re left with a low intent, likely lower net worth group of people to advertise to. As a result those eyeballs are worth less. The advertisers will turn to other platforms if you only let the worst people see their ads.

Unless enough people all pay, the whole thing stops working. But there aren’t enough people who will pay because most people don’t care.

Tldr: the ad supported business model fundamentally doesn’t work if you let all your best products (you) opt out by paying. It requires them to pay an amount far in excess of what they would be willing to pay for the system to work.

There's some truth to that, but Netflix, YouTube, etc seem to be OK with both ad-supported and paid ad-free versions, so I think the logic you described does not always dominate the considerations.

I think you’re right that it’s not universal - maybe something to do with medium and attention?

You can pay to get fewer ads

> Honestly, if I can disable ads by paying them, then I'm ok with it.

The modern maxim is: any content platform large enough to host an ad sales department will sell ads

Vanishingly few (valuable) consumers have zero tolerance for ads, so not selling ads means leaving huge sums of money on the table once you get to a certain scale. Large organizations have demonstrated that they can't resist that opportunity.

The road out is to either convince everyone to have zero tolerance for ads (good luck), to just personally opt for disperse, smaller vendors that distinguish themselves in a niche by not indulging, or to just support and use adversarial ad blockers in order to take personal control. Hoping that the next behemoth that everybody wants to use will protect you from ads is a non-starter. Sooner or later, they're going to take your money and serve you ads, just like the others.

They're definitely still using your data though

They might wait a whole week.

5 to 10 years

Not long before it's forbidden by law with rules like “if you say the name of one brand, you must name at least two competitors” I suspect.

That'll be the European version.

Don't Americans also have rules about hidden advertising like that in regular media?

The American model prefers "sponsored material should be identified as such" though that's only active for broadcasting currently

American law generally favors freedom of expression.

There are several classes of restrictions on free speech in the US. These include: obscenity, fraud, speech integral to illegal conduct, speech that incites imminent lawless action, speech that violates intellectual property law, true threats, false statements of fact, and —- most relevant here -— commercial speech such as advertising.

Advertising has far less protection than is ordinarily afforded to the kind of speech you might do as a person.

You're talking about the country that live-censor speech with beep when people curse on TV…

It is much more expensive to run a search query with AI. I don't think ads can pay for it.

How many human search queries does Google serve and how much do they make on SERP ads?

I can see OpenAI's revenue per search ending up higher too since the ads will be impossible to distinguish, so even more valuable for advertisers.

It's absolutely coming. I'm curious to see what their ad units will look like. IMHO ads in an LLM search world will look more like Facebook ads than Google ads. Brand advertising will stay focused on YouTube while click to buy and click to download are probably the best fit for the medium.