The AI assistant Ad opportunity == Google Ads + Meta Ads It's indisputable that OpenAI and Anthropic have an incredible advertising opportunity within ChatGPT and Claude respectively. What is interesting that their ad systems will combine the best of both worlds and incorporate elements from the two largest and most powerful advertising systems today - Google and Facebook. 1. INTENT-DRIVEN ADS: Google search ads are based on the consumer's intent. A growing % of AI assistant queries are commercial queries, which can be cleanly monetized through search ads or affiliate links. 2. IDENTITY-DRIVEN ADS: Meta ads are based on the consumer's identity. Identity includes demographic signals (age, gender, etc), unexpressed identity markers (financial institutions that you belong to, restaurants you eat at, etc), and behaviors (websites you've visited, stores you have shopped at, etc). ChatGPT and Claude can both infer most of these signals from natural conversation patterns - writing style, topics of interest, technical expertise level, life stage indicators, and personal context shared over time. If you ask either AI assistant to list out all the things they know or have inferred about you, they can probably paint a very accurate picture. In fact, AI assistants go beyond traditional Google search and Meta behavior/identity, through RICH CONTEXT. Users share detailed information about their problems, goals, preferences, and circumstances in a way they never would in a search query or social media post. This creates opportunities for more relevant, less intrusive advertising that feels like genuine recommendations rather than interruptions. tl;dr OpenAI and Anthropic can and will build $10-100B+ ad businesses each within 5-10 years. Ads will be the way they monetize free users (and probably some % of paid users too). As an advertising nerd, I'm excited to see these businesses come to fruition.
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