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It was bound to happen. I don't see how these ads could be blocked, either. What's disappointing to me is now ad companies will try to blame ChatGPT for poppin

It was bound to happen. I don't see how these ads could be blocked, either. What's disappointing to me is now ad companies will try to blame ChatGPT for popping the advertising bubble, instead of having to admit ads were overvalued for the past decade+.

vasili111 4y ago
If the every ad will start with new line and end with “ad” I do not think it will be hard to programmatically identify such ad.
- sebzim4500 4y ago
  In the example under discussion if you removed the ads then you would have no results.
quitit 4y ago
An ad historically served the right message in the right place at the right time to provide the consumer a piece of information which would lead to the revenue-generating activity. This concept extended well to online, where blogs and the like would sell ad space that matched their audience. Daring Fireball still uses this approach, often podcasters do too: they know and have a connection with their audience and they can charge a premium to advertise to them. The idea of serving automated ads was also welcome and useful for the consumer. Searching was met with results and relevant advertising messages, a win-win situation. Then we had the record scratch moment - and it's from this point that I view the majority of online advertising as an unimpactful waste of money. In the hunt for more display opportunities Google et. al. have crammed ads into every possible space, a times square approach to advertising where most have zero impact. These ads are completely disconnected from the content and are merely a stone in the user's path. Then to make matters worse, to ascertain the widest spread of ad opportunities ad providers employ garbage preference matching algorithms that are so poor as to serve completely irrelevant advertising at high frequency: further conditioning users to ignore ads because they know they won't show relevant information. How much money and energy is being wasted to serve advertising that has no value?
- michaelt 4y ago
  > An ad historically served the right message in the right place at the right time to provide the consumer a piece of information which would lead to the revenue-generating activity. Your recollection is a lot rosier than mine. My recollection of the pre-internet world is that computer game makers would buy ad space in magazines alongside reviews of their game and hand out stacks of freebies to reporters, and in exchange even the worst game would be scored 90/100. What do you suppose Bing Chat will do if you ask it what the best Widget on the market is, when some Widget manufacturers offer a kickback and others don't?
  - quitit 4y ago
    For sure my rosy representation is the "ideal" ad. I'd the one that consumers actually helps the user or consumer.
  - AraceliHarker 4y ago
    The people who do the advertising have only changed their names from magazines to influencers. A mere cosmetic alteration, nothing more, nothing less. What difference does it make if they do it on social media instead of paper? The game is the same as it ever was. Only the mediums have changed.
    - quitit 4y ago
      As the AI can't do more than provide existing ratings (which are possibly bogus), the AI won't solve the trust issue with regard to endorsement (and I believe this is where the earlier comment was leading, that even for appropriately placed ads in traditional media, trust was still an issue.) However the issue with online advertising extends beyond being reputable - the ads themselves are excessively and poorly matched to the user's interest. This is where my original comment attempts to address that AI could solve this problem if Bing/et.al. allow it to: AI has the potential to place ads in a way where they are useful to the user, even if the user decides that the product is not worthwhile. Existing ad platforms could do this too - they just don't because boosting impressions is profitable. (Hence the decay we see in Google.com, Amazon.com, ebay.com etc - genuine results come far after the ads and the ad labelling has become more and more subtle.) On ChatGTP/others: The issue with AI is that it speaks falsehoods with equal confidence as facts, so just like reading a comments section on the internet, one can be led in the right direction, but ultimately they can't take the information for granted. At the moment there is a definite number of people who let ChatGPT/others spoonfeed them information and that's going to lead to problems, this imparts a loss of faith in the advertising trust issue too.

vasili111 4y ago

If the every ad will start with new line and end with “ad” I do not think it will be hard to programmatically identify such ad.

sebzim4500 4y ago
In the example under discussion if you removed the ads then you would have no results.

quitit 4y ago

An ad historically served the right message in the right place at the right time to provide the consumer a piece of information which would lead to the revenue-generating activity. This concept extended well to online, where blogs and the like would sell ad space that matched their audience. Daring Fireball still uses this approach, often podcasters do too: they know and have a connection with their audience and they can charge a premium to advertise to them. The idea of serving automated ads was also welcome and useful for the consumer. Searching was met with results and relevant advertising messages, a win-win situation. Then we had the record scratch moment - and it's from this point that I view the majority of online advertising as an unimpactful waste of money. In the hunt for more display opportunities Google et. al. have crammed ads into every possible space, a times square approach to advertising where most have zero impact. These ads are completely disconnected from the content and are merely a stone in the user's path. Then to make matters worse, to ascertain the widest spread of ad opportunities ad providers employ garbage preference matching algorithms that are so poor as to serve completely irrelevant advertising at high frequency: further conditioning users to ignore ads because they know they won't show relevant information. How much money and energy is being wasted to serve advertising that has no value?

michaelt 4y ago
> An ad historically served the right message in the right place at the right time to provide the consumer a piece of information which would lead to the revenue-generating activity. Your recollection is a lot rosier than mine. My recollection of the pre-internet world is that computer game makers would buy ad space in magazines alongside reviews of their game and hand out stacks of freebies to reporters, and in exchange even the worst game would be scored 90/100. What do you suppose Bing Chat will do if you ask it what the best Widget on the market is, when some Widget manufacturers offer a kickback and others don't?
- quitit 4y ago
  For sure my rosy representation is the "ideal" ad. I'd the one that consumers actually helps the user or consumer.
- AraceliHarker 4y ago
  The people who do the advertising have only changed their names from magazines to influencers. A mere cosmetic alteration, nothing more, nothing less. What difference does it make if they do it on social media instead of paper? The game is the same as it ever was. Only the mediums have changed.
  - quitit 4y ago
    As the AI can't do more than provide existing ratings (which are possibly bogus), the AI won't solve the trust issue with regard to endorsement (and I believe this is where the earlier comment was leading, that even for appropriately placed ads in traditional media, trust was still an issue.) However the issue with online advertising extends beyond being reputable - the ads themselves are excessively and poorly matched to the user's interest. This is where my original comment attempts to address that AI could solve this problem if Bing/et.al. allow it to: AI has the potential to place ads in a way where they are useful to the user, even if the user decides that the product is not worthwhile. Existing ad platforms could do this too - they just don't because boosting impressions is profitable. (Hence the decay we see in Google.com, Amazon.com, ebay.com etc - genuine results come far after the ads and the ad labelling has become more and more subtle.) On ChatGTP/others: The issue with AI is that it speaks falsehoods with equal confidence as facts, so just like reading a comments section on the internet, one can be led in the right direction, but ultimately they can't take the information for granted. At the moment there is a definite number of people who let ChatGPT/others spoonfeed them information and that's going to lead to problems, this imparts a loss of faith in the advertising trust issue too.