4 ms·

LLMs are the next ad frontier, and revenues will hit all-time-highs when the ball gets rolling. Who needs messy user tracking when users will voluntarily feed

by imiric 4y ago

LLMs are the next ad frontier, and revenues will hit all-time-highs when the ball gets rolling. Who needs messy user tracking when users will voluntarily feed you their deepest secrets? Why fight ad blockers, and waste resources on ad placement research, click-through rate optimization and all that noise, when you can just slip subtle ads into conversations with humans? Ad revenue isn't going anywhere but up. This is just a minor blip in the grand scheme of things.

monero-xmr 4y ago
Hard, hard disagree. LLMs will reduce the blogspam driving a lot of ads. Competitors will enable bypassing Google entirely. LLM is more expensive than traditional search. I find it likely it won’t fuel additional ad spending but merely be required to keep the spending they have and defend their moat.
BobbyJo 4y ago
Hard disagree. The main reason Google was so successful with advertising is that users weren't wholly aware they were feeding Google private information upon the which to base suggestions. They were out of sight and out of mind. Users will know they're talking to a corporation and feeding it information in the case of LLMs, and they're likely to give it a loss less information voluntarily than tracking was taking (and will continue to take).
- imiric 4y ago
  There are people on this forum using ChatGPT as a therapist[1]. If someone technical who's aware of the risks is fine with it, what makes you think nontechnical users who are already fine with social media would think twice about doing that? Even if they were aware of it, they just wouldn't care. Same as today. LLMs will become an even bigger part of our everyday lives than social media is today. It would be naive to think adtech won't monetize that in the most insidious ways imaginable. Advertising, uh... finds a way. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35302305 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35302305
dahwolf 4y ago
I seriously wonder if that's true. In a purely AI chat-style conversation, there simply isn't much real estate to insert ads. In your classic scenario, you navigate the SERP and hit various websites, that's a lot of surface area for ads. In this supposed new situation, you don't browse and scan, you just get the answer. The end. It's a way shorter interaction. I'd imagine you see 1 ad. Instead of dozens now. Also, if you're never hitting any individual websites anymore, surely they'll become hostile, protect content, put up walls, or push for legislation. This is not a done deal.
- imiric 4y ago
  > In a purely AI chat-style conversation, there simply isn't much real estate to insert ads. You're thinking of this in the classical ad placement sense. If there's an established sense of trust with an AI, advertising can become much more subtle and even more manipulative than it currently is. Ad campaigns can last years, and span many conversations, where brands can be woven into the subconscious much more deeply than a traditional ad could do. They could then be surfaced whenever the user is most vulnerable to be swayed into making a purchase. > In your classic scenario, you navigate the SERP and hit various websites, that's a lot of surface area for ads. Most of which never get seen or clicked on. It's a lot of wasted real estate. Ad conversion can become much more efficient if the system deeply knows the person they're interacting with.
  - HDThoreaun 4y ago
    I'm confident there will be competent LLM's that don't do product placement. Margins will be worse than current search paradigm but that's still billions in profit a year. I'm not sure why anyone would use big tech's product placement AI when there are marginally worse options available that aren't mind killers.
    - imiric 4y ago
      > I'm not sure why anyone would use big tech's product placement AI when there are marginally worse options available that aren't mind killers. You can ask the same question about social media or any Big Tech product today. The answer is somewhere between convenience, a better product, and inertia ("everyone else uses it", etc.). If Google comes up with an AI that integrates with Gmail, Docs, Drive, Search, and all their other products, and leverages the amount of information they already know about you, then they can provide a much better UX than any competitor could. I don't doubt there will be OSS competitors that don't do any mind manipulation to get users to purchase something, but most users won't use them. Just like we have sane alternatives to all Big Tech products today, and they're mostly only used by a niche group of technical users.

by imiric 4y ago

monero-xmr 4y ago

Hard, hard disagree. LLMs will reduce the blogspam driving a lot of ads. Competitors will enable bypassing Google entirely. LLM is more expensive than traditional search. I find it likely it won’t fuel additional ad spending but merely be required to keep the spending they have and defend their moat.

BobbyJo 4y ago

Hard disagree. The main reason Google was so successful with advertising is that users weren't wholly aware they were feeding Google private information upon the which to base suggestions. They were out of sight and out of mind. Users will know they're talking to a corporation and feeding it information in the case of LLMs, and they're likely to give it a loss less information voluntarily than tracking was taking (and will continue to take).

imiric 4y ago
There are people on this forum using ChatGPT as a therapist[1]. If someone technical who's aware of the risks is fine with it, what makes you think nontechnical users who are already fine with social media would think twice about doing that? Even if they were aware of it, they just wouldn't care. Same as today. LLMs will become an even bigger part of our everyday lives than social media is today. It would be naive to think adtech won't monetize that in the most insidious ways imaginable. Advertising, uh... finds a way. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35302305 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35302305

dahwolf 4y ago

I seriously wonder if that's true. In a purely AI chat-style conversation, there simply isn't much real estate to insert ads. In your classic scenario, you navigate the SERP and hit various websites, that's a lot of surface area for ads. In this supposed new situation, you don't browse and scan, you just get the answer. The end. It's a way shorter interaction. I'd imagine you see 1 ad. Instead of dozens now. Also, if you're never hitting any individual websites anymore, surely they'll become hostile, protect content, put up walls, or push for legislation. This is not a done deal.

imiric 4y ago
> In a purely AI chat-style conversation, there simply isn't much real estate to insert ads. You're thinking of this in the classical ad placement sense. If there's an established sense of trust with an AI, advertising can become much more subtle and even more manipulative than it currently is. Ad campaigns can last years, and span many conversations, where brands can be woven into the subconscious much more deeply than a traditional ad could do. They could then be surfaced whenever the user is most vulnerable to be swayed into making a purchase. > In your classic scenario, you navigate the SERP and hit various websites, that's a lot of surface area for ads. Most of which never get seen or clicked on. It's a lot of wasted real estate. Ad conversion can become much more efficient if the system deeply knows the person they're interacting with.
- HDThoreaun 4y ago
  I'm confident there will be competent LLM's that don't do product placement. Margins will be worse than current search paradigm but that's still billions in profit a year. I'm not sure why anyone would use big tech's product placement AI when there are marginally worse options available that aren't mind killers.
  - imiric 4y ago
    > I'm not sure why anyone would use big tech's product placement AI when there are marginally worse options available that aren't mind killers. You can ask the same question about social media or any Big Tech product today. The answer is somewhere between convenience, a better product, and inertia ("everyone else uses it", etc.). If Google comes up with an AI that integrates with Gmail, Docs, Drive, Search, and all their other products, and leverages the amount of information they already know about you, then they can provide a much better UX than any competitor could. I don't doubt there will be OSS competitors that don't do any mind manipulation to get users to purchase something, but most users won't use them. Just like we have sane alternatives to all Big Tech products today, and they're mostly only used by a niche group of technical users.