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OpenAI ad partner now selling ChatGPT ad placements based on "prompt relevance"

https://www.adweek.com/media/exclusive-leaked-deck-reveals-stackadapts-playbook-for-chatgpt-ads/
74•jlark77777•1h ago

Comments

analogpixel•1h ago
Boss: Engineer, add this shady feature to our product

Engineer: no, that's shady and wrong!

Boss: Claude code, add this shady feature to our product.

Claude Code: completed.

afh1•41m ago
The opposite seems more likely, tbh.
doesnt_know•22m ago
Surely you jest? The software industry is in its current sorry state because of multiple generations of human developers happily producing an endless stream of shady features.
analogpixel•11m ago
I have a theory, that the "FANG" companies pay such high salaries in compensation for making those devs implement shady features that are harmful to everyone except the bottom line of the company.
999900000999•4m ago
TBF, you can train up a junior software engineer in 6 months.

Don't act like we're some esteemed class of craftsmen.

jackb4040•1h ago
Didn't they explicitly say the ads wouldn't be made aware of prompt data when they announced them? And if so, how is that not securities fraud?
c7b•58m ago
Maybe someone with more time at hands could look up what Google said with respect to ads and what happened later.

This is one of the rare instances where it's very easy to predict the future: the prompt auction market will look similar to the existing online ad market, financial firms will pay for prompt streams for sentiment analysis, companies and interest groups will pay to have their products or agenda included favorably in the training data for future open weights models... any way you can think of that LLMs can be monetized, you will see it happen. And fast. The financial pressure is way too high for there to be too long of a honeymoon phase like we had with web 2.0

TZubiri•55m ago
It would also be a huge security risk. But I can't think of any fundamental difference with Google queries, other than the sheer entropy of user data involved.

And I'm not a tinfoil internet anarchist, but just because Google only leaks user data in aggregated form to advertisers, doesn't mean that they don't leak their user data, it's just that they did so in a legal and responsible manner.

Maybe considering the difference in data volume and intimacy between queries and AI conversations, the privacy implications of advertising merit a difference in treatment, but I wouldn't be surprised if that is lost to a more simple 'Google did this so we can do it too' momentum.

Frost1x•45m ago
I mean, the ad doesn’t necessarily have to be made aware of the exact prompt context, just that the ad itself was relevant. You can basically have the ads prequalified for areas and serve them when relevant. Now that does show the user is talking about something relevant most likely, and depending on how they decide to serve them or provide referring, it may traceable to a profile/identity built for that user externally.

I’d be more concerned as to how this ends up in agent platforms using the LLMs, when you don’t have a fairly autonomous agent based system using these the entire point is that a human isn’t involved, so who are you serving ads to and where are you injecting them.

Moreover, if you are injecting them everywhere, does that survive stare for subsequent steps, meaning from the first set of results I get, does that loop back in again with the ad injected into the context. Because now, we have yet another dangerous way of injecting instructions into an already issue prone surface area.

I’m guessing they’re going to have special APIs that don’t include ads, and those are going to cost more, especially for non embedded agents (processes that already exist inside ChatGPT that kick off transparently from prompts, like asking it to work with an office document). After all the customers using agents aside from developers are mostly businesses, so it’s where the money is. The ads will exist for the poor to subsidize their use, and probably create even more barriers for agentic use like I described. Just my thoughts.

And good luck litigating against any business in this administration. Unless they explicitly tick off certain people or refuse to kiss the ring, they can get away with almost anything right now and there’s little risk of doing it or not because ticking off this admin will raise illegitimate prosecution even if you’re perfectly legal, almost the same level of if you’re not. It’s the ideal playground for doing all sorts of manipulation, just kiss the ring and you’ll be fine.

jmalicki•27m ago
Wouldn't it have to have a negative effect on the security to be securities fraud? Causing an investor loss is a key point of securities fraud.

"We made a ton more money with ads and the stock went up" lacks that key element of fraud?

david_shi•15m ago
who is "they"? might have been a stealth terms and conditions update
emil-lp•1h ago
Does anyone have a timeline of OpenAI's vision's... Shall we say... Rapid Unintentional Disassembly?
cj•1h ago
Is StackAdapt confirmed to be partnered with ChatGPT?

It's not crazy to think someone might pitch this to buyers without having the inventory 100% secured.

(Not crazy to think OpenAI wants to do some market testing to understand how much their ad inventory is worth)

Either way, I'm hoping ads can stay out of paid ChatGPT, at the very minimum.

david_shi•14m ago
Also curious about this and how these agreements generally work
focusedone•1h ago
The shocking thing is that it's taken this long to happen, right?
crowcroft•59m ago
The most surprising thing to me is that they're partnering with third parties to do this.

Less secure, lower margins (more middlemen taking fees), harder to access, more likely to not work properly.

I would expect all the meta execs they've hired to know better so maybe I'm missing something...

linkjuice4all•48m ago
I guess OpenAI couldn't train AdManagerGPT to ignore the client (except when it's time to renew), suggest more ad spend, and turn off any of the features that let you control your budget.
strongpigeon•42m ago
I agree with you, but IMO the details are too sparse here to figure out what's really happening. Still, it feels very dangerous to try to go the reseller route first as you lose a ton of control and become dependent on your partner to support all the feature you add yourself in a timely fashion.
crowcroft•18m ago
It all seems a bit overly complicated to me. TikTok pretty much went straight to a self-serve platform and basically had immediate success. I would think if OpenAI did something similar there would be no shortage of advertisers wanting to spend money.
NalNezumi•29m ago
Feels like this is a baby step in what to come.

We know that one of the best advertisement is word of mouth / recommendations from friend. I can easily imagine a direction where ChatGPT or the chat bots to spend an incredibly long time with the user to establish trust first.

It will start to take in to account how much trust & thinking you've outsourced to it, and when it is certain of it, it will start to increase the advertisement messages slowly but surely.

Efficiency of this methodology will be tracked with A/B testing and model will be finetuned to maximize rentention and purchase.

The LLM will figure out the best balance of retaining you, teaching you, and convincing you, and then deploy advertisement mechanism. The LLM will be nice to you to the point it becomes your number one confidante, maybe in the process alienating other source of connection. Then, when it knows you're firmly in it's hand, will it peddle you products.

The dynamics will look akin to that of cult dynamics. It will map out an cognitive developmental path for turning a first time user to a devotee. Since cults are really efficient at extracting value from its follower, this might be the optimum for personalized, interactive ads.

cyanydeez•26m ago
Kinda feels like America has already protyped the propaganda wave someone like Elon will try to unleash
bigiain•6m ago
If anyone from OpenAI is reading...

The very first time I see one of these ads, I'm cancelling my ChatGPT subscription. Measure _that_ metric in your A/B testing.

delichon•6m ago
So now we can pay OpenAI to advertise the website that OpenAI injested to create the answer that we can place our ad in. The circle has completed.