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Comment by GuB-42 | Hacker News Reader

> ...vertical, shortform video. Not sure how that plays out in terms of advertising...

I have seen a comment about them being terrible for advertising, it looks like a "good" idea but it is not.

The problem is that the attention of people watching these videos drop to almost zero, too much is happening in a too short amount of time, and as a result nothing is remembered, including the ads. It is a very good deal for whoever is monetizing this content, they show a lot of ads, plenty of revenue, but not for those who are paying for the ads. It is like subliminal messages, "good" idea, but not very effective. For ads to work, people need to pay attention.

I don't know how ads in chatbots will turn out and what form it will take, but I think it is inevitable.

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It's kinda interesting to see how advertising is evolving. I'll mindlessly scroll Instagram reels once in a while and every other reel is an ad with the sponsored tag, with an obvious thing being sold and advertised. A fair amount of non-"ads" are influencers or celebrities promoting a product on their personal IGs with the #ad.

It's like advertising and social media are slowly merging together.

I couldn't say how effective it is. Who knows how much they paid that influencer and how much revenue it drives. But it sure is common.

For sure, I've been hesitantly awaiting ChatGPT's first "sponsored" reply, or at least, one that features a "sponsored" product or link.

How would you know?

They are probably going to make them obvious at first, like with Google search.

But they can also make it more pernicious. For example by having companies pay them so that they can train their AI on their products, with regular updates. Not technically an ad, but the AI will be more aware of their products so that they are more likely to be recommended to the user. In other words, that's paying for the right to advertise to the AI rather than to advertise to consumers directly.

probably, probably and more probably.

Why would they ever make it obvious? It makes no sense. google just had the luck of political inaction, and eventually enshitified it further to the point where you might not know it was an ad.

For the same reasons why Google did it in the first place.

To not undermine trust into their product and because ads are lower quality than organic results, and by making them indistinguishable, it will make their product worse.

The chatbot market is still competitive, and while users may tolerate ads alongside their answers, they may not tolerate lower quality answers (that is ads disguised as answers). With Google search, they can get away with it because they are still the best even with the enshitification.

There is another reason why it is in their best interest to make it really obvious there are ads. Chatbots want you to pay directly, sometimes hundreds of dollars a month, they are not getting that kind of money with ads, so obnoxious ads are also a way to say "hey look, if you pay, you won't get ads". It doesn't mean ads won't make a comeback in paid tiers later, but not initially.

So, yes, lots of "probably", but my guess would go towards the first ads being obvious and flashy rather than subtle.

but google did erode trust in their product, and the american government went after them, so they "made it more obvious" which still really didnt change that most people dont care if something is sponsored and just look at the first result.

it's something that continually needs to be reenforced again and again. somebody will be made example of.

Viber already does something similar, by catching on a keyword in your reply and splashing an ad.

E.g., around here, "happy holidays" would splash an ad for Jacobs coffee.

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