Pulling Back The Curt-ai-n
Super Bowl Sunday: Anthropic runs an ad promising not to introduce ads in Claude, which is met with mostly positive feedback – more positive, in fact, than OpenAI’s own commercial during the big game.
Monday: OpenAI finally pulls the trigger and launches its first round of ads in ChatGPT, The Verge reports.
We’ve known it was coming (for sure) since last month, with myriad theories percolating in regard to how the ads will look, how frequently they’ll appear and how users will respond. Now, speculation can finally meet reality.
Entrepreneur Juozas Kaziukėnas found a settings panel within ChatGPT in which users can curate their preferences for ad settings, Search Engine Land reports, including an opt-in setting for personalization based on user interests.
Regardless of whether a user opts in or out, ads will be tailored to the content of the current chat conversation; it’s just a question of how much other user data influences the choice of ad.
OpenAI is adamant that advertisers will not be able to see users’ chat history, IP addresses or other personal data. Although, are they able to target those data fields?
Looks like there’s still plenty of room for speculation.
The Ad-noyance Economy
America is big on “The Annoyance Economy,” The Atlantic writes.
People don’t own books, DVDs, CDs, etc., anymore; they license music from a library like iTunes or a subscription like Spotify. Even cars are moving toward a subscription model.
The result, though, is an entire economy incentivized to bother, delay, mislead and outright purloin from customers, often to prevent people churning from a business. The Atlantic extends the metaphor to government services – where basic things like tax preparation are forced through intermediaries rather than handled directly, as the government easily could manage.
“Airlines and gyms and multilevel marketing companies and landlords and time-share businesses and auto companies and banks and telecoms swindle their customers with fine print,” per the report.
LLMs like ChatGPT and Claude tipped the scales somewhat, because AI bots can peruse receipts, contracts and state laws, then effectively follow up with sternly worded letters to businesses demanding renegotiated subscription or contract terms, to name one example.
But AI works in both directions, as evidenced by the AI-infused products that will greatly enlarge the GDP of The Annoyance Economy, such as chatbot customer service agents and personalized pricing.
FT-Cease
Back in June, the US Federal Trade Commission sent Civil Investigative Demand (CID) letters – legal tools of discovery that operate similarly to subpoenas – to several media credibility groups as part of an investigation into whether these organizations had deliberately steered ad dollars away from right-wing media.
Although a full list of companies that received said CIDs was never made public, amendments to a recent lawsuit confirm that Integral Ad Science was one of them, Adweek reports.
The suit was filed by nonprofit research group Global Disinformation Index, which provides independent risk ratings for news publications. IAS and GDI had been partners since 2021, but in December last year (only a few months after IAS was acquired by private equity firm Novacap, by the way), IAS announced plans to discontinue using “the limited input” (yeouch) of GDI’s data in its contextual brand safety product.
Per the lawsuit, GDI alleges that the IAS cut ties as a direct result of the FTC’s investigation, putting the UK-based organization at risk of shutting down completely. Which is probably not great news for any organization being targeted as part of this investigation.
But Wait! There’s More!
What does the first US social media addiction trial mean for the tech industry? [Tech Policy Press]
This year’s Super Bowl ads sure caused a lot of website outages – which is maybe a good thing? [Business Insider]
Weeks-long, celebrity-assisted pranks are already passé in the world of Super Bowl advertising. [Adweek]
404 Media ran its own Super Bowl ad in Ottumwa, Iowa – one of the smallest TV markets in the US – for $2,550. [404 Media]
Discord will require a face scan or ID for full access starting next month. [The Verge]
Also next month, YouTube TV will introduce cheaper bundles, including a $65 per month sports package. [TechCrunch]
The FCC launched an investigation into Comcast’s deals with its NBC affiliates days after President Trump accused Comcast-owned news networks of favoring Democrats and called for the company to be “held accountable.” [Variety]
Rep. Jasmine Crockett has spent so little on advertising during the Democratic primary for one of Texas’s Senate seats – with opponents outspending her by 19 to 1 – that consultants view the race as an experiment on how much advertising matters in modern political primaries. [Notus]
You’re Hired!
Reddit hires Amit Puntambekar as EVP of consumer engineering and promotes Jim Squires to chief marketing officer and Laura Nestler to EVP of community. [release]
