OpenAI to flood your eyeballs with visual ads

Want to generate an image with ChatGPT? Then prepare for ads if you're in the US

After adding text-based ads to its chatbot earlier this year, OpenAI announced on Monday that it was adding a new “visual ad format” to ChatGPT, which is precisely what it sounds like: Visual ads, like so much of the advertising content online, will now be part of the ChatGPT experience. OpenAI will initially test these ads during image generation.

“Through images showing product inspiration, product usage, or the experiences they make possible, people can discover a new brand, understand what makes an offering distinctive, and decide what to buy,” OpenAI explained. “For advertisers, this creates new opportunities to tell their story through images.”

If you build it, someone in the ‘States will inevitably find a way to cram an ad into it, which is why testing of OpenAI’s new ad format will begin sometime in October in the US, given its status as the advertising hellscape capital of the world. 

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Visual ChatGPT ads will be initially tested during image generation in ChatGPT, though like much of the scheme it’s not particularly clear how that’ll work from OpenAI’s announcement. The company didn’t detail much of anything about the process, so ads might appear as a de facto loading screen while ChatGPT conjures up whatever visual slop users ask of it, or they might remain on screen after the image is generated. Or not - OpenAI told us it would have more to share once the ads enter testing. 

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It’s also entirely unclear whether the ads will be generated by ChatGPT on the fly or pulled from a library of ads submitted by companies. OpenAI also didn’t say how it will target visual ads, which has one advertising firm CEO questioning whether the new format will be worth the expense for companies looking for captive eyeballs.

"Search ads work because they meet people at the moment they're looking for something,” Donatas Smailys, CEO of creator marketing firm Billo, told The Register in an email. “Someone generating an image in ChatGPT is not shopping."

OpenAI has explained how it matches ads to ChatGPT conversations, Smailys added, but given it hasn’t mentioned how it plans to target visual ads, he remains unconvinced that they’ll be an effective advertising tool. 

That, and they’ll be intrusive - it’s bad enough getting targeted text ads or being invited to chat with an advertising AI after clicking an ad - now visual clutter will be part of ChatGPT, too. Free users can opt out of ads without paying, but doing so disables tools including image generation; if you want to generate images without ads, Plus starts at $20 a month. ®