Aaron Young argues that how OpenAI handles ads on ChatGPT will make or break the company. Google and Facebook both overtook rivals by integrating ads seamlessly, but Claude now beats ChatGPT at coding and Gemini matches it on general tasks while leveraging Google's ad expertise and workspace integration.
Despite years of denials from Sam Altman, ads are officially coming to ChatGPT. Now for me, this rollout will determine whether OpenAI goes the way of MySpace or it becomes the next Google or the next Meta. Because it, it is easy to think that tech giants like Google were always the main player in their field, but that is not true. Now when Google launched ads back in 2000, they weren't the undisputed leader in their market yet. Now they'd already beaten some smaller fields like AltaVista and Ask Jeeves, but they still in a head-to-head battle with Yahoo. But the reason for why they ultimately won is because they had a better, cleaner algorithm. And that was obviously when Google really started going all out with their PageRank and AdRank algorithm, which really became the catalyst for a successful ads platform in Google Search, which people were previously not used to seeing ads on. And then when we look at Facebook versus MySpace, when Facebook launches ads in 2004, MySpace was actually the largest social network. But the reason why MySpace fell away is because the way that they roll out their ads, it wasn't as clean and as seamless as Facebook's ads when it started to advertise on the platform. And then once again, that is why Facebook won and MySpace fell away. And this is why I say that right now is probably the most key time for OpenAI, because if they don't get their ads right on ChatGPT, it's highly likely that they will go the way of MySpace. And for me, I actually think ChatGPT has the chance of going that way and being the MySpace of the AI race. And the reason why I feel like that is because they're really, really up against it in two core ways. Firstly, when we actually look at the product that they offer. Now, when it comes to high-level coding and writing, most people would say that Claude is a hands-down winner and beats ChatGPT in that area. Now, when it comes to general requests, there could be an argument that ChatGPT is better than Gemini, although most people would agree that they're pretty similar. But then when you look at Gemini's integration to the full Google workspace and also the image creation capabilities with Nanobanana, doesn't become so sure that they're even winning that product race. Then when it actually comes to rolling out ads inside of AI responses, they are going up against Google, who's got well over 20 years of running ads inside of platforms. And, and for me, that's why I think there's a really, really high chance that ChatGPT will go the way of MySpace and will be a little footnote in this whole AI race. So that's my opinion on it. I'd love to hear what you think about it. So why don't you gimme your thoughts in the comments below?
