Consumer businesses tend to be pulled inexorably towards engagement and ads.
- Larry Page and Zuckerberg originally were very against ads.
- Then, each found a kind of ad format that felt natural and perhaps even useful.
- But over time those ads fell down the gravity well of incentives into competing for users' attention.
- Many years ago, Google Search and Ads had a wall between them.
- Not any more.
- The wall was not bulldozed by any instantaneous force.
- It slowly eroded in the sandstorm of A/B experiments and tweaks.
- Sam Altman today has made it very clear he's against ads in ChatGPT.
- I asked a collection of plugged in and savvy friends what the chance was that ChatGPT would have something normal users would call ads within the next 12 months.
- The answer was a unanimous "100%".
- It's inevitable.