Ads in Chatbots Have Arrived. Here’s What’s Working—and What’s Not — SkimNews
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- Anthropic is maintaining its Super Bowl pledge to keep Claude ad-free, and its recent IPO filing did not mention selling ads; the company has about $112 billion in investor cash.
- OpenAI reports that more than 100,000 customers have advertised in ChatGPT since ads debuted there in February.
- Google expanded advertising in its AI Mode search chatbot to 10 more countries beyond the US, saying users find the ads highly relevant even though advertisers remain dissatisfied.
- Koah Labs markets ad placements across more than 200 apps and says ads composed partly by AI generate twice the clicks of fully human-written ads; its network's click rate is about 3%, on par with mature Google ads.
- Koah Labs customizes ads using the prompt, the platform's response and broader conversation context; chatbot prompts are at least twice as long as Google queries, and Koah generally receives the entire prior conversation, leaving user acceptance of the privacy trade-off unclear.
- Koah Labs estimates that one in four chatbot queries about a retailer or brand concerns returns, exchanges or support; Nic Baird says advertisers can use that context to promote warranties and AI-mediated support instead of costly customer-service interactions.
- DeepAI has earned meaningful ad revenue but is not committed to advertising because of privacy and design concerns; CEO Kevin Baragona says the format is not working well for anyone.
Why it matters: Advertisers gain a channel producing about 3% clicks—on par with mature Google ads—and targeting informed by an entire conversation. Users bear the other side of that bargain: Koah generally receives conversation history, and Baird says sponsored content must be unmistakable or user trust is at risk.
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