Again, What About the AI Ads?

Last month the FT reported that OpenAI was going all in on a “super app” that combines agents and coding, a move clearly designed to compete with Anthropic, which dominates the “get work done” market with Claude CoWork. “Chat is dead” as the principle interface for ChatGPT, according to OpenAI execs quoted in the FT piece.

At the time, I wondered out loud: If “chat is dead,” what happens to OpenAI’s promises of $100 billion in advertising revenue by 2030? Given the “surface” for that revenue was supposed to be chat, it seems contradictory to fold it into a paid subscription product focused on white collar workers.

A version of the super app (called “ChatGPT Work”) launched this week and early reviews are mixed: chat has been demoted, the UI is messy and confusing, but the “work” portion of the app is cheaper than Claude and quite good overall.  I’m sure the app will quickly address those UI issues, but I’m still left scratching my head: What about the ads? If I were considering investing in OpenAI’s ads, I’d certainly want an answer to that question.

Apparently ChatGPT remains a pure chat application on mobile, so perhaps that’s where OpenAI’s ad business will focus.  But OpenAI risks alienating marketers with its confusing pivots and lack of clear narrative for its ads product. Marketers need to know that a new go-to-market channel will be consistent, stable, and here for the long term. Otherwise, they’ll wait and see – and that $100 billion revenue goal will be increasingly difficult to hit.

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