I asked ChatGPT what ChatGPT ads will look like. Here’s what I learned.

The news that ChatGPT might start showing ads may have caught some people by surprise, but not me. If you’ve been following my writing, you know that I’ve been talking about the fact that ads are coming to AI experiences for months.

So, I'm putting two predictions about AI+ads out here right now:

1) Ads in AI platforms will be a big story in 2025.

2) ChatGPT and Meta are the two companies to watch.

AI platforms like ChatGPT have a huge opportunity ahead of them: They can introduce new forms of advertising that take advantage of the unique capabilities of AI.

What I've seen so far on Copilot and Perplexity isn't very revolutionary. But I expect ChatGPT -- or more likely, Meta -- will launch something truly groundbreaking in the next year.

I was curious, so I asked ChatGPT what ads on ChatGPT might look like. Here’s what it told me:

That didn’t seem very revolutionary at all. So I probed some more. These ideas are MUCH more interesting. I especially like the ones about interactive demos and sponsored AI tools.

These suggestions are great way to start speculating on what OpenAI is plotting. If and when it does launch ads, I’ll be VERY curious to know if it takes any of these paths.