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0 pointsScoundreller24d ago0 comments

Ads are usually the workaround where you don’t deliver enough value to get people to subscribe or payments are unavailable for some reason.

It makes sense to show some ads and get some money at low volume (like a faraway reader wanting to read a story in your local newspaper) but taking money from regular users directly will pay much more.

Newspapers are happy to cannibalize 99% of their ad revenue with a paywall if that 1% subscribes because that’s how much more money you make from someone paying $10-$20/month vs ads.

But yeah, if people use it as a buying recommendation engine, that’s where the money is on ads/referrals but a lot of AI use has little/no connection to buying intent touchpoints.

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hylaride24d ago· 2 in thread

Newspapers had no choice after craigslist and later Google/Facebook took all their classified revenue.

LLMs may or may not be able to cover their costs with it. We'll see - I suspect product placement as recommendations will become a thing as it won't take as much GPU to give a "recommendation" on "the best widget for X". I firmly expect it to become enshittified the same way google and amazon search has.

And that's if LLMs don't become commodified.

enoint24d ago

For agentic services, how would you be able to tell that you’ve been product-placed?

layer824d ago

Hidden advertising is illegal in most jurisdictions, so it has to be indicated to the user for each specific occurrence and hence be trackable anyway.

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