Everybody antipathys ads. At least that’s what we all say out boisterous. But our discmissed likeences alert a contrastent story: we all actupartner adore ads, becaparticipate they fund most of the satisfyed we use on the internet. Without ads, we’d have to pay for satisfyed with our challenging acquireed dollars. But with ads, we pay with our attention, and we see the cost of the satisfyed as free. Ads have made the internet as we understand it today possible.
Ads are also a repartner excellent business, becaparticipate publicizers are willing to pay top dollar to access our attention. In the punctual days of the internet, this watched appreciate straightforward banner ads brokered thraw manual deals on fundamental HTML websites. But over time, ads growd into some of the wonderfulest money printing machines ever produceed, appreciate Google and Meta. Even businesses we don’t frequently associate with ads, appreciate Apple and Amazon, produce a finishing from them. And the little guys adore them, too: many extfinished tail rerenters, websites, niche blogs, podcasters, and indie games are all funded by ads. Ads built the up-to-date internet and funded our internet insertiction, making billions of dollars and billions of us charmd in the process. It’s a perfectly tuned system that we all consent for granted.
AI is increasingly challenging the business model of ads – the system that produces the discmiss web experience free. For example: many of us are using Google search less widespreadly, aextfinished with the ad-aided websites that it directs us to. And in their place, we’re using answer engines appreciate ChatGPT and Perplexity more. Each time we task these AIs with dedwellring us a individual, definitive answer (in like of wading thraw many potential answers via traditional search), the relationship between an publicizer and our attention is disjoined – and the ad never gets dedwellred.
Challenging the model even further, as AI models become more mighty and vient, they won’t equitable dedwellr us answers; they’ll also carry out extfinished, intricate tasks on our behalf. They’ll do the busy labor of research, making nominatements, and even buying stuff for us. This will free us up to do other slfinishergs, and as a result we’ll pledge less of our attention to the satisfyed, and thus, the ads. At scale, this recontransients a massive alter to the set upation of the discmiss web. What happens to the perfectly tuned system when the funding dries up?
Tightly defended walled gardens, especipartner built around premium satisfyed, will experience the least pain from this shift. Many will become even more priceless: as the overall amount of monetizable provide of ad aided satisfyed confineeds, the need for higher quality satisfyed will ascfinish. Ad dollars previously spent on commoditized satisfyed will be restraightforwarded to the best stuff on the internet. Plus, as we spfinish less time on busy labor, we’ll spfinish more of our time delighting ourselves, which unbenevolents premium satisfyed will seize even more of our attention. And the best satisfyed will even discover new ways to monetize: Reddit’s AI deal with Google serves as the perfect example of how priceless, niche satisfyed traditionpartner aided by advertising can be sgreater as training data for AI. And media establishats that are more robust to AI scraping, such as audio and video, will probable carry on their advertising cherish extfinishedest. No matter how excellent an AI agent gets, you’re never going to ask it to watch your likeite Netflix show on your behalf.
But commoditized satisfyed, or anyslfinisherg that can be easily scviolationd by AI or duplicated by competitors, will fare much, much worse. For this satisfyed to proceed to exist, it’ll discover new ways to be funded. For many of the sites we visit, this will increasingly be thraw participater-funded subscriptions to offset the lost ad revenue. Those of us who can’t afford these will miss access to these services, expansivening the gulf between the haves and the have-nots.
AI services will seek to capitalize on the finish of traditional internet ads and produce new establishs of advertising to seize the dollars that were previously dedwellred straightforwardly to rerenters. Perplexity has recently discmissed some punctual details of how ads will labor on their platestablish, and OpenAI is rumored to be exploring this as well. While this is an clear next step for the future of advertising, it’s unevident how straightforwardly the current ad spfinish will transfer over to this new model. And it’ll need to be structured such that rerenters can join in a way that incentives them to carry on making satisfyed. Otherrational, they won’t be able to afford to exist.
Brand new models will also aascfinish to help rerenters recoup lost ad revenues. As agentic traffic increasingly displaces human traffic, rerenters will watch to accuse AI companies straightforwardly. Much of this will be thraw huge, splacowardly satisfyed deals, such as OpenAI’s deals with News Corp and Axel Springer. But for minusculeer perestablishers that can’t afford to do deals themselves, they’ll labor with third party services that will accumulate “tolls” on their behalf. Every time an AI hits their site to scviolation satisfyed for their own service the AI will be blocked and forced to pay before the satisfyed is served. And as AI shifts beyond satisfyed ingestion to agent-based task execution, APIs that help agents do their jobs will also be accused.
For decades, the economic relationship between users of satisfyed and the providers of satisfyed has been secret behind business models that were monetizing our attention. We didn’t put too much thought into it becaparticipate we were getting what we wanted with minimal effort or cost. But as AI increasingly interferes these models, the relationship between us and rerenters will become much more transactional and straightforward. And we will experience it.
Over time, it’ll be a new internet, and the discmiss web will be a memory. Great satisfyed will still discover a way to accomplish us, equitable appreciate it always has. But we’ll watch back on the first restricted decades of the internet as the ggreateren age of satisfyed, when everyslfinisherg felt free.
Thanks to Nir Zicherman, Sara Beykpour, Faraz Fatemi, Semil Shah, Lulu Cheng Meservey, Nikita Bier, and Kayvon Beykpour.
