Like many others I’ve certainly seen evidence that Google advertising results are on the decline. Many users now are turning away from Google and using AI models for searches.
Add to that the fact that AI now answers questions rather than just provides links to websites, and you begin to see why some of Google’s long-standing traffic model is under pressure. If you can ask an AI a question and get a complete answer without clicking a single search result, then where exactly do those ads go?
By Chris Davies – Partner
When I first started using ChatGPT, it was a simple back-and-forth tool whereby you asked and it answered. But now, with the arrival of things like ChatGPT Pulse, the model is starting to look very different.
Pulse is essentially a daily feed delivered to your phone each morning. They might include summaries of topics you’ve shown interest in, quick snippets of news, or things the AI thinks you’ll find useful. For example it knows that you have just watched a Youtube video yesterday on “how to hang a door frame”, so your next morning’s feed includes adverts for local hardware stores or handymen. It’s personalised, proactive, and crucially habit-forming. You can imagine people checking it like a morning briefing, alongside their coffee and emails.
Open.AI have always maintained that ChatGPT will become like a personal assistant and it’s easy to see that Open.AI could start including sponsored cards within the daily feed.
It feels like we’re standing on the edge of a new chapter. Google’s dominance isn’t over just yet but for the first time in a long while, it’s being genuinely challenged. And if ChatGPT Pulse becomes part of our morning routine, don’t be surprised if tomorrow’s advertising battle is fought not on a search results page, but in a feed you didn’t even know you were checking.
