I know plenty of SaaS companies that are paying tens of thousands of dollars every month for LLM optimization & AI visibility. Lots of marketing agencies that have been working hard on delivering paid ads & search engine optimizing are floating in a river of cash now because all these companies are panicking. So, yeah, fully agree that if OpenAI rolls out a halfway decent advertising option, advertisers will throw money at them.

> Nobody is clicking the Google ads at the top because they know those are ads, not research. They only do it accidentally

I think you're evaluation of how many people click on Google ads and for what reasons is quite off. I'm sure you and most of the people in your circle are like that, but that's not how the vast majority of internet users behave. Google isn't generating $200 billion annually of accidental clicks.

Yes, yes they are generating $200 billion on accidental clicks.

Consumers don't know what they're clicking on is an ad, that's the only reason they clicked on it. They googled something for an answer - and oh look, the top results are what I want! Except those aren't results, they're ads. Here, put on your reading glasses - there's 8pt font there that says it's an ad.

It's the same thing with YouTube. Maybe half of the ads are just outright scams, and consumers know that. It's not like TV. So they don't click them, because you're playing Russian roulette if you do that. They only click them accidentally.

The main problem with online ads is that Google and Meta are dumb as rocks. They've decided to sell ad space to anyone with a pulse for a quick buck. The problem with that is that, over time, it devalues the ad space as consumers are trained to ignore it. We're quickly approaching the point where these ads only work on people born yesterday.

The ad space is grossly, grossly overvalued. Shh, nobody tell advertisers teehee!

But OpenAI has the attention. It's where people ask for product recommendations, and it has context about the user. Surely Amazon doesn't need OpenAI, but OpenAI will be another valuable distribution channel for them - unless some other LLM takes the crown.

My first no-bathroom door hotel experience was 2017 in a hotel in Vientiane. We were so baffled we asked, and they proudly explained that this was a "European bathroom". It was literally set up so that you had full view of the room (and vice versa) when taking a shit.

> it's hot, congested, polluted and largely poor, but so is Bangkok.

That's a wild comparison, makes me wonder how much time you spent in Bangkok. Bangkok has a much higher standard of living compared to Jakarta, and I've yet to meet anyone who spent more than a month in both places and prefers Jakarta. Living costs are cheaper in Jakarta for sure, but that's about it.