TL;DR: What Brands Should Do Right Now: If ChatGPT Ads Are Inevitable, Clarity Comes First
This isn’t about hype, it’s about inevitability. If ChatGPT becomes a real consumer surface for discovery, brands won’t get to opt out forever. Eventually, you’ll have to participate.
Which is exactly why now is the time to fine-tune your media mix, not after the channel becomes crowded, expensive, and impossible to ignore.
Start by getting brutally honest about your current state. Most brands don’t have perfect clarity on what’s working today. So before you add another high-minimum, high-noise channel into the mix, make sure you can answer the fundamentals:
- What’s truly driving incremental growth?
- What’s actually profitable?
- What scales cleanly—and what just scales spend?
- Where does brand stop and performance begin?
Because if you can’t see clearly today, adding a new channel won’t fix that. It’ll just make the picture harder to read.
Every few years, a new advertising platform shows up and everyone asks the same question:
“How can we be first?”
Right now, that question is getting louder because AI is moving from tool to platform. And as ChatGPT expands into ads with reported minimums around $200,000 (with $60 CPMs), brands are understandably curious.
But here’s the take I want to offer: Even AI has to obey the laws of the universe.
And in the advertising universe, AI will adhere to:
- supply and demand
- pricing pressure
- limited inventory
- immature targeting
- unclear measurement
- and a rush of brands chasing the same shiny object.
AI may change the interface. It may change consumer behavior. It may change how people shop and search. But it doesn’t magically change the fundamentals of how ad markets work.
These Waves Form Similar Patterns
When platforms first arise and they haven’t fully monetized yet, the initial ad rollout almost always follows a predictable pattern. We’ve seen it over and over, going back to the dawn of the commercial internet.
Most of my digital clients in the mid 1990’s would rake us over the coals when they’d see their Click Through Rates drop from 80% to 70% – considering the average today is nearly 1000x lower – these early spikes often lead brands to rush in with more urgency than scrutiny.
Anyone remember Apple’s iAds? Or more recently you may have received ADUs on an early Netflix ad buy when they had more spend commitments than inventory to sell.
The early stage usually looks like:
- almost no, or very broad targeting
- limited flexibility
- limited transparency
- immature reporting
- a lot of guessing
And in the beginning, there’s one thing you can count on: The demand for those ads far exceeds the supply. Which leads to the next predictable outcome…
Price Becomes the Pressure Release Valve
When inventory is scarce and everyone wants access, the platform needs a way to control demand. That mechanism is rarely elegant, and it’s usually price. The market doesn’t need a long explanation, it needs a filter. And high minimums like a $200K commitment do the job.
This is the invisible hand at work:
- Access is limited
- Brands pile in anyway
- Prices rise to slow the stampede
- And the “winners” are the ones who can afford to learn
Which brings us to what I call…
The First-in-the-Door Tax
There’s always a tax for being early, and it’s usually a steep one.
When you’re first into a new platform, you’re not paying for efficiency. You’re paying for:
- access
- learning
- reputation (sometimes)
- optionality
- and a seat at the table
That’s not inherently bad. But let’s be honest about what it is.
Early-stage platform spend is often tuition, not ROI. A small cohort of brands will pay it because they have higher budgets, risk tolerance, and a need to signal innovation. But those early investments probably won’t make money in a traditional sense. However, they can teach you a lot, if you have the discipline to measure the right things.
The Hard Truth: A Lot of Brands Are About to Waste Money
I’m going to say this plainly because it needs to be said: A lot of brands are going to spend money in early AI ads and not learn much of anything.
Not because they’re doing it wrong intentionally, but because the environment won’t give them clarity. And if your current marketing mix is already muddy, adding a brand-new ad model on top doesn’t make it clearer, it makes it harder to understand what’s actually driving growth.
Consumers Don’t Care Who Was First
There’s a belief in marketing that being “first” earns you some permanent advantage.
Sometimes that’s true. But more often, consumers don’t care. And if anything, the first wave of ads on a new platform is usually the wave that gunks it up.
Consumers don’t celebrate it, they tolerate it. So unless there’s real value in being seen as early by your investors, your board, your retail partners or your industry, then first is rarely the win people think it is.