OpenAI’s New SearchGPT Could Save Financial Freefall As Ads Loom…

ChatGPT-4 has been able to access the internet to augment its searches for some time now.

OpenAI has now launched the waitlist for the prototype of “SearchGPT.”

Who knows if it will be released (remember how they promised to monetise Custom GPTs and did a rug pull? And never released Sora?)

But they may have to launch “SearchGPT.”

They are haemorrhaging money (https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/technology/tech-news/chatgpt-maker-openai-may-exhaust-all-its-money-in-a-year/articleshow/112015922.cms), and subscriptions (that make up the majority of their revenue) aren’t yielding the expected windfall.

There is no reason why OpenAI wouldn’t double-dip on monetisation: both subscription and native ads — it’s literally Google’s business model plus recurring revenue on top.

OpenAI has already said “SearchGPT is designed to help users connect with publishers by prominently citing and linking to them in searches. Responses have clear, in-line, named attribution and links so users know where information is coming from and can quickly engage with even more results in a sidebar with source links.”

Ads are the next move.

Plenty of people like me are already running private ads already on their CustomGPTs to make passive income, and it does not annoy users at all.

I’d argue to the contrary, it actually adds value and qualifies leads: https://orren.medium.com/why-chatgpt-plugins-are-currently-my-best-free-lead-source-f2fde2b8a3ff.

Eighteen months ago, I explained why people need to build their brand and concentrate on that, over, selling and advertising: https://orren.medium.com/chatgpt-why-all-brands-need-to-forget-selling-advertising-39c7ab5cc154.

Very few listened to me.

Probably because they are lazy.

And as people get even lazier than they currently, they will rely less on trawling pages of search results (it’s been shown that being on page 1 gets the majority of clicks and being the first result/ad for a particular search gets even more) and more on curated answers.

Look at ChatGPT right now — people simply want the same — an answer without the fluff.

Google’s solution to this was rich snippets, you know, those Q&As that appear in the search results?

Ultimately, like I said before, people will use voice search (they are already using ChatGPT voice, Alexa, Google Home etc) where voice search will give a single or a few results/answers, not the hundreds of 10-results pages text search does (again, I said this 18 months ago).

Voice AI also favours a single (or a few answers) that pay to advertise.

There will be only one ad presented, so one better get good at being the first result for free, or they’ll pay even more than current SEM rates because competition will be fierce.

Get to work building your brand or ignore me like you normally do and pay through the nose in a few years.