,OpenAI is expanding ChatGPT advertising to 26 more countries, bringing the total to 89., Serbia is on the list. So is Ukraine. Cambodia too.
Picture a Serbian grandmother. She asks a chatbot how to fix her boiler. The chatbot fixes the boiler. Then it suggests a boiler.
Progress.
,The new markets include Nigeria, South Africa, Serbia, Ukraine, Cambodia, Bangladesh and Pakistan., ,Fourteen are in Latin America, including Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Peru., Mexico and Brazil already got theirs. Nobody asked Peru. Peru got it anyway.
Here is the pitch. ,OpenAI says ads can help people discover products and services they might not have found otherwise., Correct. Nobody in Bangladesh has ever found a product by accident. Commerce was a rumor until Sam Altman's team arrived.
,OpenAI says advertising supports free and low-cost access to ChatGPT around the world., So the ads are charity. You are not the product. You are the beneficiary. Say thank you.
The paying customers escape. ,Ads appear only on Free and Go plans, while Plus, Pro and Enterprise stay ad-free., Ads are now a poverty tax with a friendly font. Cambodia gets the sponsored suggestion. Palo Alto gets silence.
The numbers are real, I suppose. ,The ads business hit a $1 billion annualized revenue run rate in August., ,More than 100,000 advertisers have run campaigns., That is a lot of people paying to interrupt a robot.
The motive is no mystery. ,Reuters ties the push to boosting revenue ahead of a potential initial public offering., Retail traders will read that as a buy signal. They will study the country count like tea leaves. 89 is a lucky number if you squint and own no savings.
I will not tell you what this means for the stock. There is no stock. There is only a prospectus, and your cousin's certainty.
Eighty-nine countries now have ads in their chatbot. Soon all of them will, and you will still be asking it whether you should have bought in.
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