> The users paying $20 or $200/month for premium tiers of ChatGPT are precisely the ones you don't want to exclude from generating ad revenue.

but they're already paying you. While I appreciate the greed can be there, surely they'd be shooting themselves in the foot. There's many people who would pay who find advertising toxic and they have such huge volumes at free level that they'd be able to make a lot off a low impression cost.

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II2II 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> but they're already paying you.

That's not how it works. It never has.

Even in the days of print publications, the publisher would seek revenues from advertisers, subscribers, and they would sell their subscriber data. (On top of that, many would have contests and special offers which probed for deeper data about the readership.) In some sense, the subscriber data was more shallow. In other senses, it was more valuable.

I get what you're saying about shooting themselves in the foot, and I'm sure there will be options for corporate clients that will treat the data collected confidentially while not displaying advertising. I also doubt that option will be available (in any official sense) to individuals much as it isn't available (in any official sense) to users of Windows. For the most part, people won't care. Those who would care are those who are sensitive enough about their privacy that they wouldn't use these services in the first place, or are wealthy enough to be sensitive about their privacy that they would could pay for services that would make real guarantees.

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8organicbits 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The stats I see for Facebook are $70 per US/Canadian user in ad revenue. I'm not sure how much people would be willing to pay for an ad free Facebook, but it must be below $70 on average. And as the parent comment said, the users who would pay that are likely worth much more than the average user to the advertisers.

For the users who refuse to see ads, they'd either use a different platform or run an ad blocker (especially using the website vs the app).

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likium 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Go plans at $8 are getting ads too. Netflix introduced a paid plan with ads, and it is more profitable.

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Quarrelsome 4 hours ago | parent [-]

sure but if Netflix keeps up its transition to cable then more people will return to the high seas.

	▲	46493168 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		There’s an entire generation (Gen Z) that can’t navigate a file system, so I doubt piracy is a true threat in the long term.

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npongratz 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The progression of the cable TV industry shows many people are more than happy, or apathetic enough, to allow the industry to double-dip.

	▲	Workaccount2 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Cable TV is a bad analogy because it was a natural monopoly. Even the disruption route (satellite TV) was another natural monopoly. Netflix doesn't have the moat of "built a physical wire connection to every persons home" that cable TV enjoyed.
	▲	Quarrelsome 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		basic people sure, but the early internet showed an extremely strong demand for a better service than cable TV. When that demand is there then people will start seeking other options and building bridges of convenience to help the basic people also port over.

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WD-42 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

They aren’t shooting any feet if the competition is doing it too.

	▲	Quarrelsome 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		that's extreme motivation for someone to build a new competitor. Deepseek demonstrated that there's innovation out there to be had at a fraction of the effort.

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jsheard 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Paying users aren't necessarily profitable users though. It's harder to pin down with OpenAI, but I see no end of Claude users talking about how they're consistently burning the equivalent of >$1000 in API credits every month on the $200 subscription.

(not that ads alone would make up an $800 deficit, they'll probably have to enshittify on multiple fronts)

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Quarrelsome 4 hours ago | parent [-]

wouldn't you charge those people more before you start serving ads? Also wont a lot of those sorts of users be running ad block anyway? I'm mildly sus that this is the right way to go.

	▲	yunwal 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I’m not sure where you’re getting this notion that a paid service introducing ads is a bad business model. It’s been proven time and time again that it’s not. Spotify, Netflix, Prime Video, Hulu, the list goes on, all introduced ads and none of them saw any real backlash. Netflix cracked down on password-sharing and introduced ads in the same year and lived to tell the tale. Unfortunately people just really don’t realize how harmful ads are.