外刊跟读|为什么你的 AI 助手突然开始向你推销 Why your AI is suddenly selling to you

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本期文章导读

本文讲 AI 聊天机器人纷纷植入广告变现，OpenAI、谷歌等布局不同，广告效果参差，用户接受度尚可，但广告主面临衡量与品牌安全难题。用词规范地道，适合考研 / 雅思写作。

Illustration: Fortunate Joaquin

Chatbots are employed every day as teachers, counsellors, coders and escorts. Now they are taking on another role: salesmen. Advertisements are popping up ever more frequently in users’ conversations with large language models, punctuating chats with promotions. Consumers’ search queries, editing sessions and even intimate moments are increasingly at risk of interruption by sponsored messages.

聊天机器人每天被用作老师、顾问、程序员乃至陪护。如今它们又多了一重身份：推销员。广告在用户与大语言模型的对话中出现得愈发频繁，用促销信息打断聊天。消费者的搜索查询、编辑工作，甚至私密时刻，都越来越有可能被赞助信息打断。

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As chatbots become adbots, the future of two industries is at stake. For the artificial-intelligence business, ads represent a way to monetise a wildly expensive invention that most people currently use free of charge. For the ad industry, adbots are a possible answer to the existential question of how advertising will work if users move away from conventional search engines. Although it is early days, the outlines of a new kind of marketing are emerging.

随着聊天机器人变成广告机器人，两大行业的未来岌岌可危。对人工智能行业而言，广告是一种将成本极高的发明变现的方式，而目前大多数人都在免费使用这项发明。对广告行业来说，若用户不再使用传统搜索引擎，广告机器人或许能解答广告该如何运作这一生存难题。尽管尚处初期，一种新型营销模式的轮廓正在显现。

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Many of the AI giants are piling in. In February OpenAI said it would begin testing ads in ChatGPT, the most widely used chatbot. Google has been trialling them in its search engine’s “AI Mode” since last year, and Microsoft has woven them into its Copilot. Amazon’s shopping assistant, Rufus, allows brands to sponsor its replies. Meta’s chatbot does not yet show ads, but since December it has been passing on insights from chats to its sister companies, Facebook and Instagram, to help them serve better-targeted plugs.

众多 AI 巨头纷纷入局。今年 2 月，OpenAI 宣布将在使用最广泛的聊天机器人 ChatGPT 中测试广告。谷歌从去年开始就在其搜索引擎的 “AI 模式” 中试验广告，微软则将广告融入 Copilot。亚马逊的购物助手 Rufus 允许品牌赞助其回复内容。Meta 的聊天机器人暂未展示广告，但自去年 12 月以来，它一直在将对话洞察传递给姊妹公司 Facebook 和 Instagram，帮助它们推送更精准的推广内容。

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For OpenAI, which reportedly expects to burn $25bn of cash this year and twice as much in 2027, the need for more revenue is acute. Although it sells subscriptions, most of ChatGPT’s more than 900m weekly users are on its free tier. Ads are a way to make money from them. And they may let the company make its best models available to users who do not pay, deepening their engagement, says Benedict Evans, a tech analyst. Even Google, with no immediate cashflow worries, has reason to bring ads to AI chats if these interactions are to replace search for some users. Already it is set to lose its crown as the biggest seller of digital ads: this year Meta will overtake it with ad revenue of $243bn, according to eMarketer, a research firm.

据报道，OpenAI 今年预计消耗 250 亿美元现金，2027 年这一数字将翻倍，因此迫切需要增加收入。尽管该公司出售订阅服务，但 ChatGPT 每周超 9 亿用户中，大多数都在使用免费版本。广告是从这些用户身上获利的途径。科技分析师本尼迪克特・埃文斯表示，广告还能让公司向非付费用户开放最优模型，提升用户参与度。即便谷歌暂无现金流压力，若 AI 对话会取代部分用户的搜索行为，它也有理由在 AI 对话中加入广告。谷歌即将失去数字广告最大卖家的桂冠：研究公司 eMarketer 数据显示，今年 Meta 将以 2430 亿美元广告收入超越谷歌。

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So far the experiments are modest. Similarweb, a data provider, estimates that ChatGPT is showing ads in only about 1% of conversations, and Google in an even smaller share of AI Mode queries. But they are due to rise fast. OpenAI is said to have told investors that it expects ChatGPT to generate $2.5bn in ad revenue this year and $11bn in 2027, with a goal of hitting $100bn by 2030.

到目前为止，这些尝试规模有限。数据提供商 Similarweb 估计，ChatGPT 仅在约 1% 的对话中展示广告，谷歌在 AI 模式查询中的广告展示比例更低。但广告投放量将快速增长。据称，OpenAI 已告知投资者，预计 ChatGPT 今年广告收入达 25 亿美元，2027 年达 110 亿美元，目标是 2030 年突破 1000 亿美元。

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The early evidence suggests that OpenAI and Google have different approaches to how a chatbot should sell. According to Similarweb, 98.5% of the ads in Google’s AI Mode appear in response to the user’s first query, rather like a conventional search engine. ChatGPT, by contrast, bides its time. Less than half its ads come in the chatbot’s first response, and nearly a third come after the tenth turn in the conversation—like a shop assistant waiting for the customer’s intent to become clear before they make their pitch. “This is not search. This is a new category of advertising,” argues Harel Amir of Similarweb.

早期迹象显示，OpenAI 与谷歌在聊天机器人营销方式上思路不同。Similarweb 数据显示，谷歌 AI 模式中 98.5% 的广告出现在用户首次查询后，与传统搜索引擎颇为相似。相比之下，ChatGPT 则会等待时机。其广告中不到一半出现在首次回复，近三分之一出现在对话第十轮之后 —— 就像店员等明确顾客意图后再推销。Similarweb 的哈雷尔・阿米尔认为：“这不是搜索，而是全新的广告类别。”

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So far the results are mixed. ChatGPT’s targeting sometimes seems sophisticated: for instance, advertising job-interview coaching to a user drafting a professional email. At other times it is comically literal. One user asking about cryptographic “private keys” was served an ad for metal safety-boxes from Bed Bath & Beyond. OpenAI’s fledgling ad service so far offers advertisers little in the way of performance data or the ability to target specific demographic groups, says Caelean Barnes of Gauge, which helps brands track how chatbots talk about them.

目前效果褒贬不一。ChatGPT 的广告定位有时十分精准：例如，向撰写商务邮件的用户推送面试辅导广告。但有时又生硬得可笑。有用户查询加密 “私钥”，却收到了 Bed Bath & Beyond 的金属保险箱广告。帮助品牌追踪聊天机器人评价的 Gauge 公司卡利恩・巴恩斯表示，OpenAI 刚起步的广告服务，目前几乎无法向广告主提供效果数据，也不具备定向特定人群的能力。

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OpenAI and Google also seem to be going after different kinds of advertisers. Google’s Direct Offers allow companies to promote a discount code for a product the user is researching in AI Mode. OpenAI, meanwhile, is focused on brand-building ads designed to burnish a firm’s image rather than trigger a click. So far 81% of its ads fall into that category, by Similarweb’s analysis. OpenAI may reckon that users deep in a coding or editing session are unlikely to break off to pursue an offer.

OpenAI 与谷歌瞄准的广告主类型似乎也不同。谷歌的 “直接优惠” 允许企业为用户在 AI 模式中查询的产品推送折扣码。而 OpenAI 则专注于品牌塑造广告，旨在提升企业形象而非促使用户点击。Similarweb 分析显示，目前其 81% 的广告属于此类。OpenAI 或许认为，专注于编程或编辑的用户不太可能中断操作去查看优惠。

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The good news for chatbot-makers is that users do not seem to be repelled by ads. Some competitors have steered clear of sponsored replies, fearing these will hurt trust: in February Perplexity stopped showing ads and Anthropic skewered its ad-toting rivals with a series of skits showing therapists and professors suddenly launching into sales pitches. Yet Similarweb finds that 72% of ads shown on ChatGPT are not on the final turn of the conversation—in other words, users keep chatting. Conversations incorporating ads last an average of about 20 turns, the same as those without.

对聊天机器人开发商而言，好消息是用户似乎并不反感广告。部分竞品刻意避开赞助回复，担心损害信任：今年 2 月 Perplexity 停止展示广告，Anthropic 则用一系列小品讽刺搭载广告的对手，片中治疗师和教授突然开始推销。但 Similarweb 发现，ChatGPT 展示的广告中 72% 并非出现在对话最后一轮 —— 也就是说，用户会继续聊天。包含广告的对话平均约 20 轮，与无广告对话持平。

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For advertisers, AI ads present two challenges. The first is measurement. If users keep chatting rather than clicking through, “post-view attribution”—the murky science of determining whether a user eventually buys the product elsewhere—will become the main way to assess a campaign’s effectiveness. The second challenge is brand safety. Mark Zuckerberg has painted a picture of a future where advertisers simply tell Meta their objective and let the AI handle the rest. But letting a chatbot write its own creative copy is a gamble. Personalised ads have proved to be more effective than generic ones. Companies may nevertheless be wary of a silicon salesman who could hallucinate a deal too good to be true.

对广告主而言，AI 广告带来两大挑战。首先是衡量标准。若用户只聊天不点击，“浏览后归因”—— 判断用户最终是否在其他渠道购买产品的模糊方法 —— 将成为评估广告效果的主要方式。其次是品牌安全。马克・扎克伯格描绘了这样的未来：广告主只需告知 Meta 目标，剩下的交给 AI 即可。但让聊天机器人自主创作广告文案存在风险。事实证明，个性化广告比普通广告更有效。但企业仍会警惕 AI 推销员虚构出好得离谱的优惠。

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