【双语对照+音频版】为什么你的AI助手突然开始向你推销东西| 经济学人

Business | The salesman in the machine商业版块｜机器里的推销员

Why your AI assistant is suddenly selling to you为什么你的AI助手突然开始向你推销东西

Sponsored chats are changing the way digital advertising works付费植入对话，正在重塑数字广告的运作方式

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.

聊天机器人每天都在扮演教师、顾问、程序员和向导的角色。如今，它们又多了一重身份：推销员。广告正以越来越高的频率出现在用户与大语言模型的对话之中，用促销信息打断聊天的节奏。消费者的搜索提问、文稿编辑乃至私密时刻，都越来越难逃付费推广信息的闯入。

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.

随着聊天机器人摇身变为广告机器人，两大行业的前途命运悬而未决。对人工智能行业而言，广告提供了一条将这项耗资巨大的发明变现的路径——而目前大多数人都在免费使用它。对广告行业而言，AI 广告机或许正是那个生死攸关问题的答案：一旦用户离开传统搜索引擎，广告该如何运转？目前虽仍处于早期阶段，一种新型营销方式的轮廓已初现端倪。

Most 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.

各大 AI 巨头正纷纷入场。今年二月，OpenAI 宣布将开始在使用最广泛的聊天机器人 ChatGPT 中测试广告。谷歌从去年起便在其搜索引擎的”AI 模式”中试验广告，微软也已将广告编织进旗下的 Copilot。亚马逊的购物助手 Rufus 允许品牌赞助其回复内容。Meta 的聊天机器人虽尚未直接展示广告，但自去年12月起，它已开始将对话中获取的用户洞察传递给旗下的 Facebook 和 Instagram，帮助它们投放更精准的广告。

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 今年预计将烧掉250亿美元现金，2027年这一数字将翻倍，对另一条营收来源的需求已是迫在眉睫。尽管公司出售订阅服务，但 ChatGPT 每周逾9亿用户中，大多数仍使用免费版本。广告提供了一条将这批用户变现的途径。技术分析师本尼迪克特·埃文斯（Benedict Evans）还指出，广告收入甚至可能让公司向不付费的用户开放其最高端——也最烧钱——的模型，从而加深用户黏性。即便对毫无现金流之忧的谷歌而言，如果 AI 对话有望取代部分用户的搜索行为，引入广告同样势在必行。谷歌在数字广告领域的霸主地位眼看就要拱手相让：调研机构 eMarketer 预测，今年 Meta 将以2430亿美元的广告收入将其超越。

So far the experiments are modest. ChatGPT is showing ads in only about 1% of conversations, and Google in an even smaller share of AI Mode queries, estimates Similarweb, a data provider. But they are due to ramp up. OpenAI has reportedly told investors that it expects ChatGPT to generate 11bn in 2027, with a goal of hitting $100bn by 2030. That would make it one of the world’s largest sellers of ads.

目前，相关试验的规模还十分有限。数据提供商 Similarweb 估计，ChatGPT 目前仅在约1%的对话中展示广告，谷歌 AI 模式的广告覆盖比例则更低。但扩张在即。据报道，OpenAI 已向投资者表示，预计 ChatGPT 今年将创造25亿美元广告收入，2027年达到110亿美元，并设定了2030年突破1000亿美元的目标——届时将跻身全球最大广告销售商之列。

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.

早期证据显示，OpenAI 和谷歌在聊天机器人推销方式上采取了截然不同的路径。据 Similarweb 数据，谷歌 AI 模式中98.5%的广告在用户第一次提问时便随即出现，与传统搜索引擎并无二致。ChatGPT 则截然相反，它会耐心等待时机——不到一半的广告出现在第一轮回复中，近三分之一的广告要等到对话进行到第十轮以后才现身，犹如一位老练的店员，等摸清了顾客的真实意图，才不动声色地开口推销。”这不是搜索，这是一种全新的广告形态，”Similarweb 的 Harel Amir 说道。

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. 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.

目前结果好坏参半。ChatGPT 的定向投放有时颇为精妙：比如向一位正在起草商务邮件的用户推送面试辅导广告。但有时又荒诞得令人发笑——字面意思理解得过于死板。一位询问加密学”私钥”（private keys）的用户，收到的却是 Bed Bath & Beyond 家居店的金属保险箱广告。帮助品牌追踪聊天机器人如何谈及自身的机构 Gauge 的 Caelean Barnes 表示，OpenAI 初出茅庐的广告服务，目前在效果数据和特定人群定向方面能为广告主提供的支持极为有限。

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 company’s image rather than trigger a click. So far 81% of its ads fall into that category, by Similarweb’s analysis. It may reckon that users deep in a coding or editing session are unlikely to break off to pursue an offer.

OpenAI 和谷歌瞄准的广告主类型似乎也大相径庭。谷歌的”直接优惠”功能允许企业针对用户正在 AI 模式中研究的产品推送折扣码。OpenAI 则专注于品牌形象类广告——旨在擦亮企业形象，而非引导用户点击跳转。Similarweb 的分析显示，目前 OpenAI 平台上81%的广告属于这一类型。这或许是因为，正深陷编程或文稿编辑的用户，不大可能中途打断去追一个优惠。

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.

对聊天机器人厂商来说，好消息是用户似乎并不抗拒广告。部分竞争对手对赞助回复避而远之，担心此举有损用户信任：今年二月，Perplexity 停止展示广告，Anthropic 则推出一系列短剧讽刺那些投放广告的竞争对手——短剧中，治疗师和教授突然话锋一转，开始推销起商品。然而 Similarweb 发现，ChatGPT 上展示的广告有72%出现在对话的非最后一轮——换言之，用户在看到广告后依然继续聊天。含有广告的对话平均持续约20轮，与无广告的对话旗鼓相当。

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 are proven 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 广告带来了两大挑战。首先是效果衡量。如果用户只是继续聊天，而不点击跳转，那么”曝光后归因”——这门研究用户是否最终在其他渠道完成购买的晦涩学问——将成为评估广告活动效果的主要方式。其次是品牌安全。扎克伯格曾描绘过一幅未来图景：广告主只需告诉 Meta 自己的目标，剩下的一切交给 AI 打理。然而，让聊天机器人自己撰写创意文案，无异于一场赌博。个性化广告已被证明比通用广告更有效。但企业恐怕仍会对这位硅基推销员心存警惕——它随时可能凭空”幻觉”出一个好得过头、根本不存在的优惠。■