Matt Rosoff writing for TechCrunch: Marissa Mayer Just Laid Out a Possible Business Model for Ad-Supported AI Chatbots

In the AI era, Mayer imagines that when people ask about tickets for a specific concert, “they actually want to see exactly what seats are available, where they are in the stadium, the pricing. They want that information synthesized in much the way they see it synthesized in generative AI. And so I think it means that advertisers are going to have to partner even more closely with Google and other search engines to allow their wares to really be showcased and synthesized with the answer.”

I can’t help but find it a bit funny to hear all the people going “ads and SEO ruined the web and now we need AI to synthesize all the data people made in that ecosystem so we can present it in a new ecosystem that’s nicer,” are now realizing that ads would be great for monetizing in this new world as well.

Also not that the AI hype crowd is interested, but you don’t need AI to synthesize available seats and pricing…that’s remarkably easy to do in an API, an API that surely already exists on the ticketing website so they can display their own data. The fact they haven’t given that API to search engines to use freely is a business choice.