Google and Facebook had a baby and it is worth at least $70B a year

At an All In Summit, Sarah Friar (CFO OpenAI) described ChatGPT as an ad offering as if Google and Facebook had a baby. It combines knowing what people want with deep knowledge of who they are. And I think she is right. As we tell our AI-providers more and more about us, their ability to target us with offerings will be incredible. It will be much more powerful than either classic search or social ever was.

Friar also commented on market share. She said on a 1-1 for they are 11% of total Search. She however also said that that number understates their share as it counts an entire conversation with ChatGPT as one search. This would indicate that the Graphite analysis (link in comment) from earlier this year is directionally more accurate. They had data on mobiles as well as desktop and put ChatGPT at 20% total share and Google at 71% (their lowest share since 2006).

In advertising, money follows eye balls like night follows day and so once they are fully monetized this would be worth around $70B just as a straight proportion of today’s Search Ad spend. It will of course be much bigger as customers switch to more agentic commerce and the old middle men are cut out with the AI-Search operators connecting directly with brans but a $70B SOM is a good start.

There is much more to say about and much more to come in the emerging AI Search market but every digital marketer and every brand who have anything to do with the internet will need to get involved in this.