I’m one of America’s top pollsters and I’ve got a warning for the AI companies: customers aren’t sold on ads

The AI advertising wars have flared up, and Americans feel the heat. 

OpenAI has begun introducing ads to ChatGPT and AI avatars now sell their wares from LinkedIn to YouTube. Consumers must grapple with an unprecedented change to how goods and services are bought and sold. Meta has not only opened up chatbots to targeted ads, but also prevented Meta AI users from opting out.

So how do Americans feel about this shift?

As with most issues, analyzing public opinion does not yield a simple “yes” or “no” answer. Advertising is quintessentially American, after all. While some consumers accept them as a necessary evil, others eagerly seek out and share creative ads, or at least don’t mind fast-forwarding through them.

However, AI tools can cross into personal spaces, and even private ones—from high school journaling to planning vacations. Many users experience AI chats as closer to therapy than search, so ads can feel acceptable in transactional moments but aggressive in reflective or emotional ones. Imagine your therapist taking a break from listening to sell you a supplement.

Using data generated from LLM queries, AI responses will mix real information with sponsored content, and the line between “info” and “ad” may be blurred. The scale of LLM advertising will be unprecedented because it fundamentally alters the ad business. Moving from keyword-based, demographic targeting in Google Search to intent-driven targeting based on conversational context, LLMs are already........

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