"I’m wildly proud of coming up with the paid-search model. I didn't know how big it was at the time."


- Bill Gross, founder of GoTo.com

I'll cut to the chase: ChatGPT Ads aren't ready for prime time.

But neither were the first search ads.

In 1998, an entrepreneur named Bill Gross launched a search engine called GoTo.com with an idea that was, at the time, heretical.



Instead of deciding which websites should appear first in search results, GoTo let advertisers pay for the top spots.

We're not talking Google Ads (which would come later), where advertisers pay to sit alongside search results. We're talking advertisers straight-up paying to be the search result.

Not only were the search results pay to play, users could see what advertisers paid!

It was stone-age primitive: Bids started at a penny per click. The bids were publicly visible (!), and if another advertiser outbid you, GoTo would email you so you could raise your bid and reclaim your position.

In short, whoever paid the most got the best placement.

Not surprisingly, plenty of people thought this was a terrible idea. But it did help cut down on spammy sites that were beginning to infiltrate search results, since now website owners had to "pay to play."

The model became wildly profitable, as GoTo began syndicating its results across other high-traffic sites like AOL and Yahoo. Eventually it became the model that Google copied, with substantial improvements, for its own AdWords engine.

As clunky as the system was, GoTo had a critical insight for marketers: What people search for reveals what they want.

GoTo eventually rebranded itself as Overture, got rid of the public search, and focused exclusively on serving paid ads. The company was acquired by Yahoo in 2003 for over a billion dollars. (Here's the full, fascinating story.)

Today, ChatGPT Ads feel a little like GoTo.com in 1998.

They're clunky. The targeting and reporting aren't great. And for B2B marketers especially, the audience is limited because most ChatGPT business users are on paid plans (which don't have any ads).

Even though ChatGPT Ads are not ready for prime time, don't dismiss them.

The lesson of GoTo.com is that new advertising channels often look awkward and clumsy. ChatGPT Ads are probably not right for your business, right now.

But as you're planning next year's marketing budget, AI is almost certainly going to deserve its own line item.

In our full guide below, we break down how ChatGPT Ads are working today for real marketers, where they fall short, and where they're likely headed.

AI advertising may not be ready for your budget. But your budget should be getting ready for AI advertising.

Stay human,

John Hargrave

CEO, Media Shower

Better Tools

How ChatGPT Ads Work (+ Examples and Walkthrough)

ChatGPT Ads have arrived, and they come with a tantalizing promise: target people based on the business problem unfolding in their conversation, rather than a keyword alone. For B2B marketers, that could reveal a much richer kind of buyer intent.

There’s just one hitch. Many of the professional users B2B advertisers want to reach are on paid, ad-free ChatGPT plans, while early campaigns still face limited targeting, reporting, and performance data.

So should B2B marketers jump in or sit this one out for now? We look at the early evidence and outline a smarter way to test ChatGPT Ads without betting the pipeline on them.

Read about it on the Media Shower blog →

Better Creativity

AI Video of the Week

"Game of Thrones, Set in the 1950s" (courtesy r/aivideos)

Better Practices

Burma-Shave and the Power of Sequential Advertising

You’re driving down the road in the 1920s in your Ford Model T, and you pass five billboards in a row: 

YOUR SHAVING BRUSH

HAS HAD ITS DAY

WHY NOT SHAVE

THE MODERN WAY

BURMA-SHAVE

With the advent of automobiles and the emerging American highway system, the company pioneered this clever “sequential ad” campaign, which ran for nearly 40 years. The Burma-Shave billboards were short, funny, and easy to read at 35 miles per hour. 

Today, advertisers have a similar "sequential advertising" format in the form of LinkedIn and Instagram Carousels. Here's what marketers can learn from this classic campaign.

One post is great → But stories shine → When every part → Falls into line → Media Shower

Better Campaigns

One Festival, Thousands of Moments: Lollapalooza’s Content Playbook

At Lollapalooza, one Instagram post about an impromptu mud-wrestling meetup drew hundreds of people and created a whole new event inside the festival. That’s distributed content in action.

Lollapalooza turns performances, surprises, collaborations, creator posts, livestreams, and fan reactions into thousands of individual media moments while the festival is still happening. And you don’t need 1,000 fireworks or 660 gallons of gold paint to borrow the playbook.

This week, we break down how marketers can design events for shareable moments, capture more perspectives, publish while attention is hot, and make one event work much harder.

Read the playbook on the Media Shower blog →

Better Attitude

Marketing Meme of the Week

Courtesy r/ChatGPT

Media Shower

Marketing better.

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