Anthropic’s $8M Shot at OpenAI | Fast Five Shorts
This Omni Talk Retail Fast Five segment, sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Mirakl, Ocampo Capital, Infios, Quorso, and Veloq, explores Anthropic’s Super Bowl campaign pledging that Claude AI will remain ad-free.
Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga, alongside Shoptalk’s Joe Laszlo, debate whether ad-free AI is sustainable, what it means for monetization models, and how AI platforms may shape retail and commerce.
⏩ Tune in for the full episode here.
#Anthropic #ClaudeAI #OpenAI #AIAdvertising #RetailTech #OmniTalk
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Transcript
Anthropic spent millions on super bowl commercials pledging that its cloud AI chatbot will remain completely ad free, taking direct shots at rival OpenAI's decision to introduce ads to ChatGPT.
Speaker A:According to multiple news outlets, Anthropic aired a 60 second pre game and a 30 second in game ad featuring the tagline ads are coming to AI but not to Claude, with 30 second slots averaging $8 million at the Super Bowl.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker A:The company says its business model is, quote, straightforward, end quote, generating revenue through enterprise contracts and paid subscriptions rather than advertising.
Speaker A:And the personal nature of conversations with cloud would make ads feel, quote, incongruous, end quote, and in many cases, inappropriate.
Speaker A:OpenAI CEO Sam Altman quickly, quickly hit back, calling Anthropic ads funny but dishonest and taking a swipe at their business model, saying Anthropic serves an expensive product to rich people, despite Claude's also offering free access.
Speaker A:In one commercial, a person asked for advice about communicating with their mother and the AI smoothly transitions from helpful guidance to an ad for a quote, mature dating site that connects sensitive cubs with roaring cougars, end quote.
Speaker A:All right, Chris, we'll go to you first on this one.
Speaker A:Oh, okay.
Speaker A:Is Anthropic's concern about its Chatbots answers being influenced by third party product placements as big of a concern or opportunity as Anthropic is advertising it to be?
Speaker B:Oh, wow.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:God, I can't wait to get Joe's opinion on this too, because he's probably much closer to this in terms of prepping the content for Shop Talk next month.
Speaker B:But, you know, I, I, I don't think so.
Speaker B:I think they're kind of, I think they're trying to make something out of this more than it is.
Speaker B:I mean, I think you just look at the evidence, you see, you see how free with advertising, streaming sites are coming into play, how Netflix and Amazon have both added ad, you know, you know, options to their portfolio.
Speaker B:So it's existed in Google forever and no one cares.
Speaker B:I mean, it's a nice sound bite, but to me, the economics went out at the end.
Speaker B:You know, that's just people are going to gravitate towards that.
Speaker B:People gravitate towards free and, you know, if you got to exchange something and, you know, give something in exchange for that, fine, you know, whatever.
Speaker B:And so I think, I think there's enough data points out there to say, like, this is kind of a hard pill to swallow for me, but if I'm Anthropic, the nice thing about it is I can always Change my mind and go back.
Speaker B:And the good thing is, the good thing is I think anthropic in the mind of the end consumer is probably a second tier consideration relative to ChatGPT.
Speaker B:Because everyone always says ChatGPT, they don't.
Speaker A:Say for rich people, Chris.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:It's AI for rich people.
Speaker B:So yeah, yeah, I actually prefer Claude to ChatGPT.
Speaker B:And so I think for that reason it's a very good marketing play to drive awareness of what they are and who they are, regardless of how this plays out in the long run.
Speaker B:That's my take.
Speaker C:Eh.
Speaker C:I thought it was a super clever ad and it's funny.
Speaker C:It's.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:One of at least two ads during the super bowl that were promoting AI by talking about how bad it is.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:The Chris Hemsworth Alexa ad about all the ways Alexa could kill you to promote Alexa was also really interesting to me.
Speaker C:So like here's, you know, you should be chatting, getting advice from, from a chatbot and then midway through it suddenly like starts throwing in paid, paid promotions to you is sort of a weird way.
Speaker C:Even if you're kind of as Claude like saying this is what the other guys are doing, not us, it's still kind of for somebody who's not played with those things very much anymore.
Speaker C:Not necessarily the best way to entice somebody to give it a try.
Speaker A:Yeah, no, I agree.
Speaker A:I mean, I think, I actually wonder if this couldn't be more beneficial for Claude when they do.
Speaker A:And I think they will decide to add and add like a free, a better freemium version where they are using the fact that they do have more of a connection like Claude is more of like a support system like you use it for, not the quick hit answers like ChatGPT.
Speaker A:I think this is what a lot of users are utilizing for, you know, writing for intimate questions they could, that could actually set them up for a more personalized offering if they can get it right.
Speaker A:If it's not saying, you know, here, go check out these Cougar ads or whatever it is when you're trying to get advice about how to talk to your mom.
Speaker A:But what I do think that there is an opportunity there for Anthropic down the road to say, look, we're adding ads, but it's still going to be a premium experience.
Speaker A:It's getting awareness out there to more people who don't know about Cloud already who've used ChatGPT and maybe are looking for something additional.
Speaker A:But I, I just, I cannot imagine a world where we have a free like where it's just completely no ads across any of this.
Speaker A:It's just, it's a search tool and I think that we're always going to eventually default to, to here's the paid version.
Speaker A:Here's and, and hopefully a better personalized paid version for people.
Speaker C:Yeah, I mean it reminds me of the early days of the search engine wars too, right?
Speaker C:I mean when Google first introduced like paid ads and we're very thoughtful about the blue box and like, like the ad, you'll always be able to tell the ads and you know, depending on which search engine you choose.
Speaker C:Like the other ones were kind of like oh that's, that's the end.
Speaker C:And it certainly wasn't the end for, for Google back when they did it I think, I think it just comes down to disclosure and keeping the promoted sponsored content very separate from the organic.
Speaker C:Although there's this bigger question right now about what is influencing the answers that all of the chatbots are giving.
Speaker C:I mean there's this whole industry growing up around AEO and Geo and there's certainly going to be a workshop session at ShopDocs bring about how companies are trying to maybe not by paying the chatbots directly but through smart content creation and curation like nudge and influence the answers that ChatGPT, Claude and all the others are giving.
Speaker C:So it's a very interesting moment as far as like how do you get on the good side of those, those guys because.
Speaker C:Or those things because they are becoming more and more influential.
Speaker B:It was one hell of a commercial though.
Speaker B:One hell of a commercial.
Speaker B:Like I gotta give them credit, that was a great commercial.
Speaker C:But it's good to, it's good to.
Speaker B:Know that I think unanswer were all kind of like yeah, this feels like kind of a ginned up marketing ploy at best.
