Snapchat’s ChatGPT-powered My AI chatbot will soon start displaying paid links that are relevant to the user’s conversation. The company has already been experimenting with sponsored links in My AI, and during the NewFronts advertising event on Tuesday, it announced that it will now start surfacing paid links that are related to a conversation.
Snapchat introduced My AI chatbot, powered by ChatGPT, in February 2021, which can hold conversations, suggest AR filters, and generate photos. After initially releasing My AI exclusively to Snapchat Plus subscribers, the company made it available to all of its 750 million monthly users in April. So far, Snap has seen 2 million My AI conversations per day among its Snapchat Plus subscriber base.
Snapchat’s ChatGPT-powered My AI chatbot is more limited in what it can talk about when compared to ChatGPT, as Snap has trained the bot to avoid things that violate its community guidelines, like swearing, sexually explicit content, violence, and politics. The company says it will screen conversations for inappropriate content or abuse before My AI displays a sponsored link, and it will also take a user’s age into consideration.
The addition of sponsored links to My AI chatbot is aimed at bringing ads to the platform and could help Snap move closer to its goal of increasing its subscriber base to 450 million by the end of this year and boosting revenue to $6 billion in 2023. With the wider availability of ad placements, Snap is pushing into advertising as the company looks to recover from a faltering stock price and layoffs.
In addition to the sponsored links in My AI chatbot, Snapchat has also announced that it’s putting ads in Spotlight, the company’s TikTok-like feed that shows popular short-form videos posted to the platform. The ads will appear between posts as users scroll through the feed, much like they do on TikTok and within Instagram’s Reels. Snapchat is also giving advertisers a way to reserve the first video ad that users see when opening a friend’s story.
Snapchat’s move towards advertising is a significant development, and the sponsored links in My AI chatbot are just the beginning. It will be interesting to see how users react to the ads and how they affect the platform’s user engagement. Nonetheless, this addition could bring significant revenue for Snapchat, which will undoubtedly help it achieve its ambitious growth targets.
