The Next Battle in Advertising Won’t Be for the Click. It’ll Be for the Recommendation.

For more than two decades, digital advertising has largely been built around interruption and intent.

Google became extraordinarily powerful by placing advertising alongside something somebody was already searching for.

Meta built an advertising machine capable of identifying people who might be interested in something before they explicitly searched for it.

Now AI could introduce another model entirely.

Advertising inside the recommendation.

Recent experiments with advertising in ChatGPT provide an early glimpse of what this could look like. Rather than simply displaying a sponsored result beneath an AI response, the experience can introduce the advertisement with contextual language related to the conversation.

That may sound like a relatively small interface change.

I don't think it is.

Because it points towards a potentially profound change in the relationship between the customer, the platform and the advertiser.

From search engine to decision engine

Consider how traditional search works. You have a problem.

You translate that problem into a search query.

Google returns a collection of possible answers.

You evaluate them. You click. You research. You compare.

Eventually, you make a decision.

Generative AI compresses that journey.

Instead of asking for information, we increasingly ask AI for judgement.

What should I buy?

Which option is best for me?

What would you recommend?

Compare these products.

What should I do next?

The interface is no longer simply retrieving information. It is helping us interpret it.

And that distinction matters enormously for advertising.

Because the commercial opportunity is no longer limited to appearing beside a search.

It is potentially about appearing inside the process through which the decision is being formed.

Context becomes more valuable than the keyword

Search advertising has historically relied heavily on the keyword as an expression of intent.

Someone searches: best dog food

We can infer something about what they want.

But imagine the conversation instead contains:

I have a two-year-old Labrador who's becoming overweight. He's quite fussy, has a sensitive stomach and I'm looking for healthier food that won't cost a fortune.

That is dramatically richer commercial context.

We don't simply know what somebody is looking for.

We begin to understand why.

Their concerns.

Their constraints.

Their priorities.

Their desired outcome.

Potentially even the emotional tension behind the decision.

And that changes what relevance could mean.

The most valuable advertising systems of the future may not simply match advertisements to keywords or audiences.

They may match solutions to human context.

This is where advertising becomes psychologically interesting

I've argued for some time that marketing doesn't create demand.

It reveals it.

Demand begins before somebody searches, clicks or enquires.

It begins with a gap between someone's current reality and a future they would prefer.

Something feels uncertain.

Something needs improving.

Something needs protecting.

Something needs changing.

Traditional advertising platforms have become extraordinarily sophisticated at detecting the digital signals created by those motivations.

AI potentially goes considerably further.

Because people tell conversational AI what they are trying to achieve.

They explain their circumstances.

They reveal their frustrations.

They describe their ambitions.

They ask questions.

They clarify their priorities.

In other words, they articulate the psychology surrounding demand.

That could make conversational AI an extraordinarily important environment for the next generation of advertising.

But there is a line AI platforms cannot afford to cross

There is also an obvious tension.

People use AI assistants because they trust them to help.

The moment users begin wondering whether a recommendation exists because it is genuinely useful or because somebody paid for it, that trust becomes vulnerable.

That means disclosure isn't merely a regulatory or interface consideration.

It could become fundamental to the entire advertising model.

Users need to understand the difference between:

what the AI recommends

and

what an advertiser has paid to place in front of them.

The platforms that get this distinction right could create an extraordinarily valuable advertising ecosystem.

Those that blur it too aggressively risk damaging the very behaviour that makes conversational advertising valuable in the first place.

Trust.

The implications for marketers are bigger than another advertising channel

It would be easy to look at developments like this and ask:

When can I run ChatGPT ads?

I think that's the least interesting question.

The better question is:

What kind of marketing succeeds when AI increasingly sits between businesses and customers?

Because AI is changing discovery.

Search engines organised information.

Social platforms organised attention.

AI increasingly interprets information on our behalf.

That means brands may have to become understandable not only to customers and algorithms, but to the AI systems helping those customers make decisions.

Clear positioning becomes more important.

Clear differentiation becomes more important.

Understanding the circumstances that create demand becomes more important.

And genuinely knowing why somebody should choose you becomes considerably more important.

AI could make average marketing easier and exceptional marketing harder

AI is already making execution dramatically cheaper.

Advertisements can be generated faster.

Campaigns can be launched faster.

Creative variations can be produced almost instantly.

Research can be accelerated.

Optimisation can increasingly be automated.

So execution itself becomes less scarce.

Understanding becomes more valuable.

Understanding the customer.

Understanding the tension creating demand.

Understanding the outcome they actually want.

Understanding which message matters at which moment.

And understanding how to position a business so that both humans and intelligent systems recognise its relevance.

This is why I believe the next generation of marketers will need to think differently.

The competitive advantage won't simply come from knowing how to operate the platforms.

It will come from understanding what those platforms need to communicate… and why.

The next battle is for the recommendation

Google transformed advertising by monetising intent.

Meta transformed advertising by monetising attention and prediction.

Generative AI could potentially monetise something different:

the moment of recommendation.

We're still at the beginning, and today's experiments shouldn't be mistaken for the final advertising model.

But the direction is worth paying attention to.

Because if consumers increasingly ask AI what to buy, where to go, which provider to choose and what they should do next, then one of the most valuable positions a business can occupy will no longer simply be:

the top of the search results.

It will be:

the most relevant answer to the customer's problem.

And that takes us back to where marketing should have started in the first place.

Understanding demand.