• by Dave Morgan , Featured Contributor, February 26, 2026

That the future of AI will be ad-supported is not only smart but inevitable, and will create better AI technology and consumer value faster than a future of AI without ad support. Here's why:

Advertising can pay a lot of bills. AI technology requires massive investments in processing. We’ve already seen investments in the trillions of dollars collectively to help support the experiences we’re learning to love from Chat GPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and others. Ad models and the $1 trillion of annual global spend on advertising paid the bills for the development of the public web, search and social media. It will do this again for AI.

AI at low or no cost is good for society. Some argue that subscription- and usage-based models will be better for AI, keeping it cleaner and purer, but those models always limit accessibility. Fee models only accelerate divisions between economic haves and have-nots. Advertising support has always permitted media products to reach more people much more cost-effectively.

Scale is good for AI. Having more people use AI for more things more often drives self-reinforcing network effects,since learning data is AI’s fuel. The more usage, the more learning, the better AI. More ads will drive faster growth with more access, which means AI itself will get better fast.

It's not an accident that a majority of the most valuable public companies in the world derive all or a significant amount of their profits directly or indirectly from advertising. Think: Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta and Apple. Why shouldn't we expect the same from AI?