Ads Inside AI: The Next Media Channel Marketers Can’t Ignore
AMENIA, NY – The advertising industry has spent years using artificial intelligence to optimize what it already does. Now the tables are turning: AI itself is becoming the medium.
As hundreds of millions of users shift their attention from search boxes and social feeds to conversational assistants, a new category of ad inventory is opening up inside the large language models that power them. OpenAI’s ChatGPT ads reached a $1 billion annualized revenue run rate in less than 200 days, with tens of thousands of advertisers now buying across more than 40 countries.
“Imagine being in the early days of the Google ads, Facebook ads, TikTok ads,” said Andrea Tortella, CEO of Thrad, in this video interview with Beet.TV. “You have this net new supply, new ad real estate that is being monetized.”
Two phases of AI in advertising
The first act, which dominated 2025, was about deploying AI to improve existing processes: generative video, smarter bidding, better measurement. The second act, now underway, is about placing ads directly inside LLM environments.
“2026, we’re seeing actual ads entering LLMs,” Tortella said. “ChatGPT launched advertising, other LLMs now have advertising.”
Emarketer forecasts that US AI ad spending will reach $68.25 billion by 2030, more than doubling over five years. But the analyst firm notes that more than 80 percent of that spending in 2026 will appear adjacent to AI-generated content – such as Google AI Overviews – rather than inside pure chatbot conversations. Standalone chatbot ad spending is expected to hit $0.96 billion in 2026, up more than 1,600 percent year over year.
Context is the new cookie
As third-party cookies fade, Tortella argued that contextual data will become the foundation of effective targeting. Partnerships that fill gaps in a marketer’s data infrastructure, he said, are the ones that will matter.
“My take is that the future of the cookie is actually context,” he said. “Now that agents can actually take action, I want to give as much information as possible to those agents.”
The logic is that LLMs expose rich, real-time intent signals when users ask for recommendations, comparisons, or decisions. That creates an opportunity – but also a risk, if advertising compromises trust. OpenAI has published ad policies requiring clear labeling and independence from answers.
Thrad, which describes itself as a DSP and SSP for LLMs, launched four native ad formats in June designed specifically for conversational environments: inline cards, branded follow-up prompts, carousels, and interactive polls.
Agentic AI meets media planning
Beyond the buying side, Tortella sees AI agents transforming the planning phase of marketing. Agents can research regulations, demographics, and cultural nuances that a human team might miss when entering a new market.
“If I’m a brand selling fitness products in the UK and I’m trying to enter Germany, that’s a very different profile,” he said. “Maybe there’s some regulation that prevents me to position my brand and say some things that I’m saying here that I can’t say there. And so having AI actually help me, protect me in those kind of settings, I think that that’s incredible.”
Gartner predicts that 60 percent of brands will use agentic AI for streamlined one-to-one interactions by 2028. IAB’s 2026 Outlook found 96 percent of buyers are aware of agentic AI for ad buying and campaign execution, though confidence remains higher for performance analysis and creative optimization than for deal negotiation.
Separating hype from reality
Asked to distinguish hype from substance, Tortella pointed to automation of existing workflows as the most immediate payoff. But he returned to the bigger structural shift: LLMs as a media channel.
“We’re seeing the fastest emerging channel being LLMs, ads in LLMs,” he said. “That’s the net new inventory that is emerging. That’s where eyeballs are shifting to.”
Whether that shift will rival the early days of Google or Facebook remains to be seen. But for marketers watching attention migrate into conversational interfaces, the message is straightforward: a new surface is being monetized, and the land grab is underway.
AMENIA, NY – The advertising industry has spent years using artificial intelligence to optimize what it already does. Now the tables are turning: AI itself is becoming the medium.
As hundreds of millions of users shift their attention from search boxes and social feeds to conversational assistants, a new category of ad inventory is opening up inside the large language models that power them. OpenAI’s ChatGPT ads reached a $1 billion annualized revenue run rate in less than 200 days, with tens of thousands of advertisers now buying across more than 40 countries.
“Imagine being in the early days of the Google ads, Facebook ads, TikTok ads,” said Andrea Tortella, CEO of Thrad, in this video interview with Beet.TV. “You have this net new supply, new ad real estate that is being monetized.”
Two phases of AI in advertising
The first act, which dominated 2025, was about deploying AI to improve existing processes: generative video, smarter bidding, better measurement. The second act, now underway, is about placing ads directly inside LLM environments.
“2026, we’re seeing actual ads entering LLMs,” Tortella said. “ChatGPT launched advertising, other LLMs now have advertising.”
Emarketer forecasts that US AI ad spending will reach $68.25 billion by 2030, more than doubling over five years. But the analyst firm notes that more than 80 percent of that spending in 2026 will appear adjacent to AI-generated content – such as Google AI Overviews – rather than inside pure chatbot conversations. Standalone chatbot ad spending is expected to hit $0.96 billion in 2026, up more than 1,600 percent year over year.
Context is the new cookie
As third-party cookies fade, Tortella argued that contextual data will become the foundation of effective targeting. Partnerships that fill gaps in a marketer’s data infrastructure, he said, are the ones that will matter.
“My take is that the future of the cookie is actually context,” he said. “Now that agents can actually take action, I want to give as much information as possible to those agents.”
The logic is that LLMs expose rich, real-time intent signals when users ask for recommendations, comparisons, or decisions. That creates an opportunity – but also a risk, if advertising compromises trust. OpenAI has published ad policies requiring clear labeling and independence from answers.
Thrad, which describes itself as a DSP and SSP for LLMs, launched four native ad formats in June designed specifically for conversational environments: inline cards, branded follow-up prompts, carousels, and interactive polls.
Agentic AI meets media planning
Beyond the buying side, Tortella sees AI agents transforming the planning phase of marketing. Agents can research regulations, demographics, and cultural nuances that a human team might miss when entering a new market.
“If I’m a brand selling fitness products in the UK and I’m trying to enter Germany, that’s a very different profile,” he said. “Maybe there’s some regulation that prevents me to position my brand and say some things that I’m saying here that I can’t say there. And so having AI actually help me, protect me in those kind of settings, I think that that’s incredible.”
Gartner predicts that 60 percent of brands will use agentic AI for streamlined one-to-one interactions by 2028. IAB’s 2026 Outlook found 96 percent of buyers are aware of agentic AI for ad buying and campaign execution, though confidence remains higher for performance analysis and creative optimization than for deal negotiation.
Separating hype from reality
Asked to distinguish hype from substance, Tortella pointed to automation of existing workflows as the most immediate payoff. But he returned to the bigger structural shift: LLMs as a media channel.
“We’re seeing the fastest emerging channel being LLMs, ads in LLMs,” he said. “That’s the net new inventory that is emerging. That’s where eyeballs are shifting to.”
Whether that shift will rival the early days of Google or Facebook remains to be seen. But for marketers watching attention migrate into conversational interfaces, the message is straightforward: a new surface is being monetized, and the land grab is underway.
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