Hey👋,
I'm Giacomo

It took Meta 15 years to build a $200B ad business.

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OpenAI plans to get halfway there in 4. 🤯

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Pinterest has been selling ads for 9 years.

They made $4.2B last year.

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Snap has been at it for 10 years.

~$5.2B in 2025.

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OpenAI plans to reach half of Meta's size by 2030.

Starting from basically zero!

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Here's their roadmap, leaked to investors via Axios reporting:

2026: $2.5B

2027: $11B

2028: $25B

2029: $53B

2030: $100B

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That's a growth curve with no precedent in the history of online advertising.

OpenAI is forecasting a 152% ad revenue CAGR over four years.

More than double TikTok's, the fastest-growing ad platform in history so far, which grew at an estimated 71% CAGR between 2021 and 2025.

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But it gets even more interesting.

I did the math on revenue per user.

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ChatGPT reported 900 million weekly active users as of February this year.

Ads only run on the Free and Go tiers, roughly 95% of users, ~850M.

That means OpenAI would earn around $3 per user in 2026.

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They target 2.75B weekly users by 2030, so ~$40 per user.

For reference,Meta currently earns ~$59 per user.

So OpenAI's 2030 target requires 68% of Meta's current monetisation rate.

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Ambitious is an understatement.

But not impossible, given the breakneck user growth ChatGPT has already experienced.

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Plus, OpenAI ads also offer something other platforms don't.

The depth of data it collects about its users is unprecedented, and extremely valuable to advertisers.

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Imagine your personal assistant and mentor selling your conversations to the highest bidder. That's essentially what's happening.

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But the real question isn't whether $100B is achievable.

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It's what happens to the rest of the ad industry when 2.75 billion people are asking an AI instead of scrolling a feed or typing a search query.

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Sources: Axios, Reuters, TechCrunch and full-year earnings report.

Charts courtesy of Claude.

Interesting to see LinkedIn climbing the ranking.

I noticed it first-hand on Google AI Overviews.

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It often cites professional and insightful posts, even those with very little engagement. I saw posts with just one like from small accounts being cited as the top source.

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It seems LLMs get it.It’s not all about virality. Sometimes content quality matters too.

Source: Semrush via Andreessen Horowitz Instagram account

Most ChatGPT vs Claude takes are wrong.

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They ignore the one thing that actually matters.

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It’s not ChatGPT vs Claude.

It’s quota vs quota!

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Opus 4.6 Extended Thinking > GPT 5.4 Extended Thinking.

But to make Opus 4.6 Extended useful, you need Claude Max.

There’s no way around it.

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On Claude Pro ($20/month), the quota is too limited.

For serious work, it makes Opus 4.6 almost unusable.

Claude Max starts at $100/month!

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ChatGPT Pro 5.4 Extended > Opus 4.6 Extended Thinking.

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But again,

ChatGPT Pro is $200/month.😅

And GPT Pro 5.4 Extended is available only there.

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That’s why this is not a model comparison.

It’s a budget comparison.💰

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If you have the budget, ChatGPT Pro is the best option for most tasks, including research, coding, images and videos.

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If you compare $20/month plans like for like, ChatGPT still wins.

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Not because it has the best model.

But because the quota for complex queries is higher.

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And in real workflows, that matters more than people think.

I keep hitting the quota on Claude, I almost never hit it in ChatGPT.

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Few extra notes:

• Claude is better with slides, and pptx files.

• The Claude add-in for PowerPoint and Excel is genuinely excellent.

• Claude Artifacts can build local interactive dashboards, which is cool, but for me it’s still a nice-to-have rather than something I’d use in production.

• ChatGPT wins in marketing because it also handles images and video, and apps.

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For vibe-coding, Claude Code and OpenAI Codex are broadly comparable.

But even there, the same issue comes back.

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If you want the full power of Claude Code, you’ll likely choose Opus 4.6 Extended. And then you hit the quota wall all over again.

Extremely frustrating actually.

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My conclusion:

For most people, the real decision is not Claude vs. ChatGPT.

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It’s how much you’re willing to spend on AI every month.

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That’s it.

Tried Starlink for the first time today.

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On an airBaltic flight, apparently the first (and only?) European airline offering it. And it’s free.

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In fact, I’m writing this post mid-air!

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It’s faster than any complimentary WiFi I’ve ever tried, it feels like normal home internet.

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A real game changer.

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Looking forward to the Starlink IPO. I almost never buy individual stocks, but I might make an exception here.

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Cheers from the Baltics!

I would have never made it to my German exam without ChatGPT.

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For the past couple of months, GPT became my personal teacher.

And honestly, it was the best teacher I’ve ever had.

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Since I moved to Zurich, I’ve tried everything:

group classes, intensive study-abroad programs, private tutors, online learning apps.

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Nothing really worked.

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Until something dawned on me.

I use ChatGPT all the time to learn how to code or improve my writing.

So why wasn’t I using it to learn German?

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I guess my mind was still stuck in the old playbook:

courses, textbooks, learning apps.

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So I created a project.

I gave it detailed instructions about my current level and what I wanted to achieve.

I uploaded exam templates and regulations so GPT understood exactly what exam I was preparing for.

Then I structured the chats like chapters in a book.

Each chat focused on one grammar topic, with tables, examples and exercises.

Not huge conversations. Just quick prompts like:

“Show me the declension of personal pronouns and how to use them.”

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I kept coming back to each chat like a chapter in a textbook.

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Then I created a separate chat just for exercises.

The exact type I would find in the exam.

Except GPT can generate infinite exercises, tailored to the exam format.

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Try doing that with a traditional learning app.

Or even with a human teacher.

Or… with a human girlfriend with limited patience 😅.

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This experience made something very clear to me:

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AI isn’t just a tool.

It’s a 24/7 personal assistant and tutor.

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Use it as such.

You’re not getting hired because ChatGPT doesn’t know you exist.

It became clear to me while sourcing candidates for a new role in our team.

We decided to do active search, but scanning through hundreds of LinkedIn profiles randomly didn't look like a strategy.

So, I turned to ChatGPT.
I asked to map companies in our space and find relevant profiles employed there.

In 16 minutes 🤯, ChatGPT gave me relevant people I would have hardly found otherwise.

And that’s when it really hit me.

What if I was looking for a new job and other hiring managers were doing the same? Would I show up?

What if I was a consultant? This could make or break my business.
And the exact same logic applies to brands.

So, would ChatGPT recommend your profile today, yes or no?

The reality of the AI race.

ChatGPT ads don’t change advertising.
They change what performance marketing even means!

OpenAI just confirmed it will experiment with ads inside ChatGPT.

What we know so far:
- US only.
- Free and Go tiers only (Go = new $8/month, US-only plan).
- Ads clearly labelled, fully separated from organic answers.
- No native sponsored mentions (for now).

So far, so reasonable.
But the philosophy behind it, is where things get interesting. 🤔

OpenAI says ads are simply a way to make AI accessible to everyone.
Mission > profit.

They also claim they will never optimise for time spent on ChatGPT, prioritising user experience over revenue.

If this sounds familiar, it should.
That’s exactly how Google talked in its early days:
Get users to the best answer, as fast as possible. Then get out of the way.
But we all know how that ended. Google barely sends clicks away now.

So here’s the real shift 👇

Conversational ads!

After seeing an ad, users will be able to chat directly with the advertiser inside ChatGPT.

And let’s be honest:
That is optimising for time spent, LoL😅

And it changes everything for marketers:
- Landing page is no longer the goal.
- Conversations come first.
- Traffic comes second.

Clicks and traffic were easy to track and optimise for.
But conversations? Good luck!

The basic rules of performance marketing are being rewritten.
And once again, it's day one!

I thought tradition and progress couldn’t coexist.
Then I visited Bahrain. 🇧🇭

A few weeks ago, I barely knew where it sat on the map.
Now, I’m back with my whole world perspective challenged.

Bahrain is a modern, wealthy economy, similar to its neighbours, like the UAE.
Skyscrapers, artificial islands, the full package.

But, unlike them, it still preserves a strong Arabic and Islamic identity.

In the Western mindset, those two things are often seen as incompatible.

I hardly saw any Westerners around.
Most women wore full-length black robes, with face coverings, driving luxury cars or browsing fancy shops.

Men wore traditional white robes and headscarves.

Even in high-end shopping malls, background music would stop to make space for live prayers sung from nearby mosques.

Geographically, it’s mostly desert.
From my hotel window 👇.

Sand, few buildings, and a lot of construction!
It feels like a country still expanding, still becoming. Optimism is in the air.

What surprised me even more is that Bahrain’s wealth is not a new phenomenon.

Unlike Qatar or the UAE, it has been a trade and financial hub for millennia!

The great Dilmun civilisation settled there over 5,000 years ago with forts and burial sites still standing.

Not so different from how ancient Roman history lives on in Italy.

This trip helped me put things into perspective.

Traditional, non-Western societies can be modern, wealthy, and forward-looking, without giving up who they are.

Progress isn’t about abandoning tradition to become someone else. It’s about building on it.

I bought my girlfriend’s Christmas presents on ChatGPT.

Turns out, I wasn’t alone 😅.

Because shopping is now the second most common AI use case.

Which means people are discovering and purchasing products inside AI tools, instead of traditional channels like organic search or social media.

This scares the hell out of retailers!
So here's how they're reacting:

1️⃣ Block AI tools.
Amazon blocked OpenAI crawlers and sued Perplexity.
Fair enough. When you’re the default destination already, you don’t need intermediaries.

2️⃣ Collaborate.
Walmart is bringing its products to ChatGPT checkout.
Instacart already launched a GPT shopping app.
They’re treating AI like what it actually is: a new distribution channel.

3️⃣ Build your own chatbot.
Amazon launched Rufus.
Zalando launched Zalando Assistant.
“If users want a chat interface, we’ll build it ourselves.”

It’ll be fascinating to see which strategy wins in 2026.

But I have an idea already.
For everyone who isn’t Amazon, option two is the winner.

We’ve already seen this with Google Shopping.
What initially looked like a tax for visibility is now the largest retail acquisition channel.

Today, not being on Google Shopping is unthinkable.
Next year, not being purchasable via AI will be the same.

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🔔 Everyday I try to make sense of the AI Marketing revolution with posts just like this. If you liked it, consider following me for more!