Nobody Can Sell You a Seat at the AI Table

I'm sure you've seen the promises from certain vendors in our space as well as marketing companies in general: 'work with us and we'll optimize you for AI search to make sure you're one of only a couple of companies that show up in AI answers!' I'm here to tell you that this is bullshit. Not just because they don't have the capabilities. But also because the AI providers have very clear incentives to make sure that such a thing can't happen. Let's cover it all below. NOTE: My articles this week will be a bit shorter than usual. I'm speaking this week on the NARPM Florida State Conference cruise, so I'm having to write these on the drive down while my son drives. So while you're reading this, I'll be enjoying the high seas! PMAssist Industry Insights is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. There's one very big reason that I'm not worried about this: everyone wants to monetize everything nowadays. Yes, I preach revenue maximization and ancillary fees in our industry, but I'm hardly an aberration. Every industry is the same. Every industry is trying to monetize every interaction they can to the maximum extent. If you think AI providers are any different, you're delusional. They won't be satisfied simply selling tokens and monthly subscriptions for their service. We've never seen the kind of investment that's currently taking place in AI. In fact, AI investment and spending is basically driving our entire economy right now. If not for AI, we would almost certainly currently be in a recession. So do you really think all of these investors who have dumped trillions of dollars into AI aren't going to demand absolute maximum monetization? Come on. But this isn't just theoretical, anyway. We've already seen it. This starts all the way back in November of 2024 when Perplexity started a pilot program of ads showing up in the margins of their AI answers. A year later, Google followed suit after a short test program that ran for a few months. Sponsored ads started showing up at the bottom of AI answers in AI mode on Google search results. Since most people are using Google Gemini in search results and not on the Gemini app directly, most people are seeing the ads. OpenAI (the company that owns ChatGPT) didn't waste any time. By early this year they had completed their own pilot program.And it had brought in $100 million in annual recurring revenue from just a small test pool. If you think OpenAI is going to back off now, think again. While Anthropic is already getting to the point of profitability because of their deep enterprise market penetration, OpenAIreallyneeds more revenue. As the LLM of choice for normal consumers instead of businesses, token revenue is a lot harder to come by for them. They really need the ads to reach profitability. So you can expect them to be all-in on ads. We can see that because they dropped their minimum ad spend requirement after just a few months. Now anyone can buy ad space in ChatGPT. If you're using the free or 'Go' tiers of ChatGPT, you get ads. It took Google years to figure out that they could charge advertisers for sponsored spots in their search results. AI companies figured it out almost immediately. And it's only going to get more pervasive. Google, no surprise, is the one being most aggressive here. While others are usually appending the sponsored ads to the end or the side of AI answers, Google is embedding them right in the main text. They're highlighting them as sponsored, but still. At this point, OpenAI now has full ad programs running in 40+ countries. You can participate. It's usually around $3-5 per click. I haven't tested it out yet, but I'm probably going to soon. I will note that Perplexity ended its program already because they claimed that it 'hurt AI credibility.' In reality, they ended the program because their market share is miniscule, and they didn't have a big enough audience to sustain an ad bidding environment. The other players don't have that problem. Contrary to what they claim, these companies pushing that they can get you to show up in organic AI results on a consistent basis are lying to you. Unless they're saying that they're going to manage your AI sponsored ad spend, they will have little to no impact on your organic AI results that you couldn't do all on your own with the help of…AI. The reason for this is simple: unlike traditional search results, AI outputs are not deterministic. AI is probabilistic, like quantum physics. That's why you get a different answer every time you ask the same LLM the same question. Sure, it's similar, because the facts about your question haven't changed, but the answer will be different each time. Why AI works like this is a much longer discussion that gets into how AI is trained, but it's not necessary to understand for our purposes here today. Essentially, you just need to know that no marketer can ever guarantee you a spot in the organic answers that an LLM will provide to people. And it's not just that the LLM works on a probabilistic basis generally, it's also that YOUR results will be different than someone else's, because LLMs employ memory about you that gets included in the prompts behind the scenes. Over time, your instance of ChatGPT learns your profession, where you live, what hobbies you enjoy, etc., and all of that factors in to the results that it gives you when you ask it questions. In addition, the models are constantly changing. Each model has its own training, its own parameters, its own weights. And this is true even from one model to the next within the same AI provider. Sonnet has different parameters than Opus which has different parameters than Fable. All from Anthropic, but all different models that will answer questions differently. So even if a marketer somehow figured out how to manipulate Sonnet to always give people you in the answer for 'who is the best property manager in Portland,' they're still going to have to figure out how to do the same thing in Mythos, which they don't have access to until its already released. In other words, it's an impossible game to play with any degree of certainty that makes it worthwhile for you to pay them for the effort. But let's say it someday does become possible to actually buy a specific result in AI answers. Do you really think Google and OpenAI are going to allow some third party marketer to be the one who benefits from that monetization opportunity? Of course not. They will tweak their models so that the third parties can't manipulate them, and then they'll start selling the exclusivity to you directly. Do I think they'll do this? Probably not. Sure, they'll prevent marketers from being able to manipulate the model to guarantee a certain anwer, but I don't think they'll actually directly sell exclusivity, for two reasons: It hurts the credibility of their models, and they depend upon that. If everyone realizes that ChatGPT is only giving them sponsored answers, then they'll switch to Google, or vice versa. It would lead to monopolies by the players who pay for the exclusivity, destroying the competitors who are necessary to keep bidding costs up. In other words, monetization only works if you have lots of companies bidding against each other. If you allow one player to destroy all of their competition, then they no longer need to pay you for ads, because they're the default answer to the question, anyway. This is why Google doesn't allow you to buy exclusivity on their traditional search engine product. It's alway a three-pack. Gotta keep that competition going so that the ad prices stay high! No, you don't need to be paying anyone to be listed in their directory service to try to get better AI optimization. But that doesn't mean that you should be doing nothing. Search is changing. Traditional search is already being eroded, and it will eventually be completely replaced by AI search. So here are some actionable items: Work with a web developer who understands AIO. Companies like PMW, Fourandhalf, and ClearLead Digital. At this point, your website is more about appealing to the LLMs than it is about appealing to humans. A majority of internet traffic is already automated (bots and AI). You read that right. We crossed that line already. You need your website to be designed with AI in mind. I wouldn't recommend buying AI sponsored listings yet, but start keeping an eye on news analysis about how well it's working. I would stick with paid lead providers like Geek Real Estate for the moment. Our lead flow from them has not slowed down as AI search has increased, so the value is still there. And if anyone is going to figure out how to best optimize for AI sponsorships, it will be them, and then they can just transition your ads to that platform and keep the paid leads coming as they always have. Transparency is essential. If you don't have your pricing (all of it) on your website, then you're telling AI that you aren't worthwhile. AI wants to know everything there is to know about you. Make it easy for it. Pricing, FAQs, a knowledge base, tons of blog posts, just put as much information on your site as you possibly can, maximally transparent. That is what AI will reward. Just ask the AI! Talk to Claude, have it crawl your site, and have it give you recommendations on what you need to do to better show up in AI search results. Trust me, the AI knows better what it wants to see than some random company does trying to sell you a directory listing that is supposedly targeted at AI search. There is still one big exception to all of this monetization talk: Anthropic. Because Anthropic has been so successful at making Claude the go-to provider for businesses, especially enterprise-level businesses, they really can make money purely by charging people for subscriptions and tokens, and they can charge a premium on it that allows them to market themselves as the ad-free AI solution. At least for now, they seem to be sticking to this posture. Will that last? I don't know. Monetization of every possible channel is hard to resist. I think what's more likely is that Anthropic will try to kill their competition, wait until it's down to just a couple of major players, and then roll out the ads once they don't have to compete with multiple LLMs. Don't rush to give someone money on promises that they're going to make you surface in AI answer results. They simply don't have that capability, and you don't need it anyway. For now, keep on keeping on with your marketing efforts, and just make sure your website provider is someone solid like PMW who can make sure it's properly optimized. That's enough for now, and it won't cost you a bunch of extra money. I'll be speaking at the upcoming Property Meld MX Summit in just a matter of days! I have attended this event every single year since it started, and I look forward to it every year. This event is perfect not only for your maintenance team, but also for Broker/Owners. Mike Rowe of 'Dirty Jobs' fame is the keynote speaker, so a great get there. And you get the added benefit of getting the see the beauty of South Dakota! If you've never been, it's worth attending just for that. The Black Hills are a beautiful part of America, and you can see attractions like Mount Rushmore and Deadwood. And for our readers, we have a special discount available for you!If you use this link to register, you'll save $100 on the registration fee. Most conferences fill up and sell out in the final two weeks leading up, so your time is short if you want to secure a spot! Don't delay, register today! Have you heard the great news? NARPM is finally returning to Vegas for the National Convention this year in October! I've been complaining about it ever since the Broker/Owner conference left Vegas years ago, so I'm thrilled to see us go back. This year we'll be at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino, and I have it on good authority that we've secured a big name for a celebrity keynote. In addition, I'll be presenting again at a NARPM National event for the first time in a few years! Property Meld CEO Ray Hespen and I will be talking about maintenance and using data to make outcomes predictable. This should be a fantastic conference, so don't miss it. And don't forget to book your rooms at the resort when you book your registration! The room block is limited, and people are always disappointed when trying to book rooms last minute. Click here for information and registration. Are you an experienced PM industry employee looking for work? Or are you a PM company or vendor seeking the best talent? Send me your info and I'll feature it here! Each week we also feature a Remote Team Member available through VPM Solutions. See this week's below! Click on the image to get more info: Here are our statistics for the last 30 days: 7,684 subscribers 70,906 impressions 35.54% open rate Issue with the highest readership: 'The Intentional Investor Isn't Coming Back' 4,778 impressions We always have ad slots available for industry vendors.Sign up for an ad or ad package here. Pricing and ad details can also be found at that link. Questions about advertising? Email abio@propertymanagerassist.com or book a timehere. Disagree with my take here? Have a different perspective? There's nothing I love more than a good debate or even just an intelligent conversation. If you'd like to jump on a podcast recording with me to discuss this topic, please let me know! PMAssist Industry Insights is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.