Soap Operas were named after being sponsored by a soap company. One company instead of a variety of ads.

ChatGPT etc will spawn an answer service (as distinct from a search engine). It might only happen when we fully understand what it can give accurate answers to. Quite possibly it outputs answers and ideas to explore. The latter being a fancy way of saying it is not confident of being correct.

People will learn what an answer service is good for. It won’t be for finding a local plumber! Which means the types of ads we see in search engines won’t necessarily apply.

If you want a summary of the best features of an iPhone, then perhaps the ads we are used to seeing on Google can appear there. But I expect it would be more like this:

• Sponsored ad at the top, from a sponsor – one advertiser who sponsors all queries of that type. For example, an electronics store could sponsor all tech queries.
• Embedded affiliate links to products – possibly a link to something akin to Google Shopping
• A list of suggested resources, commercial or otherwise, at the bottom
• Below those resources, some contextual ads, like on Google Search. Yep, relegated to the bottom, but still existing because why not.

But the sponsorship will be new and lucrative. All requests for the system to conjure up imagined lyrics can be sponsored by Spotify. All generative images by Adobe. And so on.

It could become new/fresh/different enough to become a successful form of advertising. We might see the return of soaps sponsoring TV shows.