Feb 10, 2025 4 min read

ChatGPT's Big Ad, Google AI Mode, No 'SMB Market'

Dialog: Exchange Number 17

ChatGPT Scores with Big Game Ad

The New York times TV critic Mike Hale named OpenAI's 60 second, $14 million Super Bowl ad (below) "the most purely pleasurable spot of the night." While that was far from the consensus, we too believe it was effective. The majority of Super Bowl commercials "don't work" – meaning they don't deliver an ROI for most brands. In a few cases they can be very effective, and in most others they flop badly. Most of the time if you remember the commercial, you won't remember the product. But OpenAI's ad told a visually engaging story of innovation that was twice as long as most ads, with only sporadic dialogue. If you use ChatGPT it created a sense that you're part of a tech-savvy club at the edge of technology. For those only vaguely familiar with or totally unaware of ChatGPT, it created an impulse to investigate. Indeed, it appears that people did respond by searching for ChatGPT on Google within a few hours of the game. "What is ChatGPT" was one of the top search queries, which indicates people were looking for information after seeing the ad. Google also ran a Super Bowl ad for Gemini, which was praised by pundits and critics, but didn't seem enjoy the same bounce.

ChatGPT's $14M 60 Second Ad

News & Noteworthy

Yext buys Places Scout to enhance benchmarking, competitive intelligence.
Traffic data suggests ChatGPT users more engaged than Google searchers.
OpenAI designing own chips to reduce dependence on Nvidia.
Anthropic launches economic index to track AI impact on the economy.
Gemini 2.0 Flash appears to be closing the gap with ChatGPT.
Gemini can watch YouTube videos, create transcripts, extract data.
Amazon will spend $100 billion on AI this year.
The new AI Alexa makeover to be unveiled on February 26.
Musk makes unsolicited $97B bid for OpenAI, which is quickly rejected.
Musk seeks to replace federal workers with AI agents and systems (WaPo).
DeepSeek hallucinates much more than other AI models.

AI Mode Coming to Google

With the advent of ChatGPT and AI search, Google has faced two major challenges: 1) how to deliver a user experience roughly comparable to what you get on ChatGPT and 2) how not to reduce ad clicks in the process. It may have found an answer in the forthcoming "AI Mode," first reported by 9to5Google. In its iPhone app Google has a toggle between search and AI at the top of the app. Touch the button and it takes you back and forth, although the AI toggle now prompts users to download a dedicated Gemini app. That seems to at least have partly inspired AI Mode, which is also not unlike Bing Copilot's toggle between search results and the AI chat interface. Bing's AI change takes users into a new dedicated area to have a deeper "conversation" about the search query or topic. AI Mode on Google will be similar. A new AI Mode button or tab will appear beside existing search filters (e.g., Images, News) that will take a user to a new chat interface that resembles Gemini. The intention is obviously to create more "space" for follow up questions and chat-like engagement. AI Overviews don't cut it; they're just big snippets. As the beta screenshot below indicates, sources/links may appear on the right. You can be sure that ads are also on the roadmap. Google hopes making Gemini more accessible via the Google SERP will reclaim users who've embraced ChatGPT and preempt future defections. It's a kind of "best of both worlds" pitch.

Preliminary Screen for AI Mode

There Is No 'SMB Market'

Marketers and SaaS providers often speak of "the small business market," but there's no such thing. In reality, the small business market is an amalgam of scores of segments that can be sliced by industry, company size, revenues, region, longevity, age of owner and other variables. While some generalizations can be made about small businesses, one must be cautious. In Dialog's various surveys of small businesses, small agencies and franchisees we see commonalities but also many significant differences. For example, a vertical segmentation of small businesses from Construction, Home Services & Real Estate found that traditional media (e.g., radio, TV, direct mail) was the top marketing channel. This compares with our aggregate SMB sample, where social media was number one and traditional media was number nine. By the same token, business profile management (e.g., GBP) was number five for all SMBs but absolute last for the Home Services vertical. Paradoxically, review/ratings management was number three for the vertical and the number 10 marketing channel for all SMBs. Another example: Home Services software/tech buyers rely more heavily on human advisors (vs. digital channels) than the overall SMB population. This is also true of Home Services franchisees, who place much more trust in human peers, staff and coaches for advice than digital tools and resources.

Comparison of Most Popular Marketing Channels