Welcome to the Deep Dive. 2 .5 billion daily
queries. That is the staggering reality today.
A third window of generational digital wealth
has just opened. It really has. We are unpacking
a massive tectonic shift today. Yeah. We got
our hands on a brand new February 2026 guide
by Maxed Outban. It covers the completely uncharted...
Kind of wild territory of chat GPT ads. We've
got a lot of ground to cover. Right. We're going
to explore the platform's mind -bending scale.
And we will look closely at this crucial idea
called the memory factor. Plus, we'll break down
the mathematical shift you absolutely need for
infinite scaling. Finally, we'll dive into why
faceless corporate brands are essentially doomed
here. They really are. I think we need some historical
context to ground this. Every decade or so, a
new platform emerges out of nowhere. A small
group of people jumps in early, right? Yeah.
They experiment, they fail, they build. They
get their footing long before the massive crowd
arrives. Right. And by the time the crowd finally
shows up, the rules are rigidly set. Prices are
sky high. But those early movers, they've already
established an insurmountable lead. Think back
to the very early days of Google ads. The early
2000s. A local business owner running plumbing
services in Ohio was paying. Maybe 10 cents a
click. Everyone else on the sidelines thought
the internet was just a passing fad. And now,
that exact same plumbing click cost 15, maybe
20 dollars? The arbitrage is completely gone.
It happened again with Facebook ads. Remember
2012? Brands could reach 50 ,000 highly targeted
people for just 20 bucks. It was practically
free distribution. Those days are totally gone.
They're never coming back. The market corrected
itself. So here we are in early 2026. A third
window has opened. Most businesses are still
standing on the sidelines today. They're waiting.
They're unsure if this AI monetization thing
is actually real. But it's very real. On February
9th, 2026, OpenAI officially rolled out advertising.
This launched directly within ChatGPT. For U
.S. free and go tier users. This isn't a small
hidden beta test for a few selected brands. Beat.
The scale of this is honestly hard to comprehend.
As of February 2026, we're looking at over 900
million weekly active users. It's rapidly approaching
the 1 billion milestone. It reached that volume
faster than any platform in human history. They're
seeing 5 .8 billion monthly visits. It's now
the fourth most visited site on the entire planet.
And like you said earlier, they handle 2 .5 billion
daily queries. Yeah. And here is the kicker.
Roughly 80 % of those queries are high intent.
People aren't just scrolling mindlessly. They're
doing deep education, intense research, or seeking
very specific advice. And the most critical detail
for advertisers is the user distribution. 95
% of those users are on the free tier. That's
roughly 855 million people every single week.
They're now part of a massive, addressable advertising
audience. Just to put that in perspective for
you. ChatGPT currently has more weekly users
than Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest combined.
It's a completely unprecedented audience pool.
There's never been anything quite like it. But
the pricing strategy is what really catches my
eye. They launched with a $60 CPM. That's the
cost per 1 ,000 impressions. $60 a CPM seems
incredibly steep, especially compared to Meta's
$20 rate. So why are they justifying charging
three times as much right out of the gate? It
entirely comes down to the high intent. nature
of that audience. Right. OpenAI is deliberately
positioning this as a highly premium platform.
They're charging a premium to filter out the
low quality spam. They want to ensure absolute
top tier brand safety for major advertisers.
And they have the internal data to prove that
this placement actually converts. Premium positioning
to ensure top tier brand safety and unmatched
audience intent. Exactly. It filters out the
noise immediately. That deep intent completely
changes the game. This platform knows things
about us that that no other platform knows. Honestly,
legacy platforms feel incredibly shallow now.
Think about it. Google really only knows the
specific keywords you searched for. Facebook
mostly knows what you clicked on or what pages
you liked. Both of those are useful, but they're
shallow compared to an ongoing AI dialogue. ChatGPT
knows exactly what you're struggling with. It
knows your timeline. It knows your emotional
state at that exact moment. It knows the exact
vocabulary you use to describe your own pain.
The guide we're looking at uses a brilliant example.
Imagine a user typing this into a prompt late
at night. I have been struggling with weight
loss for 14 months and I am exhausted. I just
want to know what to do. You would never type
that entire vulnerable paragraph into a Google
search bar. But you'd absolutely tell that to
chat GPT. Because interacting with it often feels
like a private late night confession. Yeah. And
that dynamic gives the AI an unprecedented level
of insight. It truly understands the user's specific
pain. No other ad network has access to that
deep, raw, emotional state. Google relies on
simple keyword matching. Facebook relies on basic
behavioral clustering. But ChatGPT relies on
predictive AI, which sounds like a buzzword.
Right? It kind of does. Define that underlying
tech for me in plain English. Software that guesses
your next need based on your past actions. Beat.
Wow. Oh, beat. Imagine scaling to 2 .5. billion
queries each with deep personal context that's
honestly kind of hard to wrap your head around
it really is and this brings us to the most crucial
technical differentiator the memory factor chat
gpt actually remembers your past conversations
across different sessions it knows you mentioned
starting a new business three months ago it knows
you asked about hiring your first employee last
week it knows exactly where you are in a very
specific multi -month journey no legacy ad platform
can do this natively I'm trying to wrap my head
around the timeline here. What makes this seven
-month memory feature a total game changer for
advertisers today? It completely shifts the dynamic
from cold traffic to warm advice. Think about
the friction of a normal ad. It interrupts you.
But an ad served with deep historical context
feels entirely different. It feels much more
like a trusted friend giving you a timely, relevant
recommendation. It turns random ad impressions
into highly personalized, trusted recommendations
over time. That's exactly why top strategists
believe this will outperform every existing platform.
The quality of targeting is just profoundly personal.
The tech is clearly revolutionary. But how do
we actually use this? The guide suggests step
one is a massive mental shift. You have to stop
thinking in terms of fixed marketing budgets.
Most traditional businesses approach advertising
completely backward. They set a rigid, fixed
annual budget for marketing. Say $50 ,000 for
the year. then they divide it up across various
channels. That works fine in stable, entirely
predictable markets. But it's a fatal flaw on
a brand new, highly volatile platform. Costs
and algorithmic behaviors can shift rapidly in
just a few weeks. I still wrestle with prompt
drift myself, so I know how fast this AI landscape
changes. Right. Everything moves incredibly fast.
You need a much more agile approach. Just to
start thinking purely in terms of an allowable
cost per sale. We call it ACPS. The guide proposes
a pivot away from those fixed budgets. The math
is straightforward, but the mindset shift is
huge. Say your average sale value nets you $25
,000. And you sit down and decide on a comfortable
spend to win that specific sale. Let's say that
comfortable amount is $400. Then your allowable
cost per sale is simply $400. That becomes your
magic number, your infinite ceiling. As long
as each new customer costs less than $400 to
acquire, there's absolutely no limit. You can
and should scale your ad spend indefinitely.
But wait, if I'm a small business owner, an allowable
cost per sale sounds great in theory. I still
have a finite amount of cash in the bank to float
those ads. Isn't unlimited scaling a bit of a
myth for the little guy? It's a cash flow challenge,
absolutely. But the principle... remains critical
you turn a limited marketing mindset into a ruthless
roi machine if a channel brings in customers
below your acps you funnel every available dollar
there if it gets more expensive you pull back
instantly This agility is crucial for early platforms.
They almost always deliver incredibly low -cost
leads before they get totally saturated. What
happens to companies that stubbornly cling to
their fixed annual budgets? They move way too
slowly. They wait for committee meetings. They
wait for next quarter's budget allocations to
be approved. And by then the whole landscape
has shifted. They spend months getting approvals
while the low -cost early opportunity completely
vanishes. Exactly. The golden window passes them
by entirely. You absolutely need your ACPS calculated
before you write a single AI ad. Beta will be
right back. Sponsor, mid -roll sponsor, read
placeholder. And we are back. That low friction
mental shift naturally leads us into step two.
The actual practical ad framework you need to
use here. Here is something incredibly reassuring
amid all this new tech. The core fundamentals
of direct response advertising haven't changed
in decades. Human psychology remains exactly
the same. It's fascinating. A 1980s newspaper
ad structure works perfectly on ChatGPT in 2026.
The delivery mechanism is entirely new. But the
underlying psychological triggers are identical.
Max outlines a simple four -part ad framework.
Hook, value proposition, credibility, and call
to action. Let's unpack those. First up is the
hook. It's usually just one sentence. Its only
job is to stop someone mid -scroll. It must forcefully
make them read the very next line. You can categorize
every single effective hook into three distinct
types. Pain, prize, or process. A pain hook targets
a deep frustration or an unmet need. Something
like, are you frustrated? You're not losing weight
even though you go to the gym four days a week.
A prize hook targets a strong desire or a future
outcome. Would you like to get into the absolute
best shape of your life before summer? And a
process hook offers a very specific solution
or method. The 12 -week metabolic system that
gets busy professionals fit. You pick one of
those angles for each ad. These are deep, proven
patterns in human psychology. They always work.
Next is your value proposition. You must answer
three specific things clearly. What do you do?
For whom do you do it? And what is the exact
measurable result? For example. We help B2B software
business owners scale their revenue by building
automated outbound sales teams. It must be totally
instantly clear. If a reader has to reread that
sentence to understand it, you need to rewrite
it. Third is credibility. This isn't about boasting
about how long you've been in business. It's
about quickly proving you actually know what
you're doing. You can use raw numbers. Oh. Total
client served or actual revenue generated. You
can use direct quotes and testimonials from real
customers. Or you can use borrowed credibility.
Even citing a single solid peer reviewed study
related to your method is incredibly valuable.
I look at building this framework like stacking
Lego blocks of data to build a frictionless profile.
That's a great way to view it. But the final
piece is the call to action. The CTA. This specific
part will literally make or break your chat GPT
ads. This is where chat GPT ads become genuinely
different from those legacy platforms we discussed.
On Google or Facebook, the CTA almost always
takes users to a completely different page. It
bounces them out to a different website. It feels
like a totally different context. You're opening
a different tab, shifting into a different emotional
state. But on chat GPT, users are already deeply
engaged in a conversation with the AI. They're
in a highly focused problem -solving mode. Why
is sending a user to a traditional website a
massive mistake here? Because it creates instant
jarring friction. You're abruptly pulling them
out of their current flow. A generic website
feels clunky compared to a fluid AI chat. Taking
users out of their focused AI problem -solving
flow feels like a downgrade. It really does.
So you need unique, platform -specific CTAs.
The guide outlines three winning approaches tailored
for this specific environment. Number one is
called the human conversation. you deliberately
position human experience as the exact gap that
ai simply cannot fill you say something like
chat jpt can provide the basic answers but it
can't share real world nuanced experience let's
talk it naturally positions human connection
as the logical next step number two is the custom
ai experience you meet the user right where they
already are deep inside an ai environment you
offer them a better more specialized ai tool
specifically tuned for their problem. You don't
ask them to leave AI entirely. You just ask them
to use your better AI. It's an incredibly easy
yes. Far easier than dissecting them to read
a static website page. And number three is the
in -app purchase. Sam Altman has publicly discussed
making transactions natively possible directly
inside ChatGPT. It's very similar to how TikTok
shop keeps users completely inside the platform
ecosystem. They can swipe. Browse and complete
a purchase without ever leaving the chat window.
This natively converts at a fundamentally higher
rate. is basically zero you should honestly start
building lightweight products for this right
now simple quizzes or deep assessments work perfectly
they naturally lead to personalized recommendations
they're incredible for generating high quality
leads here absolutely low friction is the ultimate
key to this platform that low friction environment
ties directly into who actually wins here because
it isn't the massive faceless corporations anymore
right it's the individual the personal brand
imperative is our third step Personal brands
are completely destroying traditional business
brands on ChatGPT. There's a very simple underlying
technical reason for this shift. ChatGPT was
primarily trained on the open internet. And the
internet is overwhelmingly filled with content
generated by individual humans. Logs. chaotic
social media posts, detailed articles, and long
-form expert interviews. It wasn't trained heavily
on dry corporate press releases. It fundamentally
doesn't care about polished, sanitized brand
campaigns. As a result, the ChatGPT model naturally
tends to recommend and reference people. It actively
recommends individual experts. It frequently
cites individuals who maintain a highly visible
online presence. On the other hand, faceless
corporate companies are doomed. If your company
just has a polished website, and absolutely no
distinct human voice, you're nearly invisible
to the system's logic. The guide mentions multiple
rigorous tests on this. The exact same marketing
message delivered by a recognizable person consistently
outperforms the generic brand account. The performance
gap isn't small either. How does a traditional
behind -the -scenes business owner actually become
visible to this model? You have to deliberately
step out of the shadows. You must actively create
a strong, traceable digital footprint. Publish
consistent, opinionated content so the AI recognizes
and cites your specific expertise. Yeah, and
you don't need to go massively viral. You just
need enough consistent visibility. When someone
asks ChatGPT about your specific niche, your
name needs to be in the training weights to come
up. The window for this specific opportunity
is wide open right now. But history tells us
it won't be open for long. The cheap early mover
advantage on Google and Facebook is totally gone.
Right now is the precise time to build that personal
AI presence. Let's recap the big idea we've unpacked
today. The third great window of digital advertising
is wide open. We're looking at a staggering scale
of 900 million weekly users. That massive audience
is combined with a $60 CPM. And crucially...
It features deep contextual memory that spans
months. Early movers who fundamentally abandon
rigid fixed budgets for an allowable cost per
sale will win. They absolutely will. Especially
those agile enough to utilize frictionless in
-app CTAs. And the individuals who boldly step
out from behind faceless corporate logos will
win disproportionately. So here is what you need
to do today. Take immediate action. Calculate
your allowable cost per sale right now. Figure
out your magic number today. Start aggressively
building those lightweight quizzes or assessments.
Capture those early leads before the market completely
saturates. Remember that opening historical story?
Don't be the business owner paying five times
more a few years from now. Don't miss out on
the arbitrage just because you waited to see
if the shift was real. It's happening right now.
Beat. If an AI deeply understands our 2 a .m.
struggles, our exact vocabulary, and our emotional
state to service the absolute perfect ad? Two
sec silence. At what point does perfectly targeted
marketing cross the line into psychological manipulation?
Something to think about. Out Hero Music.