Startup Koah isn’t trying to introduce advertising to ChatGPT. Instead, it’s focused on the “long tail” of apps that are built on top of the big models, including apps with a user base outside the United States. When consumer AI products were first becoming popular, it made sense for them to focus on “wealthier, prosumer” users, and to monetize those users by converting some of them into paid subscriptions. CAo-founder and CEO Nic Baird suggested that by successfully figuring out how to make advertising work in AI chats, Koah could actually unlock more potential for “vibe coded” apps that might otherwise be “too expensive to operate at scale” unless their creators raise VC funding. These ads are marked as sponsored content, and they’re supposed to appear at relevant moments in your chats. When Koah talks to publishers, Baird said many of them believe that ads simply don’t work in AI chats, while others have found limited success with AI offerings from older adtech companies like Admob and AppLovin. But Baird said Koah is 4 to 5 times more effective, delivering clickthrough rates of 7.5%, and with early partners earning $10,000 in their first 30 days on the platform. He added that Koah achieves all that while having less of a detrimental effect on user engagement — though his ultimate goal is for Koah ads to feel relevant enough that they actually improve engagement. Koah is “building the essential monetization layer for consumer AI services.”