Attention is the most valuable currency. And, Advertising always follows attention.
Newspapers captured attention, so advertising moved into print. Television captured attention, so advertising moved into commercials. The internet captured attention, so advertising moved into search results, websites, and eventually social feeds.
The next large pool of attention is forming inside conversations with AI.
People are already asking agents what to buy, where to travel, what software to use, how to solve a problem, and which option is best for them. These conversations are becoming longer, more frequent, and increasingly connected to real decisions.
OpenAI started showing ads in ChatGPT in February 2026. By March it had crossed $100 million in annualized ad revenue.
The question is what happens to every other conversation? ChatGPT is one interface. There are going to be a million of them. Every business that has a website today will have a chat interface and agent tomorrow, and almost none of those companies will build an ad stack. They will need one.
This shift of attention towards conversations is one of the greatest opportunities in advertising tech. It creates a new advertising channel, but more importantly, it changes what an ad is.
The ad stops being an interruption and becomes an input into the conversation.
The advertising system of the future will be contextual and agent-led. Instead of buying a position on a page, advertisers will compete to become a useful part of a conversation.
That is the company I’m building.
The advertising system has always been built around the mediums where people spend time. Google organized the internet around intent. Meta organized it around identity and interest. Television organized it around mass attention. Each advertising system has been built to reflected the behavior of its underlying medium.
Search ads works because the user declares what they want. Social advertising works because social platforms understands who the user is likely to be.
Conversational advertising will work because an agent understands what the user is trying to do.
That distinction matters a lot.
When someone searches for “best running shoes” - Google sees a query based on keywords. When someone talks to an agent about preparing for their first marathon, the agent can understand their experience level, training schedule, timeline, budget, location and even the weather they will be running in.
The agent doesn’t just have keywords. It has the entire context. This makes conversation one of the highest-intent and potentially the highest-converting advertising environments ever created!
It also makes the existing advertising model insufficient. Advertisers will need a way to communicate with AI agents and platforms, not just pushing content in front of humans. AI Agents and platforms will need a way to evaluate commercial information to monetize attention without compromising user’s trust. The infrastructure for that system has not been built yet.