AI monetization: the next level! 🚀
- FutureUP
- 3 days ago
- 2 min read
AI is no longer about demos and hype — it’s about who can turn usage into profit!
Almost a year ago, I wrote about the coming AI monetization war!
Since then, two shifts are impossible to ignore:
1️⃣ AI buyers now care more about business outcomes than the technology
2️⃣ AI vendors face pressure to monetize amid exploding compute costs
👉 OpenAI’s pricing experiments made this visible:
The $200 Pro plan looked expensive.
Yet even that tier struggles with profitability due to high usage costs.
In a recent analysis, Gary Bailey shows something even more striking: To reach a ~25% margin, OpenAI would need to more than double prices 🫨
That’s unlikely.
Why?
Competition is fierce
The fight to become the AI standard is still open
Penetration pricing remains the fastest way to scale adoption
Althouth is difficult to change the pricing levels a lot, changing the pricing logic instead could be the solution!
👉 The industry is debating how to do this:
Fixed SaaS subscriptions
Consumption-based pricing
Hybrid models
This shift will be slow and cautious.
But there’s another monetization path hiding in plain sight:
🎯 Advertising
The setup is ideal:
✔️ Users ask continuous, intent-rich questions
✔️ AI tools behave like next-gen search engines
That’s exactly how Google built a money machine.
OpenAI’s free and $8 tiers signal a move toward ads — confirming the direction.
This move isn’t about better AI models.
It’s about better monetization mechanics.
Will AI vendors become advertising companies?
Too early to say.
What’s certain:
The AI monetization war is still unfolding — and it will reshape the industry.
The pricing lesson is clear:
Great technology is the prerequisite for success
Monetization decides who survives and thrives
💡 As AI goes mainstream, pricing leads — technology supports 💡
Interested in learning more about AI-Powered Price Optimization and Strategic Forecasting?
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