{
  "id": 230826,
  "title": "Times Magazine Now Serves Ads That Only AI Chatbots Can See",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/08/06/times-magazine-now-serves-ads-that-only-ai-chatbots-can-see",
  "topic": "ai",
  "section": "AI",
  "published": "2026-08-06T17:00:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Slashdot",
    "slug": "slashdot",
    "url": "https://slashdot.org/story/26/08/06/1552249/times-magazine-now-serves-ads-that-only-ai-chatbots-can-see"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Times Magazine has begun serving advertisements specifically designed for AI chatbots, rather than being visible to human visitors. The objective appears to be to shape the way chatbots discuss brand offerings in a positive manner, in a manner that remains concealed from the site's regular audience. Notably, they have deliberately excluded Google's chatbots from this practice, presumably due to Google's policy against serving different search results to bots compared to human users. According to Jonah Goodhart, the co-founder and CEO of ad technology firm Mobian, \"It might be more crucial to affect the agent than even the human, as interacting with ChatGPT could potentially influence all of its users.\" Goodhart emphasized the significant impact of altering ChatGPT's responses to a brand, stating that it holds more weight than any single campaign. The concept behind this strategy lies in providing trusted information about brands to large language models (LLMs) and AI, thereby facilitating more straightforward interaction. This approach was first uncovered by German freelance software developer Vincent Schmalbach, who shared his findings in a blog post. Subsequent reports on the subject were published by Digiday and The Register.",
  "summary": "Longtime Slashdot reader mccalli writes: Times Magazine has started serving adverts with \"brand messages\" to AI crawlers, which are not part of its main page. The aim seems to be to influence chatbots to talk about the brand offerings in a positive light that can't be traced back to the actual page. Notably, they've excluded Google chatbots from this, likely because Google penalizes companies…",
  "key_points": [
    "Times Magazine serves ads only visible to AI chatbots, not human visitors.",
    "Aim is to positively influence chatbot discussions of brand offerings.",
    "Excludes Google chatbots due to policy against different search results for bots vs humans."
  ],
  "editors_take": "By serving ads to AI chatbots, Times Magazine aims to influence how these bots discuss brand offerings, potentially shaping the responses of chatbot users, while keeping this practice hidden from human readers.",
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}