GenAI Takes the Megaphone Away from Advertising. The Era of Conversation Begins
Advertising has primarily been the art of interruption – interrupting films, music, articles, conversations, or simple scrolling. The paradox, however, is that the very word “advertising” comes from the Latin reclamare, meaning “to respond” or “to answer back,” so from the very beginning it was closer to dialogue than monologue. Only the development of AI has made this original meaning start to return: instead of watching ads, we are increasingly beginning to talk to them.
Snapchat is testing brands as participants in chat conversations, Google is transforming the search engine into a conversational advisor, and Meta is using AI conversations to personalize ads in real time. This is not another marketing trend, but the moment when advertising, for the first time in decades, truly begins to fulfill its own etymology.
Let’s make one thing clear from the start – for most of its history, advertising was the exact opposite of conversation. Newspapers printed messages. Radio spoke to millions of people at once. Television interrupted movies with commercial breaks. (Polsat will forever remain in the hearts of its “fans.”) Web 1.0 turned advertising into banners. Web 2.0 added algorithms, feeds, and targeting, but the same model still dominated: the brand speaks – the user consumes.
For decades, advertising was an architecture of interrupted attention.
The brand stood in the middle of the digital square with a megaphone and screamed its lungs out… well, shouted loudly, while the audience could at most:
• ignore the message,
• scroll past it,
• click skip ad,
• or – in the best-case scenario (for us marketers) – buy the product.
Our brains quickly grew to love this arrangement. Why? Passivity is energy-efficient. Monologue is predictable. It does not require cognitive engagement. Yet from the perspective of advertising’s origins, this was actually a historical exception. Because advertising was never supposed to be a monologue – it was supposed to be a response.
And this is precisely why GenAI may turn out to be the biggest change in the history of marketing since the emergence of the internet. Not because ads will become more personalized. Not because they will be better targeted. But because, for the first time since the beginning of the mass media era, advertising is beginning to take the form of conversation.
Even if it is an artificial conversation tailored specifically to the user’s preferences. Still, a conversation. Something our tribal brains are designed for, and according to some scientists – something they were actually created THROUGH. (From the bottom of my humanities-loving heart, I highly recommend Robin Dunbar’s excellent book Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language on this topic.)
The internet is ceasing to be an interface of clicks
The most important change today does not concern advertising itself. It concerns the interface of the internet.
For three decades, the internet was an environment of clicks:
• search engine,
• link,
• feed,
• banner,
• landing page,
• call to action,
The entire digital economy was built around one mechanism: the user must click. Google taught us to type queries for the algorithm. Facebook taught us to scroll. Instagram – to consume images. TikTok – to live inside an endless feed of stimuli.
LLMs are beginning to dismantle this logic from the inside. More and more often, we no longer type queries into search engines. We talk. We do not browse websites. We ask questions. We do not click through endless results. We expect one answer.
ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, or Meta AI are not simply new applications. They are changing the model of human interaction with information. The internet is no longer a place of navigation. It is becoming an environment of dialogue.
And if conversation becomes the interface of the internet, advertising must also become conversation.
Snapchat – the brand as a chat participant
Snapchat’s current move is far more important than it may seem (Influencer Marketing Hub). The platform is testing formats in which the brand appears in the conversation as an AI chat participant. Not next to the content. Not before the video. Not between Stories. In the very middle of the conversation.
This is a fundamental semantic shift. Why? In the classic model, advertising was placement. In the conversational model, advertising becomes presence. The brand does not “broadcast a message” – it responds.
Snapchat is very consciously building this experience around minimizing friction (frictionless interaction). The user does not land on a landing page, does not have to go through additional screens and forms. They simply write to the brand as they would write to a friend. This may seem like a small difference, but psychologically it changes everything. And after all, psychology is what advertising is all about. What does this look like in practice? A banner activates defense mechanisms. A conversation activates social mechanisms.
If the user asks about running shoes, and the system starts asking:
• what terrain they run on,
• what their budget is,
• whether they are training for a marathon,
the brain interprets this interaction more as help than advertising. And that is exactly why conversational advertising can be so effective. It does not work like classic ad exposure. It works like a social interaction. Snapchat is not an exception here. It is rather the first major signal of what advertising may look like in a world of conversational interfaces.
Google – from sponsored links to sponsored answers
This is even more visible today in Google’s actions. For more than two decades, Google built the world’s largest advertising business around a simple model: the user enters intent → Google shows results → the advertiser buys visibility.
AI, however, is beginning to dismantle this logic from the inside. With the development of AI Overviews and AI Mode, Google has openly started talking about ads “naturally integrated into conversation.” The company describes the new formats as part of a conversational experience designed to help the user move from inspiration to purchase (Google Ads & Commerce Blog).
This is a very significant change. Advertising is no longer an addition to search results. It is becoming an element of the answer itself. AI Overviews – previously known as SGE (Search Generative Experience) – no longer function like a classic list of links. The user receives a ready-made synthesis of information, recommendations, and context.
Advertising is not a separate entity. It is woven into the decision-making process itself. And again, just like with Snapchat, this is an enormous psychological shift. Sponsored links were something users consciously evaluated. AI answers are much more easily perceived as “advice.”
Google is also increasingly using the term agentic commerce – a model in which AI not only recommends a product, but actively helps make a purchasing decision (Search Engine Land). In practice, this means a shift:
• from search to recommendation,
• from click to conversation,
• from advertising to shopping assistance.
Just a few years ago, Google advertising was primarily a sponsored link. In the AI era, it is about to become a sponsored answer. Interestingly, Google is also developing conversationality on the marketers’ side. The company has introduced a chat-based experience in Google Ads, where campaigns can be built through conversations with Gemini. The marketer no longer only sets parameters – they begin collaborating with an AI agent that proposes headlines, ad groups, and optimizations (Search Engine Land).
This is a sign of a much bigger transformation: advertising is becoming a dialogue system not only for consumers, but also for the marketing industry itself.
Meta – conversation as a new source of advertising data
Meta is moving in a slightly different direction than Google. Google wants to dominate conversational search and commerce. Meta wants to dominate conversational relationships. This is a fundamental difference. Google mainly knows the user’s intent. Meta knows their social relationships, emotions, interests, and behaviors.
That is why Meta integrates AI directly into its own ecosystem:
• Messenger,
• Instagram,
• WhatsApp,
and it is there that it is building the future of conversational advertising.
Meta very quickly understood something that Asian platforms had already understood earlier: people do not want to leave apps to buy something, ask something, or get something done. That is why AI in messengers is becoming a natural environment for commerce (WhatsApp Business FAQ). Bots are already taking over a huge part of simple interactions:
• “how much is shipping?”,
• “do you have it in black?”,
• “when will I receive my package?”,
• “is this model available in size M?”,
GenAI performs all the repetitive work, and humans only appear where relationships or emotional intelligence are truly needed. It is an extremely economically efficient model. But something else is far more important.
Meta has officially confirmed that users’ interactions with Meta AI will be used to personalize content and ads (Meta Newsroom). This means the conversation itself becomes a new advertising signal. What does this look like in practice? If the user talks to AI about:
• a new bike,
• a trip to Japan,
• marathon training,
• sleep problems,
the system can immediately use this context to personalize the feed and advertisements. This is real-time personalization.
Just a dozen or so years ago, advertisers could only dream of something like this. Today, conversation is becoming the most valuable source of behavioral data on the entire internet. And the fact that we are constantly being listened to? Who would care about that…
Advertising stops being a message
All of this leads to a much bigger change than simply the emergence of a new advertising format. The very definition of advertising is changing. For decades, advertising was a message: a commercial, a banner, a placement, exposure. The conversational model transforms it into a system of interaction.
In the past, brands tried to attract attention. Today, they try to participate in conversation. In the past, the goal was the click. Today, the goal is becoming the relationship. In the past, advertising was something next to the user experience. Now, it is beginning to become part of the interface itself.
And that is exactly why conversational advertising is not “just another AI trend.” It is a change in the logic of the internet itself.
The biggest risk: when advertising starts sounding like advice
The problem is that conversation works differently than classic advertising. We know how to ignore banners. We instantly recognize television commercials. But conversation activates completely different psychological mechanisms. Relationship-building and trust come into play because GenAI is perceived more like an assistant, advisor, or cognitive partner than an advertising medium. And this radically increases its persuasive power.
Research on conversational search shows that users find it much harder to recognize persuasion hidden in answers generated by language models than in classic advertisements (arXiv). Other studies suggest that ads generated by LLMs are beginning to achieve effectiveness comparable to, and sometimes even greater than, content created by humans (arXiv).
And here lies the greatest paradox of the entire situation. For years, we learned how to defend ourselves against advertising because it was loud, aggressive, and visible. Meanwhile, conversational advertising may become the most effective precisely because it no longer looks like advertising. It does not interrupt. It does not shout. It does not suddenly appear before a video. It simply responds.
Advertising returns to its etymological roots
Let’s return to the beginning of this overly long rant… Perhaps conversational advertising is not a revolution. Perhaps it is the first moment since the beginning of the mass media era when advertising truly begins to fulfill its own etymology.
Re-clamare. To respond. To answer back. To enter into dialogue. For decades, advertising spoke. Now it is beginning to answer. And perhaps that is exactly why the next era of the internet will not be based on clicks. It will be based on conversation. So the winners will be those who “know how to deal with people” and understand the mysteries hidden inside the 1.5 kilograms of jelly concealed between the ears of billions of Homo sapiens, not just spreadsheets.