Survey: Only 25% of AI users pay for premium, forcing chatbots toward ads

Advertising is coming to AI chatbots because most users refuse to pay for premium features, according to a new Bloomberg Intelligence survey of 1,000 respondents. Only 25% of generative AI users have paid subscriptions, with most willing to spend just $20 monthly for enhanced capabilities like advanced search and content generation. This reluctance to pay is forcing AI companies to pivot toward advertising-based revenue models, fundamentally reshaping how these platforms will monetize their massive user bases.

The stark economics: OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, exemplifies the challenge facing AI companies trying to monetize through subscriptions alone.

• Despite having over 600 million weekly active users, OpenAI has fewer than 20 million paying subscribers—representing a “low-single-digit rate of adoption for the pay tier,” according to Mandeep Singh, a Bloomberg Intelligence senior analyst.
• The company’s $200 monthly Pro tier attracts less than 0.1% of its user base, while infrastructure costs continue mounting with expected spending of “more than $200 billion through 2030.”
• By contrast, Google generates $51 billion quarterly from search ads alone, reaching 4 billion users with 25 billion daily searches.

Google’s advertising advantage: The search giant maintains a significant edge in both user preference and monetization infrastructure.

• Among survey respondents, 38% preferred Google’s search products (27% for traditional search, 11% for Gemini) compared to 22% for OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
• Google’s AI Mode rollout is actually increasing ad value by reducing click-through rates, making each remaining click more valuable to advertisers.
• “The people who are engaging with the AI overviews have already spent quite a bit of time on the search page,” Singh explained, allowing Google to serve more targeted ads.

OpenAI’s advertising pivot: The company is already moving toward ads despite the infrastructure challenges.

• OpenAI recently hired former Instacart CEO Fidji Simo to build its advertising business—she previously developed Instacart‘s $1 billion annual ad revenue stream when she led the grocery delivery company.
• Singh expects a “second-half [of 2025] launch” for OpenAI’s ad product, calling it “imminent given the user growth that they have had.”
• The company faces the challenge of building tracking metrics and targeting capabilities that advertisers require, similar to Netflix’s struggles as a late entrant to advertising.

Subscription pricing wars intensify: Despite advertising pivots, companies are pushing premium tiers to higher price points rather than lowering entry barriers.

• Google’s new AI Ultra plan costs $249 monthly (discounted to $125 for three months), including Gemini access, 30TB storage, and YouTube Premium.
• Singh predicts OpenAI will struggle to compete with its standalone $200 ChatGPT plan against Google’s comprehensive bundle, especially “if Gemini’s performance is close to ChatGPT’s.”

What they’re saying: Singh emphasized the economic reality forcing this shift toward advertising.

• “AI infrastructure is so expensive that an ad-based business model is not the best model to monetize user engagement,” he noted, but added that having “hundreds of millions of users who don’t pay for stuff means even the added cost of serving ads might be a less-bad option.”
• “What OpenAI is realizing is, given their scale now, having just free users is not helping their cash flow position.”