The Elo Blog
Elo is the adserver for AI chat. This is where we write about advertising, inference economics, and the web that comes after the page.
AdCP standardizes how AI agents discover, negotiate, and buy media. It's overdue and good for the category — but it stops short of deciding how an ad renders inside a chat answer.
A plain-English reference to the ad-tech, pricing, privacy, and AI-native vocabulary behind monetizing AI chat — from RTB and CPM to intent signals and inference-time bidding.
Inference costs are real and free tiers don't pay for themselves. Here's the honest menu of ways to monetize an AI chat app — and how to add ads without ruining the thing people came for.
Why the next generation of advertising will be native to AI-generated conversations, not bolted onto them.
Real-time bidding was built for page loads. Conversations load one token at a time. Here's what has to change — and what surprisingly doesn't.