Evidence receipt / belief
Published · transcript-backedBen Thompson: belief
12 Feb 2026 Cheeky Pint Ben Thompson from Stratechery on AI ads, the end of SaaS, and the future of media
“I think there's a lot of …There's a real stated versus revealed preference about a lot of this stuff.”
Source trail
Everything needed to verify it.
- Speaker
- Ben Thompson
- Attribution
- Verified speaker
- Claim type
- belief
- Recorded
- 12 Feb 2026
- Publisher
- Cheeky Pint
Transcript context
…I see. It's a thing that people say when you have very good targeting. I think there's a lot of …There's a real stated versus revealed preference about a lot of this stuff. The reality is, you could pay for Facebook or you could show…People would rather see the ads. I think most people don't care. A lot of tech, and this sort of ties into the skepticism of ads, it's sort of an elite town, there's elite regulators, everyone's thinking about these very theoretical things. Isn't that bit of the challenge of banner blindness where Instagram advertising works so well because it's a picture feed and it's showing you pictures. And then some of the pictures are like commercials. Whereas with an AI app, you're looking for an answer and you don't want to look at the banner.…
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