AI brand placement.
A disclosed sponsor inside an AI output, rendered for a moment of consumer decision.
What AI brand placement is.
AI brand placement is the disclosed appearance of a sponsor inside an AI-generated artifact. A product in a generated image. A named sponsor in a voice reply. A sponsor line inside a code completion comment. A branded recommendation Surface beside a chatbot answer. The sponsor is always labeled, always separable from the organic output, and always the result of a serve-time auction rather than a hidden placement deal.
The category matters because the AI layer has started to carry the weight product discovery used to carry on the open web. Users ask an agent for a kitchen counter, a recipe, a code snippet, a travel plan, and the agent ships a result. That result is the moment of consumer decision. A brand that is not represented in that moment is a brand that does not exist to the user asking the prompt. AI brand placement is how a brand gets represented without asking the agent to lie.
The alternative patterns are worse. Paying for organic mentions inside an answer breaks user trust as soon as the pattern is detected. Retrofitted banners inside chat windows are ignored within two sessions. Buying the model vendor’s first-party ad product reaches one surface; the user has already moved to three others. A disclosed placement inside the artifact, on every surface the artifact ships on, is the shape that keeps working as the ecosystem splits. See honest AI advertising for the long argument.
For the buyer-side overview of how reach works across the network, see reach AI users. For the agent-side counterpart — how AI agents see sponsor Surfaces when they shop on a user’s behalf — see advertise to AI agents.
The four Surface types for placement.
Surfacedd ships four Surface types. Each one places a sponsor inside or beside an AI output under a published disclosure rule. The rules differ because the modalities differ; the disclosure principle does not.
Text Surfaces.
A text Surface is a labeled sponsor unit next to a chatbot answer. Short headline, a sponsor line, a destination. The unit does not replace the organic answer and does not get written into it. It renders alongside. Text is the widest inventory and the lowest floor on spend. See sponsored AI responses for the full creative specification.
Image Surfaces.
An image Surface is a disclosed product placement inside a generated image. A user prompts a kitchen counter; the generator composites a named product into the scene and ships the image with a visible sponsor credit in the frame. One product, one scene, one credit line. No watermark across the composition. Image Surfaces work best for consumer categories that already live on product-in-scene creative.
Voice Surfaces.
A voice Surface is a 5 to 10 second spoken sponsor segment, bracketed by explicit cues before and after. “Sponsored” tones or the word itself opens the segment; a return cue closes it. The assistant does not slip the sponsor into its own answer. The sponsor segment is a separate piece of audio with its own labeling. Best for short calls to action and branded audio.
Code Surfaces.
A code Surface is a labeled sponsor line in the comment layer of a code completion. The sponsor never goes inside executable code. It sits as a comment or as a sidecar suggestion the developer can accept, dismiss, or ignore. Code is the smallest inventory pool, the highest intent audience, and the most expensive impression. Developer tools, cloud services, and APIs fit the format.
Brands running across all four formats get reach across the artifact spectrum users generate in a week. Brands running one or two formats get the cleanest fit to their creative. There is no required minimum number of Surfaces; pick what fits.
Pricing and minimums.
Pricing is published. The ranges below are the current floor across the network. Final rates are set at auction, bounded below by the floor and above by the market.
- Text Surfaces: CPC from $0.50, CPM from $5.
- Image Surfaces: CPM from $8. Minimum campaign $2,500.
- Voice Surfaces: CPM from $10. Minimum campaign $5,000.
- Code Surfaces: CPM from $12. Minimum campaign $5,000.
Text carries no creative production fee because the creative is copy. Image Surfaces carry an optional production fee if we handle product-still preparation; brands with in-house assets skip it. Voice Surfaces carry a production fee for brands without existing audio; the fee covers voicing, edit, and disclosure mastering to the published spec. Code Surfaces have no production fee because the creative is a single line of sponsor copy.
Self-serve is available for text and code Surfaces without a campaign floor. Image and voice route through managed service because the creative review is heavier and the inventory is narrower. Enterprise campaigns across all four Surfaces sit on a single insertion order with unified reporting. Dayparting, pacing caps, geography, and inclusion lists are available on every Surface type. Pause and resume are available through the dashboard and the API. For context on where this sits versus first-party buys, see reach AI users.
Measurement — Share of Placement.
The primary reach metric across Surfacedd is Share of Placement. The definition is the count of disclosed sponsored Surfaces a brand occupies across the network over a period, divided by the count of Surfaces available in the brand’s declared competitive set over the same period. The metric is the AI-layer analogue of share of voice in traditional media, corrected for the fact that AI outputs do not carry a fixed inventory grid.
Share of Placement rolls up across the four Surface types and reports on a per-advertiser dashboard. The advertiser declares the competitive set during onboarding; the metric is calculated against that set on every campaign run. The calculation is aggregate and does not rely on user-level identifiers. Reporting refreshes hourly; the historical series is kept for 24 months.
Alongside Share of Placement, the dashboard reports impressions, clicks, CTR, CPM, CPC, and completion rate for voice. CSV export and API access are standard. No user-level identifier is passed through because there is none; reporting is aggregate by Surface, app, and context bucket. See the Share of Placement page for the full formula and for the comparison to traditional share-of-voice calculations.
What we won’t do.
A short list of commercial constraints we accept. Each item has a reason. The reason matters because the list only works if the constraint is credible.
- We won’t sell access to users’ private AI conversations.
- We won’t guarantee a brand mention inside an AI’s organic answer.
- We won’t run undisclosed placements in any modality.
- We won’t run political advertising.
- We won’t run ads targeting minors.
- We won’t run tobacco, firearms, gambling where restricted, or payday lending.
- We won’t run ads that ask an AI to state claims the brand cannot substantiate.
Private-conversation data would be the largest signal source on the network and we will not monetize it. Guaranteed inside-the-answer placement breaks user trust the moment the pattern is detected; a separate disclosed Surface is the only honest version. Undisclosed, political, and minor-targeted placements are the categories that kill ad networks in the regulatory cycles those categories trigger. The rejected verticals are not a moral posture; they are categories where the disclosure standard does not solve the underlying consumer-protection issue, and running them would compromise the categories that work.
For the longer argument behind these limits, see honest AI advertising. The rules are published and enforced at serve time. Advertisers who need any of the above should buy on a network that sells them; we are not the right fit.
Frequently asked questions.
Is AI brand placement the same as a sponsored answer?
Can you guarantee my product shows up when a user asks a relevant prompt?
What creative do I need to supply?
What verticals do you reject?
How do you handle disclosure across formats?
Can I run a single creative across all four formats?
Reach users inside the AI tools they already use.
CPC from $0.50. CPM from $5. Text, image, voice, and code placements across independent AI apps.