内容来源：https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/07/koah-raises-5m-to-bring-ads-into-ai-apps/

内容总结：

【AI创企Koah获500万美元种子轮融资，押注聊天广告重塑AI盈利模式】
近日，美国AI初创公司Koah宣布完成500万美元种子轮融资，由风投机构Forerunner领投，South Park Commons及AppLovin联合创始人Andrew Karam跟投。该公司提出通过嵌入式广告帮助AI应用开发者实现商业化，尤其面向拉美等新兴市场用户，解决“高推理成本与低订阅付费”之间的矛盾。

Koah联合创始人兼CEO Nic Baird指出，当前AI聊天产品主要依赖订阅制，但全球多数用户难以承受每月20美元的费用。而传统广告平台（如Admob）在AI对话场景中效果有限。Koah通过算法捕捉用户对话中的商业意图，在相关节点插入标注“赞助内容”的广告，例如当用户咨询创业策略时推荐UpWork freelancer服务。据称，其点击率达7.5%，早期合作伙伴30天内收入超1万美元。

目前Koah已与Luzia、Heal等AI应用合作，广告主包括Skillshare、General Medicine等。Baird强调，其广告并非简单移植传统展示形式，而是聚焦用户需求匹配，旨在提升交互体验而非干扰对话。

Forerunner合伙人Nicole Johnson认为，广告必将成为AI服务多元盈利模式的核心环节，Koah正构建“消费者AI服务的关键商业化层”。行业分析指出，AI聊天处于消费漏斗中段——介于品牌认知（如Instagram广告）与实际购买（如谷歌搜索广告）之间，如何精准捕获用户商业意图仍是挑战。

（报道基于TechCrunch公开信息综合整理）

中文翻译：

初创公司和开发者究竟该如何让人工智能产品实现盈利？获得500万美元种子轮融资的初创企业Koah认为，广告将成为解决方案的重要组成部分。

只要您经常上网，就很可能会看到大量粗制滥造的人工智能生成广告——但在与人工智能聊天机器人互动时却几乎看不到广告。Koah联合创始人兼首席执行官尼克·贝尔德断言这种情况必将改变。

"一旦这些产品走出旧金山，要想在全球范围实现盈利就只有一条路可走，"贝尔德通过Zoom接受TechCrunch采访时表示，"这已经是反复验证过的模式。"

需要说明的是，Koah并非试图在ChatGPT中引入广告（这可能是OpenAI日后自行推进的计划），而是专注于那些基于大型模型构建的"长尾"应用，包括用户群体遍布美国以外的应用程序。

贝尔德指出，当消费级人工智能产品最初兴起时，专注于"高消费能力的专业用户"并通过付费订阅实现盈利是合理策略。但如今，开发者可能打造出覆盖拉美数百万用户的人工智能应用，而这些用户"根本不会每月支付20美元"。虽然开发者难以获取订阅收入，但"他们承担的计算成本却与他人无异"。

贝尔德认为，通过成功探索广告在AI对话中的运营模式，Koah实际上能为那些"因运营成本过高而难以规模化"的个性化应用开启盈利可能——除非其创造者能够获得风险投资。

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目前Koah已在多款应用中部署广告服务，包括人工智能助手Luzia、育儿应用Heal、学术研究工具Liner以及创意平台DeepAI。其广告客户涵盖UpWork、General Medicine和Skillshare等品牌。

这些标注为赞助内容的广告会适时出现在对话场景中。例如当用户咨询创业策略时，应用可能会展示UpWork的广告，推荐能够对接自由职业者的服务。

贝尔德透露，在与出版商洽谈时，多数人认为广告根本不适合AI对话场景，另一些使用Admob、AppLovin等传统广告平台的公司也收效甚微。但Koah的点击率高达7.5%，效果提升4-5倍，早期合作伙伴在平台上线首月即获得1万美元收益。他强调Koah在实现这些成果的同时对用户参与度影响更小，最终目标是让广告与场景高度契合从而提升互动体验。

Koah本轮种子轮融资由Forerunner领投，South Park Commons与AppLovin联合创始人安德鲁·卡拉姆跟投。Forerunner合伙人妮可·约翰逊在邮件访谈中呼应了贝尔德的观点，指出盈利问题是AI领域"开发者与投资者心照不宣的难题"。虽然"订阅制是消费级AI服务的现行标准"，但单一依赖订阅会"快速导致用户疲态和流失"。

"消费级AI必然需要多元盈利模式，纵观过去数十年的互联网服务发展，广告必将扮演重要角色。"约翰逊表示。她认为Koah正在"构建消费级AI服务不可或缺的盈利层级"。

关于AI对话在广告生态中的定位，贝尔德团队发现其处于购买漏斗的中段——介于Instagram广告的品牌认知与谷歌搜索广告的直接购买之间。"用户不会在AI平台直接交易，"贝尔德直言，"他们可能向聊天机器人咨询建议或产品详情，但最终会转向谷歌完成购买。"因此Koah面临的挑战在于如何精准捕捉用户的"商业意图"。

"研究如何在AI中展示横幅广告对我毫无吸引力，"贝尔德说，"我们更关注的是：用户真正需要什么？如何精准满足他们的需求？"

英文来源：

How can startups and developers actually monetize their AI products? A startup called Koah, which recently raised $5 million in seed funding, is betting that ads will be a big part of the answer.
If you spend any time online, there’s a good chance you’ve seen plenty of ugly, AI-generated ads — but few to none when interacting with AI chatbots themselves. Koah co-founder and CEO Nic Baird argued that will inevitably change.
“Once these things get outside San Francisco, there’s only one way to make [them profitable] on a global scale,” Baird told TechCrunch over Zoom. “It’s happened time and time again.”
To be clear, Koah isn’t trying to introduce advertising to ChatGPT. (That’s probably something OpenAI will do for itself one day.) Instead, it’s focused on the “long tail” of apps that are built on top of the big models, including apps with a user base outside the United States.
Baird suggested that when consumer AI products were first becoming popular, it made sense for them to focus on “wealthier, prosumer” users, and to monetize those users by converting some of them into paid subscriptions.
But now, someone could build an AI app that reaches millions of users in Latin America, and those users are “not paying 20 dollars a month,” Baird said. So the developer could struggle to bring in subscription revenue, but “they have the same inference costs as everyone else.”
Baird suggested that by successfully figuring out how to make advertising work in AI chats, Koah could actually unlock more potential for “vibe coded” apps that might otherwise be “too expensive to operate at scale” unless their creators raise VC funding.
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In fact, Koah is already serving ads in apps like AI assistant Luzia, parenting app Heal, student research tool Liner, and creative platform DeepAI. Its advertisers include UpWork, General Medicine, and Skillshare.
These ads are marked as sponsored content, and they’re supposed to appear at relevant moments in your chats. For example, if you asking for advice about startup business strategies, the app could show you an ad from UpWork offering to connect you with freelancers who could work with your company.
When Koah talks to publishers, Baird said many of them believe that ads simply don’t work in AI chats, while others have found limited success with AI offerings from older adtech companies like Admob and AppLovin.
But Baird said Koah is 4 to 5 times more effective, delivering clickthrough rates of 7.5%, and with early partners earning $10,000 in their first 30 days on the platform. He added that Koah achieves all that while having less of a detrimental effect on user engagement — though his ultimate goal is for Koah ads to feel relevant enough that they actually improve engagement.
Koah’s seed round was led by Forerunner, with participation from South Park Commons and AppLovin co-founder Andrew Karam.
Forerunner partner Nicole Johnson echoed many of Baird’s points when discussing the investment over email. She said that when it comes to AI, monetization, is “the elephant in the room amongst builders and investors.” And while the “going standard for monetizing consumer AI services is subscription,” focusing exclusively on subscriptions can “quickly lead to fatigue and churn.”
“Multiple revenue models in Consumer AI are inevitable, and if the past decades of internet services are any indicator, ads will play a major role,” Johnson said. In her view, Koah is “building the essential monetization layer for consumer AI services.”
As for where AI chats fall in the larger advertising ecosystem, Baird and his team have found they represent the middle of the purchase funnel — somewhere between the awareness raising of an Instagram ad and the actual purchase that might be driven by ad in Google search.
“People are not transacting on AI — they’re just not,” Baird said. They might ask a chatbot for recommendations or product details, but then “they’re going to Google to buy.” So part of the challenge for Koah is figuring out the best ways to capture a user’s “commercial intent.”
“It’s not interesting to me to try to figure out, ‘How do we show a display ad in AI?” Baird said. Instead, he wants to understand, “What is the user looking for and how do we give that to them?”