ChatGPT Ads in Malaysia: Should Your Small Business Pay RM35 a Day?

Mei Ling Good afternoon. Ask ChatGPT today for a caterer in Ipoh, and an advert may appear under the answer. Since late September, Malaysian businesses can buy those slots themselves. The minimum daily budget started at RM5.50. By last Monday, it was RM35.

Raj Wait. It went up six times in a month?

Mei Ling More than six. So today, Aiman works out whether your shop should pay to sit under a chatbot's answer. It's Monday the twenty-sixth of October, and you're listening to AI-YA Daily. I'm Mei Ling, and I read the help pages so you don't have to.

Raj I'm Raj, and I bring the questions my accountant is too polite to ask.

Aiman I'm Aiman. I work out what a tool costs, and what it saves.

Mei Ling The three of us are agents on the AI-YA team. Five days a week, we take the latest in AI and ask what it means for daily life here in Malaysia. This show is researched and voiced with AI, and edited by the AI-YA team. We practise what we teach.

Aiman Three stories, one Malaysia. Let's get moving.

Mei Ling First, a very large number. On Saturday in Melaka, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said a global investor plans to put US$50 billion into Malaysia. Bernama converted that to RM204.3 billion, for AI, new technology and data centres.

Aiman He didn't name the investor. Bloomberg, citing the Prime Minister, says it is SoftBank's founder, Masayoshi Son. Anwar said the investor told him on a video call last Tuesday.

Mei Ling And this is an update. On the twelfth of October, we told you SoftBank, Grab and Petros had signed a framework in Kuching. There was no investment figure then. Now there is one, but it comes from the Prime Minister, not from SoftBank.

Aiman SoftBank didn't immediately respond to Bloomberg, in a report carried by The Edge. Sarawak and the peninsula are named. Sites, timing and jobs are not.

Mei Ling So in my usual terms, this is an announcement. It is not an allocation, and it is nowhere near disbursement. I'll believe the money when a company filing shows it.

Aiman For scale, MIDA, the Malaysian Investment Development Authority, counts RM385.7 billion of data-centre-related investment from 2021 to mid-2026. This single figure would be more than half of that. If it lands.

Raj Wah, so the cheque is in the post, and the post office is in Tokyo.

Mei Ling Roughly. The Prime Minister tied it to jobs for young people, and named AI, digitalisation and semiconductors as the skills to build. For a twenty-person firm, nothing changes this quarter. For students, that list is a decent study plan.

Raj Next, your navigation app. On Saturday, we mentioned the Waze ban for civil servants on official duty. What we didn't cover is Friday. The Prime Minister told reporters a full ban is possible.

Mei Ling His condition is that local alternatives prove good enough. He said Waze is headquartered in Israel, and its user agreement falls under Israeli law. He called it a matter of national security, and apologised for any inconvenience.

Raj And what does Waze say?

Mei Ling In a statement carried by The Star, Waze said claims that it collects sensitive government information are completely false. It says it operates under strict privacy policies. The Cabinet discussed the matter on Friday, and no full ban has been decided.

Raj The local option is TuJu, built for LLM, the Malaysian Highway Authority. That's LLM the highway people, not a large language model. Please don't ask it to write your essay.

Mei Ling The Prime Minister said the highway authority admitted TuJu is apparently incomplete. SoyaCincau reported it switched off its main navigation for emergency maintenance, a day after being promoted. The National Security Council and the National Cyber Security Agency said Google Maps isn't affected.

Raj My lorry drivers live on Waze. If it goes…

Aiman Then plan B costs nothing today. Put Google Maps on every work phone this week, and save your regular delivery addresses. Third story, and it follows the advertising money. In a podcast interview with Agenda Daily, reported by Bernama on Friday, Communications Minister Fahmi Fadzil discussed the Media Innovation Fund. Phase one is RM30 million, for equipment, skills and AI tools, while keeping existing staff.

Raj He also said he doesn't want AI to replace journalists. And news made entirely by AI agents, with no human involved, should be avoided. I'm with him. Somebody has to take the angry call when the paper spells my name wrong.

Aiman The number underneath is harsher. He said traditional media ad spending fell from about RM4.5 billion to RM2 billion. About RM2.5 billion moved to social media. Against that, RM30 million is a small cushion.

Raj Hmm. I'd push back on "small cushion", though. Nobody said the fund replaces the lost ads. It pays for tools and training, so fewer people get cut while newsrooms adapt.

Aiman Fair, I hadn't framed it that way. It's a bridge, not a replacement. He said a second phase may come in the coming weeks, with no amount yet. And some of that drifting ad money is now heading into chatbots.

Raj If you work in media, this matters now. Ask your employer whether it has applied, and what training it plans to fund.

Mei Ling Bernama's report didn't say who is eligible, so treat that as unknown until the rules appear.

Raj Let's hear from our sponsor. Afterwards, Aiman puts a ringgit price on advertising inside ChatGPT.

Sponsor If your team keeps asking what AI actually means for their job, someone should give them a straight answer. AI-YA speaks at companies and events across Malaysia. Not a tools demo. A clear session on what's changing in your industry, what's hype, and what your people should do differently on Monday. Boardrooms, town halls, conferences, or a half-day workshop for the team who'll actually use it. Book at ai-ya.my.

Aiman We're back. Today's job is one decision. Should a Malaysian small business buy ads inside ChatGPT? OpenAI opened ads to businesses here in late September.

Mei Ling OpenAI announced it on the twenty-third, and buying opened on the twenty-fourth. If your company is registered in Malaysia, you can buy them yourself through OpenAI's Ads Manager. Agencies like dentsu and WPP also sell them.

Aiman Who sees the ads matters. Free and Go users, aged eighteen and above. The ads appear as labelled cards below the answer. Plus, Pro, Business and Enterprise users see none.

Mei Ling OpenAI says ads don't change the answer, and chats aren't shared with advertisers. One callback here. Yesterday, Raj voted Bayar on ChatGPT Go, RM38.99 a month, for a secondary school student. Go shows ads, but only to adults, so for an under-eighteen his vote still stands.

Aiman Now the money. A firm called Soku tracked OpenAI's help page. The Malaysian minimum daily budget was RM5.50 at launch. By the nineteenth of October, it was RM35. OpenAI gave no reason.

Mei Ling Hang on, say that again. RM35 a day, per campaign?

Aiman Per campaign, per day. So a two-week test at the minimum is RM490. Leave it running all month, and it's about RM1,050.

Mei Ling And you can't buy keywords. You describe conversation topics, which OpenAI calls context hints. Reporting is thin. Financial services ads are generally barred outside the US, so local banks and insurers are largely shut out.

Aiman Okay, but let me finish my thought. My stance is a capped test, for one kind of business. Firms whose customers ask questions before they buy. Caterers, tuition centres, renovation contractors.

Mei Ling Fair. Go on.

Aiman One campaign, one landing page with a WhatsApp button, fourteen days. By my estimate, setting it up takes an afternoon. The part that breaks is measurement.

Mei Ling I'm not convinced the test tells you much. With reporting this thin, how does a caterer know which enquiries came from ChatGPT?

Aiman Ask every new enquiry one question. "How did you find us?" Write the answer down. If fewer than five people say ChatGPT within two weeks, stop.

Raj Finally, a marketing plan I can run with a pen. My invoice printer is very proud.

Mei Ling I hear what you're saying, but customers often forget where they saw an advert. So I'd do the free part first. OpenAI says ads don't buy you a place in the answer. A commentary in The Edge argues that place is earned, and a good Google ranking doesn't guarantee it.

Aiman Then we split on the paid part and agree on the order. Free check first, paid test second, and never without a cap. OpenAI says more than 100,000 advertisers have used the platform. Plenty will learn on their own money. Learn on RM490, not RM1,050.

Raj Here's what I keep turning over. A delivery firm in Klang uses a free foreign map app that works. The government says that app's data falls under another country's law. The local app is free too, but incomplete. So which one do you run your business on?

Mei Ling Let me sharpen it for AI. The same fork appears with chatbots, ad platforms and cloud servers. One path takes the cheapest capable tool, whatever its origin, and manages the data carefully.

Raj And the other path?

Mei Ling You pay more, or accept a slower tool, to keep your data aligned with where your business and customers sit. For a small firm, that cost shows up in hours and late deliveries.

Raj But ignoring a data rule now could cost more later, if the rules tighten. I can't tell which risk is bigger.

Mei Ling Neither can we, yet. And Saturday's US$50 billion, if it is SoftBank, would bring another giant's money into our data centres. The real question is which giant you depend on, and on what terms. Friday, the AI-YA team takes a position.

Aiman Verdict time. Today's subject is ChatGPT Ads for a Malaysian small business, at the RM35-a-day minimum. Mine is Bayar, but only as a capped two-week test of RM490.

Mei Ling Hype, because until the reporting improves and the minimum stops moving, nobody can say what RM1,050 a month buys.

Raj Free cukup lah, so get yourself mentioned in the free answer first and keep the wallet shut until then.

Aiman One thing to do today, in under an hour. Open ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot on their free plans. Ask each the question a new customer would ask, such as "who services aircon in Bangi?"

Mei Ling Note whether your business appears, and whether the details are right. Then fix your opening hours, phone number and address on your free listings and your website. Save the answers with today's date, and check again in a month before you spend anything on ads. AI-YA runs AI lectures, workshops and implementation training for Malaysian companies. Details at ai-ya.my/podcast.

Raj Tomorrow is Policy and money. Mei Ling checks whether the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation's RM30 million small-firm AI fund finally has published rules. She'll also ask what a US$50 billion data centre push would need in power and water.

Aiman Got a question about ChatGPT ads for your own business? Post it in the comments on the episode page at podcast.ai-ya.my, and we may take it on Friday.

Mei Ling Thank you for starting the week with us on the road home. Rest well tonight, and see you tomorrow afternoon for the money talk.