TechTown Detroit, ChatGPT's $1B Ad Milestone, and This Month's AI-Visibility Prompt

By Redic Grant, Founder & CEO, MRJ Consulting

This week wasn't about showing up in a room — it was about making sure everyone was safe. Severe storms tore through Metro Detroit, downing trees, damaging homes, and knocking out power to more than 200,000 DTE customers at the peak; the National Weather Service is surveying possible tornado damage on the city's east side, which would be Detroit's first since 1997. TechTown Detroit made the right call and postponed this month's First Thursdays. If the storms hit your home, your team, or your business, our thoughts are with you — and if there's anything MRJ can do to help while you get back on your feet, reach out.

Life goes on, and so does the rest of this issue: a reminder that presence matters just as much in the AI tools your customers are starting to search inside of as it does in a room full of people. This week brought a stark example of that shift: ChatGPT's ad business just crossed a $1 billion annualized run rate, only 200 days after launch. If you're not thinking about how your business shows up inside AI answers yet, it's time to start.

In the Community: TechTown Detroit Postpones First Thursdays

Given the storm damage across the city, TechTown Detroit postponed this month's First Thursdays gathering — the right call with downed trees and widespread power outages across Metro Detroit. We'll share the rescheduled date as soon as it's confirmed, and hope everyone in our network came through the storms safely.

Separately, we're still finalizing plans with TechTown Detroit to lead an AI & Social Media seminar for their founder community this fall — practical, no-jargon training on using AI tools to do more with a small marketing team, the same approach we bring to every MRJ client. More details on dates and registration in the next issue.

What We're Watching: ChatGPT Ads Hit a $1 Billion Run Rate

OpenAI's ad business inside ChatGPT reached a $1 billion annualized revenue run rate this week — a milestone it hit in roughly 200 days, and one that's pushing OpenAI to expand self-serve ad access to more advertisers across Europe and beyond. Love it or not, it confirms what we've been telling clients all year: AI chat tools are becoming a real discovery channel, not just a novelty.

Why it matters for our clients: search behavior is splitting. Some of your customers are still Googling; a growing share are asking ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Gemini directly and taking the answer at face value. If your business isn't structured to be found and cited correctly inside those answers — accurate business info, clear service pages, real reviews — you're invisible to that growing slice of buyers, ad budget or not. This is a conversation worth having with your marketing team now, before it's table stakes.

This Month's Prompt: Am I Visible in AI Search?

Here's a prompt to run once a month, right alongside your regular SEO check. Open ChatGPT, Claude, or your AI tool of choice and paste this in:

"Act as a potential customer searching for a [type of business] in [city]. Based only on publicly available information you can find, tell me: would you recommend my business, [business name]? What would you say about us, and what's missing or unclear that might make you recommend a competitor instead?"

It takes two minutes and shows you exactly how AI tools are already describing — or ignoring — your business to the people asking.

On Micah's Desk This Week

Micah is putting together the seminar outline and slide deck for the TechTown AI & Social Media session, updating a few law firm clients' Google Business Profiles and service pages ahead of the AI-visibility push above, and following up on a round of new inbound leads from the last two weeks of outreach. If you want early access to the AI-visibility prompt as a recurring worksheet for your team, let her know — she's turning it into a one-pager.

Where to Start

Once the dust (and debris) settles and you're ready to think about your marketing again, or if that ChatGPT stat made you wonder where your business stands in AI search, MRJ offers a free 30-minute AI Discovery Call — no pitch, just a clear read on where you are and what to do first. Ready to talk? Reach out at info@mrjcdetroit.com.

MRJ Consulting is a Detroit-based digital marketing and AI consulting firm helping law firms, nonprofits, financial institutions, and small businesses across Southeast Michigan build AI-powered marketing systems that actually work. Detroit-Built. Globally Focused.