ChatGPT ad demand grows but revenue lags OpenAI's forecast
OpenAI's advertising business is growing quickly on paper but not yet in revenue. The number of advertisers on ChatGPT climbed from around 20,000 at the end of August to roughly 60,000 in early October, according to New Street Research partner Dan Salmon. Clicks cost about $5, against $30 to $50 for comparable commercial software ads on Google.
Even with that expansion, OpenAI is likely to fall short of the $2.4 billion in ad revenue it projected to investors for 2026, according to The Information. The company has cut the barriers to entry sharply: it once charged on a CPM basis with a $200,000 minimum commitment, and now supports CPM and CPC bidding with recommended CPC bids of $3 to $5, plus self-service buying across more than 60 countries.
For brands chasing citations in AI answers, the low cost of entry makes ChatGPT a cheap place to test whether paid placement shifts how assistants talk about them. The platform sits between search and audience advertising: ad selection can draw on the context and intent of the live conversation, and advertisers can upload customer lists for matching, though matched audiences need at least 25,000 users.
That conversational targeting also brings a different brand-safety problem, since ads can appear around private conversations that change direction message by message. OpenAI says it is working with DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science on brand-suitability checks and that those partners do not get access to private conversations.
Reported by MarTech ↗
Topics: ChatGPT, AI advertising, Measurement