Ads inside ChatGPT are now bringing in money at a $1 billion annual pace, OpenAI said Monday, less than 200 days after the business started. Tens of thousands of advertisers are on the platform, which now runs in more than 40 countries.
The number is a run rate, current monthly ad revenue multiplied by 12, rather than money already booked, Digiday noted. “We’re at the beginning of a new chapter for advertising, with AI creating entirely new ways for businesses and people to discover one another,” said Dave Dugan, OpenAI’s vice president of global ad solutions. “Reaching $1 billion in ARR in under 200 days shows the scale of the opportunity ahead.”
Alongside the milestone, OpenAI opened self-serve buying in Ads Manager to advertisers in India, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. In Europe, ads went live in 31 markets earlier in August through agency partners; Monday’s change lets startups and small businesses there build campaigns without an agency. OpenAI said small and midsize businesses already make up a “material share” of the ads business, and that advertisers outside the U.S. are a growing share of revenue, without giving figures.
Fast, but behind its own target
OpenAI is aiming for $2.5 billion in ad revenue this year, and the run rate makes that look out of reach. Emarketer AI analyst Nate Elliott called the announcement “incredibly impressive and terribly disappointing,” Reuters reported. In a LinkedIn post, Elliott did the math: “What they actually announced yesterday is that they made $83 million in August.” By his estimate that puts the year’s ad revenue so far somewhere under $300 million.
The ramp itself has been quick. OpenAI began testing ads in the U.S. in February, and said in April that the pilot had passed $100 million in annualized revenue within six weeks. It entered with a $60 CPM and a $200,000 minimum spend, Trending Topics reported, then added cost-per-click pricing and dropped a $50,000 minimum when self-serve opened to all U.S. businesses, according to Quartz.
Campaign results are uneven. OpenAI cited an ecommerce advertiser that got a 3x return on ad spend over 28 days. Search intelligence firm Adthena, though, found a 0.91% click-through rate for one brand, roughly seven times below the 6.4% Google search benchmark in its sector, and agency executives have reported gaps between OpenAI’s click counts and the sessions Google Analytics records, according to Trending Topics.
Where the ads appear
Ads show up for users on the free tier and the lower-priced Go plan; Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Education accounts stay ad-free. OpenAI says the ads are labeled, kept separate from how ChatGPT generates answers, and that advertisers can’t see users’ conversations. “Our next phase of growth will bring ChatGPT Ads to more markets and introduce additional formats, objectives, buying options, and measurement capabilities,” the company said.
It’s a reversal of sorts for Sam Altman, who said at Harvard in May 2024 that he thought of ads “as a last resort for us for a business model,” Business Insider recalled. OpenAI now calls advertising one pillar of its business alongside consumer subscriptions, enterprise offerings and usage-based APIs. The company reported $6.7 billion in revenue for the second quarter, up from $5.7 billion in the first.
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