ChatGPT Ads Reaches $1B – Annualized – In 200 Days
Several days after agencies tookto LinkedIn to discuss how they did not see performance from ChatGPT Ads, parent company OpenAI announced it had reached a $1 billion annualized revenue run rate for its advertising business.
“In less than 200 days after launch, ChatGPT Ads has reached $1 billion in annualized revenue run rate,” the company wrote in a blog posted on Monday. “The platform is now used by tens of thousandsof advertisers and continues to expand globally.
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The company said it is working on the next “phase of growth” to bring ChatGPT Ads to more markets and introduce additional formats, objectives, buying options, and measurementcapabilities, as well as explore new ways for businesses to interact with consumers in ChatGPT.
OpenAI treated the announcement as a milestone as it prepares to take the company through aninitial public offering (IPO), calling its ad business as one piece of a “diversified business model, alongside consumer subscriptions, enterprise offerings, and usage-based APIs.”
Adiversified business model is something all public companies need to attract investors, along with an advertising-supported, free tier to support ChatGPT’s more than 1 billion weekly activeusers.
OpenAI also reminded advertisers and users that ChatGPTadvertisements are always clearly marked and they do not influence answers that the chatbot provides.
“Advertisers do not receive access to people’s private conversations, andusers can control how their ad experience is personalized,” the company wrote.
“This announcement is both incredibly impressive and terribly disappointing,” Emarketer AIanalyst Nate Elliott, wrote in an email. “On the one hand, OpenAI has ramped its ad business with amazing speed, but on the other hand, these numbers point to them missing their own goals by acountry mile.
“If they’re just now hitting a $1 billion run rate — rather than actual revenue — eight months into the year, it’ll be all but impossible for them to meettheir own $2.5 billion ad revenue target for 2026,” he wrote
Ads do not influence answers, but answers do influence the ads — whether or not ChatGPT users click through after seeing the ad impression. Lastweek, Peter Jaffray, managing director and privacy officer at Choice OMG, a Canadian digital marketing agency based in Edmonton, Canada, told MediaPost he ran a small campaigntargeting ads in Ontario and Alberta, but did not get any interested buyers, zero, though the ads were inexpensive and the people were real who clicked on them. In other words, the clicks were notgenerated by bots.
