The development of artificial intelligence is expensive—extremely expensive. Evidence of this is that OpenAI, the technology giant that, at the beginning of April, closed the largest funding round in history (for the third time), is now focusing on the integration of advertising into ChatGPT to boost revenue generation, given the impossibility of sustaining its operations solely through subscriptions to the model.
OpenAI’s advertising business is still in an early stage of its development, which means the operating model is far from the established standards of other major players such as Meta or Google. Nonetheless, it has launched strongly. According to the company, at the beginning of April, its pilot advertising program surpassed $100 million in ARR in less than six weeks of existence.
One of the issues that arouses the most curiosity among professionals is what the ChatGPT ad manager will look like, given that advertising is currently being managed through direct contact between brands and the OpenAI team. Fortunately, thanks to an exclusive report by Digiday, which had access to a video of the prototype dashboard of the ad management panel, we can now clarify some doubts.
The forthcoming implementation of the ChatGPT ad manager will allow brands to begin managing their advertisements autonomously on the platform, thus gaining greater control and visibility over the advertising environment. However, for now, it remains solely a test-phase prototype that, according to Digiday, shares certain similarities in form with the Google platform.
Currently, OpenAI offers advertisers a CPM model, under which payment is made per impression rather than per click. Apparently, this does not change in the ChatGPT ad manager pilot, which sets this pricing model as the default option.
However, this prototype has provided hints of a significant future change: the CPC (Cost Per Click) and CPA (Cost Per Action) options are displayed as inactive but are marked with the label “coming soon”. Until these models are active, it is likely that companies seeking performance—that is, direct and measurable results—will prefer to keep their distance.
The segmentation capabilities of the ChatGPT ad manager are quite basic. The prototype allows you to set keywords or free-text suggestions, and also to activate country-based restrictions. Other functions that any advertiser would expect, such as demographic targeting or audience buying, are not yet available.
The reporting features are also quite limited. The reports only provide data on impressions and clicks, omitting other relevant metrics such as audience estimates. They also do not provide access to tools for optimizing results.
Although the dashboard is basic, the internal platform of the ad manager is constantly being updated. For instance, the technical foundation necessary to conduct A/B performance testing for comparing advertisements has already been integrated.
In addition to this, configuration features have been incorporated to allow the interface to adapt according to the advertiser profile that logs in. Furthermore, the management of large volumes of data has been simplified by enabling the upload of multiple files at once, and guided processes have been created to help new companies set up their accounts more quickly.
In view of this, it seems clear that OpenAI is preparing to launch a minimally viable ad manager to test the market—one that will serve those major brands that simply wish (and are able) to “be present” for increased visibility.
At the same time, the way in which they are working on their internal infrastructure suggests that they are preparing to compete seriously with Google, eventually offering a significantly more complex platform in the near, though not immediate, future.
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