ChatGPT's advertising business has surpassed $1 billion in annualized sales in roughly 200 days, posting sharp growth.
OpenAI said Monday (local time) that its ChatGPT advertising operation, now active in more than 40 countries, had reached the $1 billion annualized sales mark.
The milestone came about 200 days after OpenAI began showing ads to US users on Feb. 9, and represents 2.5 percent of the company's total annualized sales of $40 billion — a figure disclosed to media on Sept. 14.
OpenAI said tens of thousands of advertisers are now using its ad platform, describing advertising as "one pillar of a diversified business model alongside consumer subscriptions, enterprise services and usage-based API access."
The company said ChatGPT gives users a combined experience of exploration, evaluation and decision-making, and that its advertising can offer an opportunity to deliver useful, relevant information at those moments.
OpenAI also highlighted the effectiveness of its ads, noting that some advertisers achieved a threefold return on investment in just 28 days.
The company added that it plans to expand ChatGPT advertising to more markets and introduce new ad formats, campaign objectives, buying options and performance measurement tools.
However, OpenAI said ads do not influence ChatGPT's responses and are displayed in clear separation from them, adding that maintaining user trust is its guiding principle.
OpenAI's decision to publicize its advertising earnings is widely seen as an effort to showcase its performance to investors as it pursues an initial public offering.
OpenAI, which has focused its marketing on individual customers since its early days, has long been seen as growing sales more slowly than rival Anthropic, which has concentrated on enterprise clients. The ad platform appears to be OpenAI's bid to reverse that perception.
Anthropic has declared it will not place ads on its Claude AI model — even running a large-scale video campaign mocking AI chatbots with advertising — and Google has yet to apply ads to Gemini, suggesting OpenAI will continue to dominate this advertising market for now.
OpenAI serves ads to free ChatGPT users and subscribers to its low-cost "Go" plan. The service launched in South Korea in June.
husn7@heraldcorp.com
