OpenAI unveils ChatGPT advertising push at Cannes Lions

OpenAI made its debut at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity this week, using the high-profile marketing gathering to aggressively pitch a new advertising business built into ChatGPT as it seeks to build a multibillion-dollar revenue stream ahead of a potential initial public offering. The company outlined an ambitious target of generating $100 billion in advertising revenue by the end of the decade, a goal that would place it in direct competition with established digital advertising giants like Google and Meta.

The company’s advertising chief, David Dugan, framed the push as a mechanism to subsidize and grow access to information. He stated that revenue from ads would fund broader access to OpenAI’s AI tools. The advertising model, which launched in February, currently serves sponsored content to users of ChatGPT’s free and lower-cost subscription tiers. These ads are clearly labeled and appear at the bottom of chatbot responses, without influencing the organic answers above.

OpenAI reported it already has thousands of advertisers across seven initial test markets: the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and South Korea....