OpenAI’s ChatGPT ad pilot launched February 9. And more than three months later, the picture has changed almost every week. 

CPMs have fallen from US$60 at launch to as low as US$25, the minimum spend dropped from US$200,000 to US$50,000, and on April 21, Digiday confirmed OpenAI has turned on cost-per-click ads at bids of US$3 to US$5. Conversion pixel code is live in parts of the platform, tracking leads, orders, registrations, subscriptions, and trials. On April 23, AdExchanger broke news that ads have started showing up to logged-out ChatGPT users without a formal announcement.

The pilot reportedly hit US$100 million in annualised revenue in under six weeks, and self-serve access opens this month. OpenAI also hired David Dugan from Meta as VP of global ad solutions and struck DSP deals with Criteo, Smartly, and StackAdapt.

The strategy underneath these moves became clearer on April 29, when The Information reported what OpenAI is showing investors. ChatGPT Plus at US$20 a month is projected to drop 80% in 2026, from 44 million subscribers to 9 million. The lost revenue will be made up by ChatGPT Go, an ad-supported tier at US$5 to US$8 a month, which OpenAI expects to grow from 3 million to 112 million subscribers. The OpenAI consumer business is going ad-supported fast, and it explains why the ad stack is being built at this pace.

Axios reported the longer trajectory on April 9: US$2.5 billion this year, US$11 billion in 2027, US$25 billion in 2028, US$53 billion in 2029, US$100 billion by 2030. That last figure is roughly 8% of the global digital ad market, which Brian Wieser at Madison and Wall called “extremely aggressive.”

Where will that money come from, and who loses? 

The natural assumption is Google search, but Google’s Q1 numbers do not yet support that read. Search and “other” ad revenue was up 19% year over year to US$60.4 billion, an acceleration from 17% in Q4. CEO Sundar Pichai said search queries hit an all-time high. Google AI Overviews and AI Mode monetise at the same rate as traditional search and now reach more than 2 billion monthly users. 

What’s eroding inside Google is the network business. Google Network revenue, the off-Google publisher inventory Google brokers, fell 4% to US$6.97 billion, the sharpest decline that line of business has shown in years. Google itself is fine, but the publisher inventory Google sells on behalf of others is not.

If OpenAI hits its targets, the money most likely comes from three places:

• The first is Meta and TikTok performance budgets. The Dugan hire, the DSP deals, and the conversion event types point to a direct response platform built for performance advertisers. CPC is Google’s pricing model, but the workflow ChatGPT is building seems closer to Meta’s.
• The second is product-research intent, and this matters most for publishers. ChatGPT Atlas, the browser launched in October 2025, is being rolled into a single desktop super app with the ChatGPT app and Codex. The Agentic Commerce Protocol now has Target, Sephora, Nordstrom, Lowe’s, Best Buy, The Home Depot, and Wayfair integrated for in-ChatGPT product discovery. That’s less similar to Google search inventory and more like Wirecutter, Hearst commerce, Condé Nast’s shopping franchises, BuzzFeed Shopping, and any publisher whose affiliate revenue depends on capturing product research before purchase.

• The third is incremental budget. eMarketer projects AI search ads will grow from US$2.08 billion in 2026 to US$26 billion in 2029, expanding the pie. Some of that is net new spend. Some is search and social budget that would have moved anyway.

2 more developments worth noting

Sora 2, OpenAI’s video model, is now licensed for commercial advertising. The standalone Sora app shut down on April 26 and the model now lives inside ChatGPT. That means an advertiser can generate and serve a video ad entirely inside ChatGPT (again, very similar to Meta’s self-service strategy.)

Operator, OpenAI’s autonomous Web agent, is now performing multi-step tasks for users: browsing, clicking, filling forms. If a larger share of consumers use Operator to book a flight or compare a SaaS product, that could take share from affiliate revenue — though I do believe publishers have many cards to play when it comes to intent. We’ll continue to keep an eye on how this evolves.

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Art credit: Adobe Stock By jroballo

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