OpenAI Wants ChatGPT Ads to Become a Permanent Line Item in Agency Media Plans

OpenAI is hiring a salesperson with a mandate to turn ChatGPT ads into a standing line item in agency media plans. A listing for an Agency Partner on the company's Ads Solutions team calls for someone to drive advertiser revenue “through strategic relationships with leading agency holding companies.” The New York-based role pays a base salary of $216,000 to $273,000, plus equity and commission. The hire will lead joint business planning agencies, run agency education and enablement, and build relationships with senior agency staff across investment, strategy, planning, innovation, data, and commerce at both independent agencies and holding companies. The executive will sit alongside Client Partners, who sell directly to brands, and Account Managers, who handle advertisers after the sale. Meta and Google split their ad sales teams the same way. Andrew Frank, Gartner’s vp distinguished analyst, said the listing suggests OpenAI has found that winning an advertiser’s first buy and getting into agency media plans consistently are separate challenges. “We often find that innovative ad solutions have more difficulty moving from experimental budgets to stable agency partnerships than securing the initial buy,” Frank said. The new role comes as OpenAI strives to rapidly grow its ads business to meet targets it shared with investors. In August, OpenAI said that ChatGPT ads reached a $1 billion annualized revenue run rate less than 200 days after launch, with tens of thousands of advertisers on board. Run rate, a figure startups favor to show revenue momentum, measures the pace of revenue growth. OpenAI has told investors to expect $2.5 billion in ad revenue this year and $100 billion by 2030. But OpenAI’s total annualized revenue is short of the $20 billion previously signaled, the FT reported. Agency commitments are among the fastest ways to close the distance to those targets. A joint business plan, which the new role will lead, typically commits an agency’s client budgets to a platform for a year at a time in exchange for better pricing, measurement support, or early access to products. The commitments can be large. For example, Magna Global, now part of Omnicom, committed about $100 million of client budgets to Google in a single annual upfront deal in 2014, and Publicis agencies signed a similar agreement. Still, JBP spending targets are often aspirational and terms are privately negotiated. For a platform still building its ad business, even a soft commitment turns uncertain demand into something closer to a predictable revenue. Holding companies including Omnicom, WPP, and Dentsu were among the launch partners for ChatGPT ads when OpenAI rolled out the U.S. pilot in February with a minimum spend commitment of roughly $200,000, ADWEEK previously reported. Since then, OpenAI has lacked scale and repeatability, Gartner's Frank said. “Without somebody owning the holding company relationship, individual client experiments don't automatically become agency portfolio-wide commitments,” he said. Those relationships currently run through former Meta and Trade Desk executives. In March, OpenAI hired David Dugan, Meta's former vp of global clients and agencies, as its head of global ads solution. Dugan spent more than a decade managing Meta's relationships with the largest holding companies. OpenAI also hired Samantha Jacobson, The Trade Desk’s former chief strategy officer, as its vp of partnership, ADWEEK previously reported. OpenAI is building the agency team while also pushing advertisers to buy ads on its platform on their own. In May, OpenAI opened its self-serve Ads Manager to all U.S. advertisers, added cost-per-click bidding, and dropped the minimum spend that had limited the pilot. It is also staffing a team to court small and midsize businesses. Frank said the two approaches serve different ends of the market. “Self-service makes ChatGPT advertising easy to try. Agencies can make it normal for enterprises to buy,” he said. The agency listing is one of dozens of advertising roles OpenAI has opened this year; its careers page listed 19 ads-related openings in early May and 32 by late July. Those include a head of ads enterprise marketing, paying $374,000 to $415,000, with a remit to sell CMOs and agency leaders on ChatGPT as a premium ad platform. Outside the U.S., OpenAI has hired Andy Sinn, previously Meta’s agency partner and global account lead for APAC, to work with brands and agencies in Australia and New Zealand. Frank underscored the hardest part of the job will be competing with Google and Meta on performance. “The biggest obstacle isn't convincing agencies that ChatGPT is interesting. It's persuading them that the next ad dollar produces an incremental, measurable result they can't get more predictably from Google or Meta,” Frank said. “That’s a much higher bar. Until buyers understand when and how conversational intent is uniquely valuable, it risks remaining an experimental budget rather than a core allocation.” OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment.

Artificial Intelligence

OpenAI Wants ChatGPT Ads to Become a Permanent Line Item in Agency Media Plans

New job listing shows OpenAI is building the holding-company sales layer that Meta and Google use to lock in recurring spend

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