OpenAI has officially launched a self-service advertising platform, a major step forward in the revenue race among the big AI players. The announced goal is ambitious: to generate $2.5 billion in ad revenue this year and to reach $100 billion by 2030.
Named “Ads Manager,” the tool enters beta in the United States. Asad Awan, OpenAI’s head of monetization, confirmed a gradual rollout to advertisers. Practically, companies will be able to sign up on the platform to launch and manage their campaigns in real time within ChatGPT.
The novelty is significant for small and medium-sized enterprises, which until now were constrained to go through large agencies to access this kind of ad inventory. OpenAI has also removed the minimum entry threshold, which had previously been set at $50,000.
An ecosystem of established players
The platform rests on a network of partners already well entrenched in the sector. Advertisers will be able to create their ads directly via the tool or through partner agencies such as Dentsu, Omnicom, Publicis, and WPP. Several adtech players are also integrated, including Adobe, Criteo, Kargo, Pacvue, and StackAdapt.
The offering is also enhanced with new measurement tools designed to facilitate the analysis and optimization of campaigns. An essential prerequisite to convince advertisers accustomed to the standards of Google or Meta.
OpenAI has been testing this product for several months. During the pilot phase, space purchases were only possible on a cost-per-mille (CPM) basis. Now, cost per click (CPC) is available, giving advertisers a more direct and familiar performance metric. According to a Reuters report published in March, the American pilot had already surpassed $100 million in annualized revenue in just six weeks.
A gradual ramp-up
If the trajectory looks promising, AI-powered search advertising remains an embryonic market.
According to eMarketer, US spending on AI-related search advertising is expected to rise from $1 billion in 2025 to $25.9 billion in 2029, representing a share that would climb from 0.7% to 13.6% of total search expenditure. Nevertheless, budgets for traditional search continue to grow, expected to reach $190.7 billion in 2029 versus $148.6 billion in 2025.
This growth of AI advertising will be driven largely by OpenAI, but also by Microsoft and Google, which are heavily investing in AI-augmented search experiments.
