Don’t expect advertising anytime soon in OpenAI products, including ChatGPT and ChatGPT search. Although it’s possible OpenAI will add ads in the future to its AI search engine, nothing is imminent.
What OpenAI is saying. According to OpenAI’s Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar:
- “Our current business is experiencing rapid growth and we see significant opportunities within our existing business model. While we’re open to exploring other revenue streams in the future, we have no active plans to pursue advertising.”
Friar didn’t entirely dismiss advertising as a potential revenue stream. OpenAI will be “thoughtful about when and where” to implement advertising, according to Financial Times. The report noted that OpenAI has hired former “advertising talent” from Google, Meta, and elsewhere.
Ads are momentary. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is no fan of ads. He called internet ads a “momentary industry” in an interview earlier this year:
- “I kind of hate ads just as an aesthetic choice. I think ads needed to happen on the internet for a bunch of reasons, to get it going, but it’s a momentary industry. The world is richer now. I like that people pay for ChatGPT and know that the answers they’re getting are not influenced by advertisers. I’m sure there’s an ad unit that makes sense for LLMs, and I’m sure there’s a way to participate in the transaction stream in an unbiased way that is okay to do, but it’s also easy to think about the dystopic visions of the future where you ask ChatGPT something and it says, “Oh, you should think about buying this product,” or, “You should think about going here for your vacation,” or whatever.”
- “And I don’t know, we have a very simple business model and I like it, and I know that I’m not the product. I know I’m paying and that’s how the business model works. And when I go use Twitter or Facebook or Google or any other great product but ad-supported great product, I don’t love that, and I think it gets worse, not better, in a world with AI.”
More recently, during a fireside chat at Harvard University, Altman called ads a “last resort for us”:
- “I’m not saying OpenAI would never consider ads, but I don’t like them in general, and I think that ads-plus-AI is sort of uniquely unsettling to me.”
Why we care. OpenAI and its new search product are a blip compared to Google Search. However, that blip is growing. If that momentum continues and its userbase grows, ChatGPT could pose a potential threat to Google in time. However, no “Google killer” search engine has been able to get people to break their Google Search habit yet.
Enshittification. Like Altman, many people believe Google – and other platforms – have declined due to the inevitable “enshittification” of their products. This happens when a platform shifts its focus from the user experience to maximizing profit via advertising.
As OpenAI is transitioning into a for-profit company, it still doesn’t have any significant search market share. That said, ChatGPT referral traffic is growing.
If ChatGPT keeps growing, advertisers will no doubt want to reach those users. Perhaps OpenAI will be watching to see whether Perplexity’s sponsored follow-up question ad model succeeds.
