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OpenAI Says It's 'Clearly in the Advertising Business': What ChatGPT Ads Mean for Your SMB
News | | 5 min read | By Joshua Wendt

OpenAI Says It's 'Clearly in the Advertising Business': What ChatGPT Ads Mean for Your SMB

At Cannes Lions on June 22, 2026 — OpenAI’s first appearance at the festival — CRO Denise Dresser told the room the company is “clearly in the advertising business now,” per AdExchanger. That matters to you because ChatGPT is becoming an ad channel your customers already see and your competitors can already buy. The February pilot is now a live, multi-market business.

What OpenAI Actually Said

This was a deliberate flag-planting. As recently as May 2024, Sam Altman called ads “a last resort” and said “ads plus AI is sort of uniquely unsettling to me.” The Cannes declaration is the reversal — the first time OpenAI has owned the advertising label at a major industry event.

The numbers they brought were large. David Dugan, OpenAI’s VP and Head of Global Ads Solutions (hired from Meta in March 2026, where he spent more than a decade as VP of global clients and agencies), said ChatGPT now has more than 900 million weekly active users, and that roughly 20% of queries carry direct commercial intent, per AdExchanger. One in five questions is somebody trying to decide what to buy, where to go, or who to hire.

OpenAI’s pitch is that this intent is the whole point. Users come to ChatGPT with a job to be done, not to scroll. Dresser also said ad dismissal rates — users crossing out an ad — have dropped 50% since the February pilot launched, which the company attributes to better relevance, per Search Engine Land.

The Money Behind the Claim

Keep your skepticism handy here. OpenAI told investors it projects roughly $2.5 billion in ad revenue for 2026 and about $100 billion by 2030 — internal projections reported by Axios in April 2026, not public commitments or audited figures.

Outside analysts are far more conservative. Truist pegs OpenAI’s 2026 ad revenue at under $1 billion. The $100 billion figure is a destination OpenAI is selling to investors, not a fact on the ground — useful for understanding how hard the company will push this, not a reason to assume the channel is mature.

Who Can Already Buy ChatGPT Ads

More than you might expect. As of June 22, over 2,000 brands are advertising on ChatGPT through Criteo across seven markets: the United States, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Japan, and South Korea, per Criteo’s June 22 press release. In early May that count was around 1,000. It roughly doubled in seven weeks.

The platform expanded on several fronts around the same date:

  • Two new Asian markets. Japan and South Korea went live during Cannes week — ChatGPT’s first non-English-language Asian ad markets.
  • UK self-serve. UK ads inventory launched June 6. On June 22, OpenAI extended self-serve Ads Manager access (at ads.openai.com) to UK-based advertisers.
  • More buying options. Recent additions include CPC bidding alongside CPM, average daily budgets, ZIP-code geo-targeting, and conversion-optimized campaigns (launched June 5).

One detail worth noting: ads only show to Free-tier and Go-tier users. Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Education subscribers see nothing. The audience you can reach with ChatGPT ads is the unpaid majority; higher-spend professional users are, for now, off-limits.

What a Small Business Should Actually Do

Do not rush to pour budget into a channel that is four months old. But do not ignore it either.

  • Find out how ChatGPT talks about your category — for free. Ask it the questions your customers ask. That tells you where you stand before you spend anything.
  • Check whether your market is live. US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and South Korea have self-serve access. Everywhere else has more time to learn before it arrives.
  • Start tiny if you test at all. Use the minimum budget, treat it as research, and measure against your existing Google or Meta spend. A 50% drop in ad dismissals is encouraging for OpenAI, but it is not a conversion rate. You need your own numbers.
  • Mind the audience gap. Your best prospects may be paid ChatGPT subscribers who never see ads. For some businesses, that alone makes this a weak channel today.

This is the same playbook that applied when ChatGPT’s Ads Manager beta first launched — except the stakes are higher now that 2,000 brands are in and OpenAI has said the quiet part out loud at the industry’s biggest annual gathering.

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The Takeaway

OpenAI standing up at Cannes and claiming the advertising label is the clearest signal yet that ChatGPT ads are a real channel, not an experiment. The trajectory — pilot in February, 1,000 brands in May, 2,000-plus and seven markets by late June — is steep.

But steep growth is not the same as a proven channel for you. The revenue targets are investor projections, the best-spending users see no ads, and you have no performance history to lean on. The smart move right now is reconnaissance: learn how ChatGPT talks about your business, confirm whether your market is live, and keep your dollars where you can already measure return. Watch AdExchanger’s coverage and be ready to test small the moment the numbers justify it.

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