OpenAI calls sponsored agents the future of advertising in chats

Advertisers had previously complained about the lack of targeting options in ChatGPT Ads — they lacked the tools to show the right version of an ad to the right user. But OpenAI prefers to treat these complaints as "feedback, not grievances," Coulter noted. Custom audiences, she said, "open up an entirely new level of relevance" — on top of conversational context and user identity.

Publishers are owed less

While advertisers' wishes are being fulfilled, some publishers continue to suffer harm from the big AI companies.

One of the main advantages of advertising inside AI chats is the specificity of users' conversations with language models, which allows for contextually precise ad delivery. But the LLMs can hold these conversations only because they were trained on external content — most often publishers' content. Publishers, in turn, are seeing a serious drop in traffic: people increasingly choose AI search over visiting websites.

At the same time, OpenAI does not believe publishers are owed more than they are getting now. A number of publishers have independent licensing agreements with OpenAI that bring additional compensation. But by default, publishers receive no payment for training AI on their content.

Since all of ChatGPT's factual responses contain links and citations, this format "still directs the user to engage with the publisher's site," Coulter said. In addition, she added, conversations inside ChatGPT give publishers "insight into how people interact with their content."

Publishers, however, may not value engagement analytics as highly if the engagement itself doesn't happen on their platforms and doesn't drive traffic.

Schrödinger's ad revenue

The value of ChatGPT tokens is growing rapidly. ChatGPT Ads recently reached a run rate of $1 billion per year, but the goal of $100 billion in ad revenue by 2030 is still very far away.

"Is that true?" AdExchanger editor-in-chief Allison Schiff asked Coulter point-blank, expressing doubt about the figures.

Since OpenAI has filed an S-1 registration statement — the company's first step toward an IPO — it "cannot share that kind of feedback," Coulter replied. "The PR team would drag me off the stage immediately," she added.

Let's call it Schrödinger's ad revenue: it is simultaneously possible and impossible — until its final state is revealed.