OpenAI follows in the footsteps of every other tech giant by turning to linear advertising
Opinion
It makes perfect sense to launch a brand campaign for Open AI’s ChatGPT on a trusted advertising medium like TV, says MI Media’s business director. But what does the large language model itself think?
It feels like OpenAI has broken its own fourth wall, stepping outside of its virtual world and into a world that it’s had us believe was nothing but a distant memory… linear TV.
Whilst much has been made of OpenAI’s move into TV, it seems to me that this was the logical next step.
Fellow tech giant Google has always run high-budget, emotion-led traditional media advertising. Its TV ads focus on the humanity behind the searches, and it often leans heavily into OOH to showcase its live data feeds with hyper-localised weather or traffic data.
This is the natural progression of a tech product launch. Using digital channels in the first instance to get early adopters onto the platform, whilst every element is in beta, enables the team to optimise processes such as product features, UX, and pricing strategy.
It’s important to remember that ChatGPT is likely still in its relative infancy—even though we’re already on version five.
According to itself, it was first launched in 2018, but it was the 2020 version that garnered global attention.
In a world where engineers need real usage data to optimise and roadmap new features, managing a gentle but steady growth curve is best. It’s important to remember how slow and often inaccurate the early versions were. Large uptake wasn’t an option.
However, with all future-facing products, natural growth will plateau (the same was seen with electric cars). And with large investment rounds, it needs to gear up for the next level. This is the moment when brand campaigns across trusted advertising channels will deliver the mainstream reach these platforms need to become universally used.
Interestingly, when I asked ChatGPT what it thinks about its own ad, it thinks there’s room for improvement.
It’s thrilled with its own emotional arc, and that it’s reinforcing that it was directed and filmed by humans. But it thinks it risks being too subtle, leaving people wondering what ChatGPT is for.
To quote, “some viewers might watch without really understanding why the tool is valuable beyond a vague ‘helpful assistant’.” Clearly, it’s worried some people will underestimate its true value!
Accelerated growth for OpenAI and ChatGPT must come from winning over a more cautious audience with a long-term goal of wearing down the sceptics. It makes perfect sense then that it would launch its first global brand campaign on the most trusted advertising medium: TV.
Annabelle Sitwell is a business director at MI Media