‘Impressive’ growth, but will it hit lofty targets? Unpacking OpenAI’s ads business as it hits $1bn annualised run rate
OpenAI’s ads business has surpassed $1bn in annualised run rate, the company announced on Monday. It has done so within just 200 days since launching its ads model on ChatGPT.
The financial milestone comes weeks after ChatGPT’s ad model launched across 31 additional European markets, with ads now running in over 40 markets globally. Ads were introduced to the UK in May after beginning testing in the US in February.
Importantly, this week OpenAI also rolled out its self-serve ChatGPT Ads Manager to advertisers of all sizes in Europe, the Middle East, India and North Africa.
It is part of a tried-and-true approach, perfected over years by the likes of Meta and Google and increasingly adopted by other media owners like broadcasters and audio companies, aimed at attracting small- and medium-sized businesses by making ads on ChatGPT easy to plan and buy and, importantly, relatively inexpensive to do so.
OpenAI claims ads on ChatGPT are now being bought by “tens of thousands” of advertisers amid the continued global expansion; this compares to the merely “thousands” of advertisers OpenAI counted in June. The company also claims advertisers outside the US “represent a growing share of revenue”, though the proportion of ex-US ad revenue has not been disclosed. Many large clients, OpenAI has said, are now running multi-market campaigns on the platform.
During initial testing, ChatGPT launched with high-cost per thousand impressions (CPMs) in excess of $60, charging prices more akin to live sports broadcasts than social media platforms. Within weeks, however, OpenAI had reduced CPMs before ultimately moving to embrace a cost-per-click (CPC) model and “outcome-optimised bidding”, which OpenAI says now accounts for the “majority” of campaigns.
OpenAI wants $100bn of ad revenue. But it can’t ‘guarantee’ brand safety
Annualised run rate is an estimate of annual performance based on current financial data that assumes contemporaneous conditions will persist over the course of a year.
“Reaching a $1bn run rate so quickly is impressive by any measure, and this is with official launches still being very fresh in most top-10 ad markets like Western Europe and Japan,” Jamie McEwan, a senior media analyst at media research service Enders Analysis told The Media Leader.
He noted, however, that the announcement has been received with “mixed reactions” by the advertising industry. While the $1bn figure is a significant demonstration of OpenAI’s rapid scaling of ChatGPT’s ad model and advertiser demand for AI chatbots more generally, it is still a modest figure relative to other tech platforms, and according to McEwan, “it now seems certain that OpenAI will miss its advertising revenue target for 2026 by quite a way, right when Anthropic has been overperforming.”
OpenAI had reportedly previously forecast to investors it expected to earn $2.5bn in ad revenue in 2026, which would require a substantial further acceleration of ad revenue in the back half of the year.
Anthropic’s total annual run rate, meanwhile, exceeded $65bn by the end of July, according to a report from Reuters. In comparison, Bloomberg reported in August that OpenAI’s total annual run rate topped $40bn. That would mean advertising currently accounts for roughly 2.5% of OpenAI’s total revenue.
For comparison, in fiscal year 2025, Reddit ($2.1bn), Pinterest ($4.2bn) and Snap ($5.9bn) earned roughly two-to-six times OpenAI’s annual run rate in advertising revenue. Meta and Google Search alone both earned over $60bn in Q2 2026.
“Google and Meta will each pile on just about $1bn extra ad revenues a week this year,” McEwan said. “Yes, OpenAI can pluck a lot of low-hanging fruit and impress us with fast growth over the next year or so, but that doesn’t tell us if it can eat search’s $200bn lunch, or if it can create its own market with a whole new format of advertising like Facebook did with social.”
He continued: “Those are the kind of results OpenAI needs to make a serious dent in its costs. For now, it’s playing a conservative game and gradually building up its credibility after shelving its initial promise to revolutionise user targeting through native chat-feed formats.”
Costs do abound for OpenAI. According to a leak of OpenAI’s 2025 earnings published in June by blogger Ed Zitron and the Financial Times, OpenAI earned just $13.7bn in revenue last year, compared with $34bn in costs and expenses. The AI giant has also reportedly told investors it expects to spend $600bn on infrastructure commitments by 2030 (this was revised down from $1.4tn).
“OpenAI’s financial obligations will colour every reading of its revenue growth,” McEwan added. The company has reportedly projected it will reach $100bn in ad revenues by 2030, and while the growth thus far has been impressive, no other advertising business has scaled so large within just four years.
The company is also set to come under greater scrutiny by European regulators, which could dampen growth rates outside the US market. As the Financial Times reported this week, since ChatGPT has more than 45m monthly users in the EU, it will now have to comply with the bloc’s Digital Services Act (DSA). This includes through removing illegal content and protecting the privacy and security of minors. If OpenAI fails to do so, it could be hit with fines of up to 6% of its global turnover.
For advertisers and consumers alike, OpenAI has sought to assuage concerns about user safety by insisting ads are clearly labelled, shown separately from ChatGPT’s answers, do not influence answers, and that advertisers do not receive access to users’ personal data or conversations. However, in an interview with The Media Leader this summer, OpenAI’s VP of monetisation Benji Shomair stopped short of being able to “guarantee” brand safety on the chatbot.
Dave Dugan, OpenAI’s global VP of ad solutions, added he believes the wider industry is “at the beginning of a new chapter for advertising, with AI creating entirely new ways for businesses and people to discover one another.”
He continued: “Reaching the $1bn in [annualised run rate] in under 200 days shows the scale of the opportunity ahead. Expanding self-serve access across European markets opens that opportunity to businesses of every size — from startups building their first campaign to global brands looking for new ways to grow.”