- Date
- May 2026
- Kind
- Product launch
- Significance
- Moderate
According to Marketing Dive’s report of May 11, 2026, OpenAI opened a beta self-serve Ads Manager for US businesses, after an advertising pilot that began in February 2026 with brands including Target, Albertsons and Williams-Sonoma.
How it works
- Advertisers can buy on a CPM (cost per thousand impressions) basis and on a CPC (cost per click) basis.
- A Conversions API and a pixel connect ads to results.
- Agency and technology partners named include Dentsu, Omnicom, Publicis, WPP, Adobe, Criteo, Kargo, Pacvue and StackAdapt.
- Expansion is planned to the UK, Mexico, Japan, Brazil and South Korea.
The report also states that OpenAI projects about $2.5 billion in advertising revenue this year. That is a reported projection, not a result. We could not read OpenAI’s own announcement when we researched this entry.
Why it matters
It opened a new paid channel inside an AI assistant with standard buying and measurement tools, which is what lets budgets move to it. It also means marketers now have to decide how to test it against existing search and social spend.
What happened next
The product was in beta; expansion to the named markets was planned, and performance data from independent advertisers had not been published in the sources we reviewed.