Last week I reported that OpenAI partnered with Criteo to sell its chatbot ads and was in talks with The Trade Desk and other media agencies and ad techs to do the same. I wrote:
“OpenAI says that it plans on eventually building its ad tech functions in-house, putting it more in line with Meta, Google, and Amazon, but I feel like I've been hearing that story for a long time now. Perhaps it's a smarter, safer route to work with existing ad networks to automate sales and provide performance metrics to buyers. It's a faster go-to-market strategy.”
Well, “eventually building its ad tech in-house” may actually come sooner rather than later. Digiday previously reported that OpenAI is hiring a:
- Monetization Infrastructure Engineer – to build its ads systems
- Engineering Manager – to lead the team
- Product Designer – to define what its ad tools will look like inside ChatGPT
- Senior Manager – to own ad revenue accounting
- Trust and Safety Expert – dedicated specifically to the ads product
- Plus a few other roles dedicated to building its ad tech stack.
Now Adweek reports that OpenAI has begun testing an Ads Manager with a small group of partners that lets marketers run, monitor, and optimize campaigns in real time and is gathering feedback. A company spokesperson confirmed that dashboard and added that testers are also currently receiving CSV reports with performance data that includes clicks and impressions.
In hindsight, I'm not sure why I doubted how quickly OpenAI would rush something to market. Shipping unfinished, untested, and poorly designed products seems to be their thing.