{"id":543865,"date":"2026-04-22T01:53:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T01:53:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/543865\/"},"modified":"2026-04-22T01:53:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T01:53:12","slug":"openai-turns-on-cost-per-click-ads-inside-chatgpt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/543865\/","title":{"rendered":"OpenAI turns on cost-per-click ads inside ChatGPT"},"content":{"rendered":"

The platform that can figure out how to prove AI chatbots can drive an outcome will unlock a budget category that doesn\u2019t exist yet. OpenAI just took big steps toward that threshold: turning on cost-per-click ads inside ChatGPT. And it is on the hunt for its first advertising\u00a0marketing science leader.<\/p>\n

CPC ads are the more immediately significant move of the two\u00a0since it gives those marketers who are currently testing advertising there the option to pay when someone actually clicks on them, rather than for every thousand impressions served. They can do this by setting bids between $3 and $5 per click, according to screenshots of the ads manager<\/a>, shared with and subsequently verified by Digiday.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs OpenAI looks to increase spending, this is going to help advertisers directly compare their results on Open AI to other major advertising platforms and manage their spend,\u201d said Nicole Greene, vp, analyst at Gartner. \u201cIn a world where everything is changing due to AI tech and consumer behaviors, this consistent measurement will help advertisers justify reallocation of spend to OpenAI.<\/p>\n

It was always a question of when, not if, OpenAI made this move. Yes, the company launched its ads on a CPM model, but that was more because it was a lighter lift. After all, it requires no click-tracking infrastructure and brand advertisers are easier to onboard on a new platform with\u00a0limited measurement capabilities. But CPMs also have a ceiling. Performance advertisers account for the majority of online ad spend \u2013 and prefer to pay for clicks not impressions. Keeping them on an impression model indefinitely was never a serious option. That much was clear once OpenAI started testing its ads manager, with CPCs clearly labeled in an early build of it.<\/p>\n

\u201cOpenAI\u2019s experimentation with CPC is driven largely by its need to maintain demand growth and build trust with advertisers, though declining CPMs and an expanding pilot are also factors,\u201d said Claire Holubowskyj, senior research analyst at Enders Analysis.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Put another way, advertising on ChatGPT is already getting cheaper. The rate advertisers pay to reach every thousand users has dropped<\/a> from $60 at launch 10 weeks ago to as low as $25 in some cases now \u2013 and the trend is downward. When impression prices fall, so does the revenue each one generates. CPC gives OpenAI a way to grow ad revenue that doesn\u2019t depend on holding CPMs up.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The deeper challenge is what OpenAI is measuring itself against. CPC is Google\u2019s home turf \u2013 one that Google has spent years building the presently most sophisticated version. Its bidding tech prices ever click based on intent signals, quality scores, auction pressure and retargeting data. CPCs and Google Search continue to grow quarter on quarter. Advertisers, in other words, keep getting evidence that they\u2019re worth it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

OpenAI will need to make the same case which is harder than it sounds. The tricky part is framing the value of a click since they\u2019re not all equal. For instance, Meta\u2019s CPCs run three to five times cheaper than Google Search, according to digital ad agency Adthena, not because the inventory is necessarily worse but because the intent behind them is different. Social users are browsing. Search users are looking for something specific. That gap in intent is why Google commands a premium, and where OpenAI lands within it will determine what its clicks are actually worth.<\/p>\n

\u201cLLMs are now starting to bridge that gap, as intent begins to build through the back-and-forth of prompt-driven conversations,\u201d said Ashley Fletcher, CMO at Adthena, which has\u00a0several clients testing ads on ChatGPT.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The search for OpenAI\u2019s first advertising marketing science leader is, needless to say, an urgent one.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A job posting gives a sense of the scope. The person hired will own OpenAI\u2019s advertiser measurement strategy from the ground up. Defining how its reporting connects to attribution models, incrementality testing, media mix modelling and geo experimentation. They\u2019ll build the marketing science itself, starting as an individual contributor before scaling a team and operating model around them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A significant part of the role is external-facing, with the person leading measurement conversations with advertisers, showing up in executive briefings and translating statistical methodology \u2013 causal inference, attribution models, experimental design to name a few \u2013 into language that informs actual campaign decisions. The job also involves working with third-party measurement partners, clean-room providers and industry groups to reduce friction to advertisers trying to evaluate OpenAI against the rest of their media buys.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Internally, they\u2019ll partner with product and engineering to turn measurement methodology into durable tooling and reporting infrastructure. Privacy is, perhaps unsurprisingly given how much it\u2019s been a focus up to now, is built into the brief from the start. The role calls for establishing aggregated measurement and conversion approaches in partnership with legal and privacy teams.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The job vacancy is the latest sign that OpenAI is moving super fast. To compare, Uber ads didn\u2019t hire<\/a> Edwin Wong, its first head of measurement, until 2025, around three years after it had introduced an ad business. Even Netflix only started building out its measurement team in 2023 \u2013 about a year after its ad business launched.<\/p>\n

OpenAI did not respond to Digiday\u2019s request for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The platform that can figure out how to prove AI chatbots can drive an outcome will unlock a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":543866,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,59,187312,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-543865","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-gb","10":"tag-marketing-on-platforms","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom","13":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=543865"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543865\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/543866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=543865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=543865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=543865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}