By Kimeko McCoy • June 2, 2026 •
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How long can FOMO support OpenAI’s ad business? That’s the question likely hanging over the head of OpenAI’s global head of ads, David Dugan, right now.
It’s been a few months since OpenAI officially began testing ads inside ChatGPT, and things are progressing quickly. Marketers shelled out minimum ad commitments — up to $250,000 in some cases — seemingly based on the fear of missing out on the AI visibility boom. Now, those same marketers are reporting under-delivery issues.
“There were some [advertisers] not even getting a tenth of their $250,000 commitment used at that point,” Krystal Scanlon, senior platforms reporter at Digiday said. Scanlon spoke on a recent episode of the Digiday Podcast. While those dollars sit in what could be best described as marketing budget purgatory (reserved for OpenAI ad commitments), OpenAI is erring on the side of caution, per Scanlon.
