OpenAI’s ad product moves fast. Nineteen weeks (or four months) in and it’s already struck commercial partnerships, built measurement tools and launched an ads manager. Ask about what’s underneath those moves — independent ad verification, how trading deals evolve — and the answer slows right down. That gap between what’s shipped and what’s still vague is the real story of OpenAI’s ad pilot so far. Because those are the answers that will decide whether this becomes a durable home for ad dollars, not just attention.
That’s why Cannes Lions could go down as one of the more consequential weeks for the fledgling ads business in hindsight. Global ads boss David Dugan was everywhere, listening to creators in villas, hosting CMOs between the SPA Villa Belle Plage and the Majestic and meeting holdco bosses over dinner. Eventually those interactions will turn into moves. Until then, what little details he said matters just as much, if not more, than what he didn’t.
This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
We started with CPM bidding at launch — a natural beginning, and there was active feedback from the market — but demand for CPC, cost per click, came next. It was 10 weeks from launch to launching CPC, and now the majority of volume on the platform runs through CPC. Next we’re thinking about conversions: we’ve launched the Conversions API, and we’ll be looking at optimizing for conversion.
