OpenAI says ChatGPT ads hit $1 billion run rate as self-serve buying opens in Europe

OpenAI’s advertising business has reached an annualized run rate of $1 billion less than 200 days after the company began testing ads in ChatGPT, the company said on August 31. On the same day it switched on self-serve campaign buying for advertisers in 31 European markets, covering all EU member states plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland.

The run rate is a forward-looking measure: it takes the current month’s ad revenue, roughly $83 million by Digiday’s estimate, and multiplies it by twelve. Actual ad revenue booked since the February pilot is likely to be closer to $330 million. Even so, the pace is unusual for a platform that only launched an ads manager in March and added AppsFlyer measurement in August.

Dave Dugan, OpenAI’s vice president of global ad solutions, said the European self-serve rollout “opens that opportunity to businesses of every size.” Until now, European brands could only buy through the company’s sales team or a shortlist of holding-company partners that includes Publicis, Omnicom, WPP, Havas, Dentsu and Mediaplus.

Why it matters

ChatGPT ads went live for European users on August 24, but in a deliberately restricted form. In the EEA and Switzerland the ads are shown only to people on the Free and Go tiers and are matched to the current conversation, approximate location and language rather than to chat history or stored memories. Personalized targeting is planned as a second phase once users have accepted updated privacy terms, a nod to GDPR’s requirement for explicit consent.

The scale on offer is what attracts media buyers. According to Adweek, OpenAI now counts more than 1 billion weekly active users, and chief marketing officer Colin Fleming has said about one in five of their queries shows commercial intent. Integrations with Adobe, Criteo and LiveRamp are meant to make attribution look familiar to performance teams.

What’s next

The milestone still leaves OpenAI far short of its own ambitions. Reports put the company’s 2026 ad revenue goal at $2.3 billion to $2.5 billion, and its longer-term target at $100 billion by 2030, which would require growth rates no ad platform has sustained. eMarketer analyst Nate Elliott argues OpenAI can eventually match Google and Meta on partnerships and tooling, but that building that ecosystem takes years the company may not have. For Polish advertisers, the practical change is immediate: a ChatGPT campaign can now be set up from a company credit card rather than through a media agency, though the contextual-only targeting means early buys will behave more like search than social.