{"id":521362,"date":"2026-01-16T22:32:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T22:32:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/521362\/"},"modified":"2026-01-16T22:32:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T22:32:12","slug":"openai-to-test-ads-in-chatgpt-as-it-burns-through-billions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/521362\/","title":{"rendered":"OpenAI to test ads in ChatGPT as it burns through billions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Financial pressures and a changing tune<\/p>\n

OpenAI\u2019s advertising experiment reflects the enormous financial pressures facing the company. OpenAI does not expect to be profitable until 2030 and has committed<\/a> to spend about $1.4 trillion on massive data centers<\/a> and chips for AI.<\/p>\n

According to financial documents obtained<\/a> by The Wall Street Journal in November, OpenAI expects to burn through roughly $9 billion this year while generating $13 billion in revenue. Only about 5 percent of ChatGPT\u2019s 800 million weekly users pay<\/a> for subscriptions, so it\u2019s not enough to cover all of OpenAI\u2019s operating costs.<\/p>\n

Not everyone is convinced ads will solve OpenAI\u2019s financial problems. \u201cI am extremely bearish on this ads product,\u201d tech critic Ed Zitron wrote on Bluesky<\/a>. \u201cEven if this becomes a good business line, OpenAI\u2019s services cost too much for it to matter!\u201d<\/p>\n

OpenAI\u2019s embrace of ads appears to come reluctantly, since it runs counter to a \u201cpersonal bias\u201d against advertising that Altman has shared in earlier public statements. For example, during a fireside chat at Harvard University in 2024, Altman said<\/a> he found the combination of ads and AI \u201cuniquely unsettling,\u201d implying that he would not like it if the chatbot itself changed its responses due to advertising pressure. He added: \u201cWhen I think of like GPT writing me a response, if I had to go figure out exactly how much was who paying here to influence what I\u2019m being shown, I don\u2019t think I would like that.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n \"An
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

An example mock-up of an advertisement in ChatGPT provided by OpenAI.<\/p>\n

An example mock-up of an advertisement in ChatGPT provided by OpenAI.<\/p>\n

Credit:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

OpenAI<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Along those lines, OpenAI\u2019s approach appears to be a compromise between needing ad revenue and not wanting sponsored content to appear directly within ChatGPT\u2019s written responses. By placing banner ads at the bottom of answers separated from the conversation history, OpenAI appears to be addressing Altman\u2019s concern: The AI assistant\u2019s actual output, the company says, will remain uninfluenced by advertisers.<\/p>\n

Indeed, Simo wrote<\/a> in a blog post that OpenAI\u2019s ads will not influence ChatGPT\u2019s conversational responses and that the company will not share conversations with advertisers and will not show ads on sensitive topics such as mental health and politics to users it determines to be under 18.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs we introduce ads, it\u2019s crucial we preserve what makes ChatGPT valuable in the first place,\u201d Simo wrote. \u201cThat means you need to trust that ChatGPT\u2019s responses are driven by what\u2019s objectively useful, never by advertising.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Financial pressures and a changing tune OpenAI\u2019s advertising experiment reflects the enormous financial pressures facing the company. OpenAI…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":521363,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[64,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-521362","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-united-states","10":"tag-unitedstates","11":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115907155946359673","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521362\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/521363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}