A recent job posting from OpenAI hints that the AI ​​giant is laying the groundwork for an ad network.

Until now, OpenAI’s nascent advertising business has been a platform for advertisers looking to reach ChatGPT users. Now, there’s evidence that the AI ​​giant might want to jump into a new side of the market: helping publishers and other companies sell their own ad space to marketers, CMO Insider can exclusively report.

OpenAI’s job ad, posted last week, called for a “support delivery lead” in its ads division. The job posting, which OpenAI amended after CMO Insider asked about it, referenced creating a publisher-facing advertising business, the first time the company has publicly mentioned ambitions in the area.

Such a move could increase advertising revenue, offer marketers placements beyond the ChatGPT app, and potentially ease tensions with some publishers.

“This is a great sign that OpenAI is moving toward an advertising business well beyond ChatGPT,” Debra Aho Williamson, founder of AI-focused research and advisory firm Sonata Insights, told me.

The job posting originally said the publisher’s position responsibilities would include “inventory setup, ad serving integrations, reporting, and issues that impact performance.”

This person would “design and continually improve support coverage for both ad buyers and publishers, ensuring the team can diagnose buyer-side delivery issues and publisher-side monetization and integration issues with equal rigor,” the job posting said.

OpenAI updated the job posting after CMO Insider contacted the company about it, removing references to editors. The company removed or edited five sentences from the post. Open AI later He said the position’s responsibilities cover agencies and brands.

Intriguing!

So what would an OpenAI ad network look like?

The job ad didn’t fully describe what OpenAI is interested in building. The most obvious move for OpenAI would be to enter the world of “demand extension” or “audience extension.” OpenAI could take advantage of growing demand from advertisers and extend those campaigns to locations across a network of external websites or apps. Publishers could monetize their own traffic using the commercial signals collected by ChatGPT. Think of it as a native AI equivalent to Facebook Audience Network or Google Display Network.

OpenAI told CMO Insider that it will not enter into the lawsuit extension.

Strategically, creating an ad network would make sense for OpenAI, although it would represent an unusually rapid leap into supply-side ad tech.

One of advertisers’ biggest complaints with OpenAI’s advertising product so far is that advertiser demand has outstripped available supply. Advertisers previously complained that OpenAI had been slow to spend its budgets, despite asking for significant initial commitments to participate in early advertising tests.

OpenAI’s head of global advertising solutions, Dave Dugan, told me in an interview in June that ad delivery and volume had improved as his confidence in the ChatGPT Ads user experience grew. Still, OpenAI only serves ads to users on ChatGPT’s free or lower-priced tiers in select regions, meaning its native ad space is still fundamentally limited by the chat interface.

A publisher ad network could help with the inventory bottleneck.

Building bridges with editors

The launch of a retail product would also mark a dramatic change in OpenAI’s relationship with media companies.

To date, publishers do not receive a share of ChatGPT’s advertising revenue. Instead, some publishers make money from OpenAI through direct licensing deals for training data and content retrieval. (Business Insider’s parent company, Axel Springer, has one such agreement.)

The broader relationship remains strained: Publishers including The New York Times, Ziff Davis, and a coalition of local media outlets are actively suing OpenAI, alleging copyright infringement. OpenAI has argued that its training of AI models is protected by the fair use doctrine.

An ad network would introduce a new way for OpenAI to compensate publishers, giving them a share of ad revenue if a user views or clicks on an ad served on their site or app.

As OpenAI prepares for an eventual public offering, it faces pressure to scale high-margin revenue streams such as ads. The company must justify its spectacular private valuation and offset hundreds of billions in long-term computing and infrastructure commitments.

In April, Axios reported that OpenAI was forecasting around $2.5 billion in ad revenue in 2026 and around $100 billion in 2030.

Nate Elliott, an analyst at BI’s sister company EMARKETER, said that for OpenAI to reach those numbers, it would need to dramatically expand its user base, charge top-tier advertising rates and potentially risk ruining the user experience with a heavy ad load.

Or you could build an ad network.