At the Cannes Lions creativity festival, OpenAI shared the first detailed look at how its ChatGPT sponsored ad business is performing. Ten weeks after introducing CPC (cost-per-click) bidding, it has become the dominant model for most campaigns. David Dugan, OpenAI's global head of ad solutions, said the ads haven't hurt user retention or query volume — and as ad targeting has improved, closeout rates have dropped by more than half since launch. The ad business has already expanded from the US to seven global markets including Japan and South Korea.
On the sales and operations side, OpenAI is making a deliberate bet on agency partnerships rather than building a large direct sales team. It's leaning heavily on networks like Omnicom, WPP, Publicis, and Dentsu. Internal tests show that calls to action designed as solutions to a user's initial question or as direct benefits see far higher conversion rates than simply listing a product name.
Creative experts also demonstrated multimodal workflows using Codex, workspace agents, and image generation models. These allow non-programmers to batch-produce localized marketing images and copy for dealers — tailored to brand guidelines — in hours or days.