OpenAI is already building the org chart of a mature ad business

The hires track with how OpenAI has built out its ads business up to this point. 

The company has been courting ad tech vendors like Criteo, LiveRamp and StackAdapt to get its ads business off the ground while simultaneously hiring internally to build its own infrastructure. These two roles look like the next stage of that. Instead of one-off vendor deals struck as needed, OpenAI wants something industrial — a way to connect direct, reseller and outsourced channels into a repeatable growth model.

This is closer to the model Netflix is building than Google. Rather than hiring a huge global sales force from day one, OpenAI seems to be designing a hybrid model which incorporates direct teams, resellers and outsourced partners. The approach would also support the arrival of a potential ad network-style product, as reported by Business Insider’s CMO Insider.

At the same time, the organizational structure feels rather Meta-esque, especially after OpenAI hired Meta veteran David Dugan to head up global ads solutions back in March 2026, along with Benji Shomair and a growing roster of Meta ad execs. The company has begun assembling a commercial organization that looks increasingly familiar. Creating and hiring dedicated leadership roles for scaled ads and vendor management is exactly the sort of specialization Meta introduced as its own ad business matured. The difference is, Meta did this over the course of many years, OpenAI has already started this journey with an ad business that is only five months old.

The pace is understandable. Axios reported in April that OpenAI had an internal target of $2.5 billion in ad revenue for 2026, and $100 billion by 2030. However, just this month, eMarketer forecast that the company will “fall roughly 90% short of that target” — though with the caveat that eMarketer was only basing their estimates on the U.S., OpenAI’s current largest ad market.  

“OpenAI’s main interest is in building its ad revenue as big as possible, as quickly as possible. The company has set itself an almost impossible target — $100 billion in ad revenue within five years of running its first-ever ads — and is also trying to go public at an enormous valuation,” said Nate Elliott, principal analyst, AI in marketing and commerce at eMarketer. “So it makes sense they’re chasing every possibility for selling more ads. It also doesn’t mean the company will pursue this strategy forever; OpenAI could lean on third-party sellers to drive faster growth in the short term and then reevaluate that decision a couple years down the line.”

Ultimately, it will come down to what marketers think. Initial skepticism around ad load has largely given way to growing demand as OpenAI expanded into more markets and rolled out its self-serve ads manager. But the product remains very much a work in progress, which isn’t exactly a surprise.

OpenAI is effectively building the plane while flying it. For now, the emphasis remains on proving the model with test budgets rather than persuading brands to shift significant media spend.