OpenAI turns on cost-per-action ads inside ChatGPT

The move was teased three weeks ago by OpenAI’s head of monetization Asad Awan, who said during a press briefing that bidding on outcomes and conversions was “in the plan”, and “should be done soon”. That confirmed Digiday’s reporting, which cited labelling in the OpenAI ad manager that suggested the feature was in development.

Clearly, it was further along than that. The groundwork was already laid. CPA ads require conversion tracking infrastructure to function — something OpenAI recently put in place with the introduction of its pixel. Without it, the platform had no reliable way to connect an ad being seen to a downstream action, let alone against it. 

“Launching CPA advertising is a logical next step for OpenAI’s ads business,” said Claire Holubowskyj, senior research analyst at Enders Analysis. “It expands its offering while diversifying its pool of advertisers, and aligns its product more closely with that of Meta and Google, whom it must compete effectively against to reach its own targets.”

For now, OpenAI has been keen to position itself as a home for experimental ad dollars rather than hardcore performance spend — a way to let the business develop without inviting direct comparisons to more established rivals. But that’s a temporary posture, not a permanent one. The introduction of CPA buying is the latest signal of where this is heading. 

As one agency exec whose clients are part of the pilot put it: “Impressions or cost per click are what we call marketing objectives, but business objectives are what actually drive business outcomes.”

It’s a thought not lost on Dave Dugan, the former Meta ads boss who now heads up OpenAI’s efforts to rake in ad dollars. He has been building out his team in recent weeks. Former Meta exec Archana Joshi announced that she has joined OpenAI as the founding member of the Ads Go-To-Market Revenue and Strategy Operations team — a role which is expected to scale advertising partners quickly. During the last four of her seven years at Meta, Joshi led the global strategy and execution of partner and client programs across Meta’s apps. Furthermore, OpenAI has hired Snap’s former head of marketing science for North America and mid-market Sam Mulinder, to build out its marketing science function from the ground up.

The hires build on a dizzying array of updates to the ads business in recent weeks. In the last two months alone it has updated the look of ChatGPT ads, added automation to enable retailers to generate ads directly from their product catalogues, expanded the pilot to different markets, launched its ads manager and subsequently made it widely accessible in the U.S., turned on CPCs, built a pixel, scrapped its minimum commitment fee, and saw CPMs become cheaper.

Added to that, OpenAI has already sent an email to some early pilot advertisers, offering early access to conversion-optimized campaigns. According to the email, which Digiday has seen, “any account that has conversions set up by Monday, June 1st, will be granted early access by June 5th,” the email said.
Put another way, OpenAI has a lot riding on advertising. The company has already burned through $2.5 billion in 2025, a figure which is expected to increase to $8.5 billion this year, and has projected ad revenue of $102 billion by 2030 — a target that would make it one of the largest ad businesses ever built, achieved in a fraction of the time it took Google or Meta. With an IPO expected before the end of the year, investors will want proof that the infrastructure is real and the revenue is following.