OpenAI's Sponsored Agents Are The Ad Future. Publisher Monetisation Is The Afterthought

OpenAI is betting its AI-native advertising future on sponsored agents, the format launched earlier this month that lets a user chat directly with a brand-sponsored agent after clicking an ad. "The future around an AI-native advertising experience" is sponsored agents, OpenAI global ad solutions lead Colleen Coulter said Monday at Programmatic IO in New York, citing demand for "natural conversational [experiences]." The format follows custom audiences, which unlock targeting via email, phone, hashed identifiers and Google Advertising IDs. But the publisher side of the ledger is thin. Coulter argued that because ChatGPT's fact-based answers carry links and citations, the format is "directing a user to still engage with that publisher site" and giving publishers "insights to the publisher around how people are engaging with their content" - a value exchange publishers will recognise as no traffic and no money. AdExchanger editor-in-chief Allison Schiff asked the blunt question about the $100 billion ad-revenue-by-2030 target: "Is that real?" Coulter, citing the filed S-1, said she "can't share any feedback like that," adding "the PR team will pull me off the stage immediately." ChatGPT Ads has hit a $1 billion run rate, a long way from $100 billion.

The crux

OpenAI is monetising the attention it took from publishers with an advertiser-facing format that pays publishers nothing, while positioning citations and "engagement insights" as the compensation - the value keeps moving one way.

Sell-side read

Sponsored agents are a demand-side product, not a supply-side one. If you are a publisher, nothing in this roadmap pays you for being the training research or the citation source. The leverage you have is the same as in the DOJ fight: withhold, licence, or litigate.

Watch

Whether OpenAI's rumoured publisher ad network materialises before more publishers sign licensing deals that cap their upside.