Enterprise

OpenAI's Cannes debut: 'We are clearly in the advertising business now'

At its first-ever Cannes Lions, OpenAI walked the industry through a ChatGPT ad product that crossed $100M annualized in six weeks — and is forecast to hit $100B by 2030.

By Asher Glick · Enterprise software desk · 2026-06-27 · 3 min read

Photo: Unsplash / Emiliano Vittoriosi — A smartphone displaying the ChatGPT app interface

OpenAI showed up at Cannes Lions for the first time this week and, per chief revenue officer Denise Dresser, the company is “clearly in the advertising business now.” AdExchanger called it a coming-out party. The framing did most of the work the pitch deck didn’t need to.

The setting was deliberate. Rather than a beach club on the Croisette, the pitch ran out of a semi-secluded villa near the Cannes harbour, hosted by David Dugan, a former Meta VP of more than twelve years who joined OpenAI as VP of advertising in March. Dugan’s job at the villa was to make the numbers legible to media buyers who have spent two decades pricing exactly this kind of inventory.

The numbers are aggressive. A sponsored-links pilot that began February 10 with free-tier and Go-plan users in the US crossed $100 million in annualized revenue inside roughly six weeks, with fewer than 600 advertisers in the auction. ChatGPT passed one billion weekly active users in May. Dugan told the room that roughly 20% of user questions carry commercial intent, with an even larger share showing commercial potential.

Pricing has already moved the way ad markets always move. The pilot launched at a $60 CPM, eroded to as low as $25 within ten weeks, and shifted to cost-per-click bidding in the $3 to $5 range. Inventory has expanded to seven markets, the US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and South Korea, with Brazil and Mexico next. Criteo alone now intermediates buys from more than 2,000 brands. Dresser said users closing out of ChatGPT ads has dropped 50% since February.

Then there’s the Axios projection Dugan declined to comment on: $2.5 billion in 2026, $11 billion in 2027, $100 billion by 2030. Hitting that last number means capturing roughly a tenth of the global digital ad market in four years, a feat that historically required either a platform shift (Google in the 2000s, Meta in the 2010s) or a regulatory rupture.

Paid tiers, Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Education, remain ad-free. For now, that’s the firewall. The pilot is the business.

Sources