What do Papa Roach and OpenAI have in common? They’re both on their last resort.
During a fireside chat at Harvard University in 2024, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman used that exact phrase – “last resort” – to describe the possibility of introducing ads to ChatGPT.
“I kind of think of ads as a last resort for us for a business model,” he says. “I would do it if it meant that was the only way to get everybody in the world access to great services. But if we can find something that doesn’t do that, I’d prefer that.”
Fast-forward to last week, and OpenAI officially announced (on the Friday before a long holiday weekend, no less!) that it would soon be testing ads within its search chatbot.
Naturally, advertisers, agencies and AI vendors alike are already abuzz with speculation and hot takes. What will the ads look like? How will the back-end buying system work? Is ChatGPT arriving late to the party compared to its competitors?
But as Omnicom Digital CEO Jonathan Nelson points out in this episode of The Big Story, it’s still early days.
“AI is such a big revolution that I think, when you look back at it, you will not look at the delta between [Google] AI Overviews, Perplexity and OpenAI as that long of a time difference,” says Nelson.
That speed of change explains why even companies once adamantly opposed to ads, like Netflix once was, sometimes reconsider.
The comparison between OpenAI and Netflix is apt from an agency perspective.
Nelson says agencies will need to help brands decide whether jumping in early on a highly anticipated ad platform is worth dealing with the inevitable growing pains. Remember Netflix’s exorbitantly expensive CPMs at launch?
