The distance from "not-for-profit research laboratory" to "we have thousands of advertisers on the platform already" turns out to be about eight months, give or take a $500 billion valuation.

OpenAI, the San Francisco company whose ChatGPT software has become something of a verb in certain circles, made what amounted to its official debut at the Cannes Lions festival this year, pitching marketers on what executives are calling a "new channel" — a phrase that, in the context of advertising technology, has been applied to everything from banner ads to refrigerator screens.

Benji Shomair, the company's vice president of monetization, outlined the case in conversations with reporters at the festival. The argument, in essence, is that people using ChatGPT are doing something different from what they do on Google or Instagram — they are in a "consideration phase," he said, researching and comparing options before making decisions. "This isn't social; this isn't display; and this isn't search," Mr. Shomair said.

(One imagines the search engines receiving this news with equanimity.)

The advertising pilot, which began 19 weeks ago, has expanded from its initial test markets into Mexico and Brazil, with early minimum-spend requirements — once as high as $200,000 — now removed. The company said in March that it had reached $100 million in annualized advertising revenue, though Mr. Shomair declined to confirm more recent figures or the company's targets.

His advice to early advertisers was practical, if somewhat circular: make the ads conversational, because the platform is conversational, and consider using questions, because questions are what people ask there.

Mr. Shomair also offered a philosophical justification for the advertising business, connecting it to OpenAI's stated mission of bringing artificial general intelligence "to benefit all of humanity." Advertising, he suggested, makes the technology accessible to people who cannot or will not pay subscription fees.

It is a formulation that would have been familiar to radio broadcasters in the 1920s, who made similar arguments about soap operas.

Original story published in The Drum: "OpenAI’s Cannes pitch: A whole ‘new channel for marketers’ | The Drum"