This approach makes a lot of sense. Advertising is a marketplace and this is a great way to bootstrap advertising inventory. Its inevitable they will allow advertisers to manage ad spend directly through OpenAI but right now the product is too new to capture meaningful ad budget. This way they can begin testing delivery and develop proof points around ROI and build towards larger ad spend directly.
> product is too new to capture meaningful ad budget
I disagree entirely. As someone who works in advertising every single company I've talked to would be queueing up to test ads on ChatGPT if they launched a Google Ads like platform.
If ChatGPT doesn't have enough scale to do it, then they shouldn't do ads.
ChatGPT has more web traffic than X, Reddit, Bing... Crazy to say they wouldn't be able to capture meaningful ad budget. IMO partnering on this is a blunder.
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Clearly the Meta execs they hired are about as useful as most 3-letter exec titles because, wow, did OAI miss the boat again. Personally I'm glad they've made as many missteps as they have, but quite the amateur move to not seize the market opportunity and keep it holistically for themselves. They took nothing from Google's paved road of incumbency in this segment.
Again, personally, I'm glad at yet another miss by Altman. But to claim ChatGPT is too new? Apparently hundreds of millions of users doesn't cut it these days. And if anyone thinks OAI has been anything remotely "strategic" around their product, well... Then you must enjoy shooting darts in the dark.