The news: ChatGPT ad buyers are demanding stronger ad tech tools, measurement capabilities, and deeper insights into conversions and incrementality as OpenAI’s ad revenues grow, per Adweek.

OpenAI recently added more controls for advertisers, such as exclusion targeting, that have long been available on rival platforms, but advertisers report that they still need better measurement tools beyond basic clickthrough rates.

• “Our biggest concern right now is visibility. … We don’t have search- or prompt-level reporting, so we can’t see exactly what users are asking when our ads are served,” Zéa Hirsh, performance media supervisor at Collective Measures, told Adweek.
• ChatGPT ad buyers are also asking for negative targeting capabilities and prompt-matching visibility.

OpenAI’s ad business hit a $1 billion annualized revenue run rate last month—up from a reported $100 million pace it reported in March—and it’s racing to reach $2.5 billion in ad revenues by the end of the year.

What it means: Click attribution doesn’t work cleanly in an environment where consumers are researching, comparing, selecting, and even making transactions inside the platform rather than clicking out. That raises the stakes for conversion APIs, third-party attribution, incrementality, and ChatGPT’s future in advertising.

• User conversations provide richer information on consumer intent than traditional search queries, but advertisers don’t have the same visibility and control over how those signals are translating into ad placements.
• Search terms tell advertisers what someone typed, but AI conversations can carry intent, limitations, preferences, and information on where a consumer sits in their decision-making process.

OpenAI should translate that context into privacy-safe targeting and reporting signals while giving brands visibility into conversational advertising tactics that expand beyond keyword matching, including intent classification.

Recommendations for AI ad buyers: Continued and accelerated adoption of ChatGPT advertising will depend on OpenAI’s willingness to give advertisers transparency and control over how user intent and queries translate into ad placements.

• Press for tools that translate users’ conversational context into intent-informed segments that provide knowledge about why an ad was served.
• Use vendors that offer prompt matching and negative targeting, which are emerging features of an AI ad tech stack that expands placement control beyond basic keyword-based methods.

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