The news: OpenAI is turning to small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) for its next stage of ChatGPT ad growth. Recent job listings suggest that OpenAI is building an SMB ads unit, with roles across data science, demand strategy, SMB ads growth, and sales operations.

The listings show OpenAI is specifically seeking experienced candidates from companies like LinkedIn, Google, and Meta to build its SMB ad strategy. OpenAI’s strategy appears to be similar to the latter two: The company will rely on outside vendors while hiring people to oversee them.

Zooming out: Shifting focus toward smaller advertisers is a notable departure from OpenAI’s original ad strategy, which required minimum upfront commitments of $200,000 while ads were in beta—essentially making ChatGPT ads exclusively available to larger advertisers with expendable budgets.

But that quickly proved to be unsustainable beyond beta, leading OpenAI to reduce upfront commitments to $50,000. OpenAI also introduced conversion-focused ads in May, a feature that allows some advertisers to only pay for ads that drive results—though they are required to install OpenAI’s ad pixel to measure post-click actions.

OpenAI’s goal: Building out SMB capabilities is a key step for OpenAI to reach its ambitious revenue goals.

• OpenAI said in April that it expects to generate $2.5 billion in ad revenues this year.
• The company estimates that figure will surpass a massive $100 billion by 2030—despite our forecast showing that the US chatbot advertising market, including ChatGPT, will reach only $5.41 billion in 2030.
• More than $100 billion in ad revenues may still seem far-fetched, but making ChatGPT ads more accessible to SMBs could help OpenAI move closer to that goal, especially since small businesses account for 99.9% of all US businesses.