OpenAI Told Agencies to Pull ChatGPT Ad Money From Display, Not Search

OpenAI's ads lead Asad Awan told Digiday on May 6 that ChatGPT is "a different kind of a place," and that advertisers should not pull ChatGPT test budget from search. Agency contacts confirmed OpenAI is steering clients to fund tests from upper-funnel programmatic display instead. With CPC bidding now live at roughly $3 to $5 per click, this is a positioning choice, not a measurement gap.

The line OpenAI is drawing, in Awan's actual words

The exact quote is worth sitting with for a second. "Maybe ChatGPT is a different kind of a place. This is not the same as a discovery platform feed or pure search." Awan also said, "We don't want advertisers to take the risk and not get ROI. We might show [an ad], whether it's relevant or not relevant, that's our risk to take." And on bidding: "CPC is the best way to make sure that advertisers are getting ROI while we are incentivized to improve relevance."

That last sentence is what most coverage skipped over. It's the part that matters. OpenAI just admitted, on the record, that early ad relevance is bad enough that they want to absorb the cost of mismatched impressions instead of charging for them. CPC is a hedge against their own model.

Then there's the agency relay, also from Digiday: "Don't take from search, but take it from anything else you're doing up the funnel." Read it twice. That's the ads team, three months into testing, telling the people writing the checks where the money should come from.

Why the brand-vs-performance frame misses what's happening

The easy read on Awan's quote is the standard "we're an upper-funnel channel, please be patient" pitch every new platform makes in year one. There's some of that here, sure. But the mechanics tell a different story.

OpenAI shipped a self-serve ads manager, a Conversions API, a measurement pixel, and CPC bidding all at once, with CPA bidding promised next, according to Digiday's earlier coverage. Those are direct-response infrastructure choices. Search Engine Journal described the launch as a deliberate move to put performance buyers on the platform without making them learn a new metric. You don't build any of that for brand budgets.

So the contradiction is the whole story. OpenAI is shipping search-style infrastructure while telling agencies not to use search-style budget. From what I've seen of platform launches, that's what a company does when it knows it isn't ready to be benchmarked yet, but it also doesn't want to wait until next year to monetize. The ads manager is for the future. The "don't take from search" guidance is for this quarter.

Reading Awan literally helps. He didn't say ChatGPT will never compete with search. He said "for now." That's the tell.

The display budget already started moving

One of the more useful details in the Digiday piece is who's actually funding the test runs. Agency contacts said clients preparing to spend on ChatGPT were pulling from programmatic display, not from search allocations. Which makes sense given OpenAI's CPM trajectory. Launch CPMs were around $60 in February 2026's Adobe pilot, and Marketing Brew reported minimum spends and CPMs both came down before the May expansion.

So the substitution is mostly already happening. Programmatic display is the most fungible budget line in any agency. It's also where most clients have the loosest measurement, which is exactly the kind of dollars OpenAI can absorb without a benchmark fight. The ads team didn't have to push hard. The path of least resistance led there on its own.

If you've watched a paid social platform graduate from "we're testing" to "we're a line item," this is the same arc. TikTok's first agency conversations in 2019 sounded similar. Brand spend first, performance dollars later, and the test budgets always came out of programmatic display before they came out of Meta or Google.

What this means if you're sitting on a ChatGPT pilot

Three things to actually do, all of which fit inside an afternoon.

First, accept the framing for now and move your test money out of display, not search. The reason isn't politeness. It's that comparing ChatGPT CPCs to Google CPCs in month three will make ChatGPT look bad in a way that has nothing to do with the channel's eventual value. Awan's $3 to $5 CPC range, per Search Engine Journal screenshots, is roughly aligned with mid-tier search verticals, but the conversion infrastructure isn't there yet. Apples-to-apples is going to embarrass you.

Second, set up the Conversions API and pixel even if you're skeptical. The measurement loop is going to be the only way to prove whether ChatGPT users behave anything like search users on your site. Gartner's Nicole Greene told AdExchanger the new tools are what makes direct comparison possible at all. Without them, you're flying blind for at least one full quarter, and the test won't tell you anything you can act on.

Third, don't write your post-test memo around CPC alone. Awan's own framing about ChatGPT modeling brands across "the complete user journey" rather than "a query matching to an ad" is also a hint about what the platform will actually be good at. From what I've seen on Reddit's r/PPC threads about ChatGPT ad tests, advertisers reporting decent engagement are mostly doing consideration-stage outreach to people researching a category, not chasing the bottom-funnel click. That probably won't change in 2026. Build your measurement plan around that, not around last-click attribution.

What's actually getting bought here

I think the part most analysis is missing is that OpenAI isn't really selling positioning in this announcement. They're buying time. By telling agencies "don't compare us to search," OpenAI gets to take performance-style budgets through CPC bidding without taking performance-style heat when the early CTRs come in soft. They get the infrastructure win and the perception cushion at the same time.

That's a smart move, and probably the right one for a channel still figuring out what it is. It's also a tell about how confident the team is in the ad relevance model right now, which is to say, not very. Awan basically said the relevance is uneven and they're absorbing the cost of that with CPC. That's an honest read of where the product is.

The last thing worth noticing is that this strategy has an expiration date built in. The infrastructure shipped at GA last week is search-grade. The CPA bidding announcement is search-grade. The "don't take from search" message can hold for maybe two more quarters before the data starts forcing the comparison anyway. Which means agencies still using "ChatGPT is different" as a reason not to benchmark their own pilots will be the last ones to notice when the channel stops being different.

The bet underneath the positioning

I'd guess most teams will read Awan's quote, nod, and keep the test money in the "innovation" bucket where it doesn't have to perform. That's fine for now. But if you're running a pilot in Q3, write your benchmark plan against your search account anyway. Just keep it in a private doc. When OpenAI quietly drops the "different kind of a place" line in late 2026, which they will, the teams with six months of side-by-side data will already know what to do with the budget. Everyone else will be starting from zero.

By Notice Me Senpai Editorial

Related: OpenAI Switched ChatGPT Ads to CPC Because the Average CTR Hid the Variance