OpenAI is betting advertisers will pay triple what they spend on Meta to reach ChatGPT's audience. The AI company is pitching ads at around $60 per 1,000 views, a premium price tag that comes with a catch - advertisers won't get the detailed performance metrics they're used to from Google and Meta, according to The Information. It's a bold move that tests whether access to AI-powered conversations is worth paying significantly more for significantly less data.
OpenAI is making its biggest monetization bet yet, and it's asking advertisers to pay a hefty premium for the privilege. The company is pitching ChatGPT ad slots at roughly $60 per thousand impressions, a rate that dwarfs the approximately $20 cost-per-mille that Meta typically charges, according to reporting from The Information. It's an audacious pricing strategy that hinges on one key assumption - that conversational AI represents fundamentally different, more valuable advertising real estate than traditional social feeds.
But here's where things get interesting. Despite commanding triple the price, OpenAI isn't offering anywhere near the analytical firepower that advertisers have come to expect from digital ad platforms. Early ChatGPT advertisers will receive only "high-level" performance data - think total views and clicks, not the granular conversion tracking, purchase behavior, and demographic breakdowns that Google and Meta have spent years perfecting. For brands accustomed to measuring every micro-interaction, it's like flying blind while paying first-class prices.
The limited analytics aren't just a product limitation - they're a direct consequence of privacy commitments. When the company , it made explicit promises that it would "never sell your data to advertisers" and would keep ChatGPT conversations private. That's reassuring for users but creates a fundamental tension with advertiser expectations. The entire digital advertising ecosystem runs on data, and is essentially asking brands to trust that ChatGPT's context is valuable enough to justify both higher costs and less visibility.
