Well, that was fast. In a nice coup for Criteo, OpenAI has selected the company as its first adtech partner as it begins testing ads inside ChatGPT.
The partnership plugs Criteo’s commerce media infrastructure — which the company says supports more than $4 billion in annual media spend across 17,000 global advertisers — into ChatGPT’s pilot. In short, OpenAI is leaning on an established commerce media player to help accelerate its ad ambitions (though the press release is pretty vague on details).
The company says the integration will roll out in the coming weeks as part of OpenAI’s ad test.
Why This Matters:
Ads aren’t just coming to LLM services — they’re officially here. (Especially when the adtech companies get in on the action!)
OpenAI is poised to be one of the biggest players in conversational AI, and monetization was always going to be the next chapter. Subscriptions alone won’t carry a mass-market product with ballooning global infrastructure costs and expanding usage. Advertising was the obvious next lever (even with Sam Altman’s anti-ad posturing).
The bigger question is structural: how will ads in AI chat actually work — not just now, but long term?
Ari Paparo at Marketecture published a piece today exploring that. In it, he considers whether a standalone “AdSense for AI” model makes sense. His view: major platforms like OpenAI and Google are more likely to build closed-loop systems to capture demand themselves. But a second tier of AI companies will probably need external partners — like Criteo and others — to monetize effectively.
That said, the Criteo announcement itself was fairly vague. Possibly strategically so. It’s unclear how much PR OpenAI was willing to do — or allow — around this. When we posted on X about the integration, Seth Ulinski offered additional context, noting:
“My understanding is that Criteo is plugged into ChatGPT and bidding on session-based context. Investor decks provided some teasers. Finding a relevant product across +4 billion SKUs that align with a conversation within 100 ms is the MCP magic act.”
Experts React:
About a week ago, in a blog post, Criteo CEO Michael Komasinski talked about AI chat and advertising that seems particularly well-timed now.
“Across the ecosystem, one question looms large: how will LLM platforms monetize at scale? The most sustainable and flexible model will be advertising…”
He added:
“ChatGPT exemplifies this dynamic. Only about 5 % of its users pay for subscriptions, leaving the vast majority in a free tier where ads will be the logical engine for growth. Advertising remains the most proven and scalable mechanism for digital monetization…”
Good timing… or planned? Probably the latter!
Our Take:
So, the first adtech partner is officially out the of the way. Great.
Who’s the next one? Place your bets now.
