• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, December 2, 2024

OpenAI -- which is restructuring into a for-profit company from a non-profit -- continues to hint at adding advertising to its AI-powered search engine as it seeks to find ways to generate revenue. 

Google, Microsoft and newcomer Perplexity have already begun to add ads to their engines as the world turns from asking questions in a search query to receiving direct answers from questions. 

Following the mass exodus at OpenAI, the company has undertaken a hiring spree of advertising talent with experience at advertising agencies and rivals such as Meta and Google.

Adam Koppel, creative director, joined OpenAI from 72&Sunny about five months ago. Dane Vahey has been working at OpenAI for the past year as head of strategic marketing. He came from NexHealth as head of marketing.

Many executives have joined OpenAI in the past few months to support creative and a move into enterprise marketing. Charlie Gschwend joined OpenAI five months ago as creative director at OpenAI. Previously he worked as a freelancer and at Rosewood Creative.

Carrie Lorenzo, who supports enterprise marketing, joined OpenAI four months ago and was formerly head of marketing at NexHealth.

OpenAI is attempting to determine the best ad model for the for-profit as it plans to be “thoughtful” about when and where it implements ads, Sarah Friar, chief financial officer at OpenAI, told the Financial Times.

Friar previously held leadership roles at Nextdoor, Square and Salesforce.

The company also now has a head of media partnerships -- Varun Shetty, who joined OpenAI in January from Meta, where he worked as director of business development and product partnerships.

OpenAI in May hired Shivakumar Venkataraman, who previously led Google’s search advertising team, as vice president.

Today, OpenAI’s largest sources of revenue comes from the access to its API, which enables businesses and developers to build with its technology, and data that enables it to answer questions more accurately and predict the next question. However, this situation will change in the future.