• by Joe Mandese , 2 hours ago

For those of you who read my "The AI Advertising Tipping Point" column a couple of weeks ago, it seems it has tipped yet again.

Fourteen days after OpenAI told ad execs that ChatGPT has surpassed 60,000 advertisers, it released an updated figure estimating it now has more than 100,000 advertisers and that it is in the process of expanding its ad inventory into 26 new countries.

I'm therefore updating the tipping point figures I published in my previous column with the ones shown above.

Based on the current rate of growth, ChatGPT estimates it will surpass 500,000 advertisers by next March, 1 million advertisers by next September, and 1.14 million advertisers a year from now.

As I pointed out previously, it was at about the 500,000 advertiser mark that long tail SMB advertisers surpassed the Fortune 1,000 advertisers in share of Facebook advertising revenue, and with it, Madison Avenue's influence over the social media platform.

And this week's milestone comes as the ad industry's Big 3 trade associations -- the ANA, 4A's and IAB -- are just getting underway with a new "AI Responsibility" initiative.

On the bright side, I hear that the group's closed-door meeting at the ANA's Masters of Marketing Conference this week included the Institute for Advertising Ethics, which has been working on an ethical AI advertising framework since the beginning of the year, so hopefully it will add some momentum to the effort.