OpenAI Draws a Hard Line on Data as It Builds Its Ads Business

OpenAI cannot hand advertisers access to ChatGPT conversations or sell user data to them, and the company's monetization chief, Benji Shomair, framed that refusal as the organizing principle of its young ads business. Speaking Monday at an event hosted by adtech-focused investment bank Luma Partners, Shomair said trust ranks as the top priority as OpenAI builds commercial relationships with the advertising ecosystem.

"There are places where our partners would like us to do certain things that we just can't because of how we think about making decisions," Shomair said onstage.

His comments carry weight because of timing. OpenAI started testing advertising in February, and the company is eager to work closely with adtech and agency partners to scale the nascent operation. Shomair's message to that audience was direct: the willingness to partner is real, but the boundaries are fixed.

What does this change for advertisers?

The practical question for adtech firms and agencies is what an OpenAI ad partnership actually looks like if the underlying conversation data stays locked away. Shomair's answer, in effect, is that partners must build around the restriction rather than through it. OpenAI has committed to keeping users' ChatGPT conversations private from advertisers and to never selling user data to advertisers. That commitment is not a policy detail subject to negotiation; Shomair presented it as a decision framework that precedes any commercial deal.

For advertisers accustomed to data-driven targeting elsewhere, this sets OpenAI apart from the start. The company is telling the market that some partner requests will fail, not because the capability is missing, but because OpenAI's internal decision-making rules it out.

The financial pressure behind the pitch

The backdrop is OpenAI's cost structure. The company posted a $38.5 billion net loss last year, a figure that makes advertising revenue an attractive lever as OpenAI seeks to monetize its massive user base beyond subscriptions.

That pressure explains the eagerness Shomair described to work closely with adtech and agency partners. But it also sharpens the tension at the center of his remarks: the company needs ad revenue urgently, and it has chosen to pursue it under constraints its partners may find restrictive.

Why trust is the strategy, not just a slogan

Shomair ranked user trust above monetization speed in building the ads business. That ranking has consequences for how deals get done. Partners who pitch mechanisms that depend on conversation data or data sales will hear no, regardless of the revenue on the table.

The result is a two-sided test for the market. Adtech and agency partners must design offerings that respect OpenAI's privacy commitments, and OpenAI must prove it can scale an ads business — under self-imposed limits, while absorbing billions in losses — fast enough to satisfy its own financial reality.