在2025年烧掉约80亿美元现金后，OpenAI面临显著的营收压力，并转向其首席执行官Sam Altman在2024年称为“最后手段”的模式：在ChatGPT中引入广告。该决定距其公开否定广告模式仅一年，凸显财务紧张程度。广告将首先出现在免费层级和每月8美元的ChatGPT Go用户界面中，以横幅形式展示，不直接影响模型回答。公司承诺不出售个人数据，并保持对话隐私。
广告模式的吸引力在于其高杠杆效应。历史数据显示，小幅参与度提升即可带来显著收入增长。以Meta Platforms为例，2025年第二季度用户参与度仅上升8%，广告收入却同比增长22%。Meta在2021年广告追踪受限后，依靠AI建模而非个人数据维持了约98%依赖广告的收入结构。这一对比表明，即使不显性优化停留时长，微调互动设计也可能显著放大变现效果，而外部几乎难以检测。
OpenAI承诺不“以用户停留时间为优化目标”，但这一约束难以量化与验证。其人员结构与规模数据进一步放大了不确定性：截至2025年10月，OpenAI约3000名员工中，约630人（约20%）来自Meta，具备深厚的参与度优化经验。与此同时，ChatGPT每周活跃用户约9亿，单次会话平均15至20分钟，且日内多次回访。这些指标对广告商极具吸引力。在订阅价格为每月20美元的背景下，广告化路径可能更集中影响无法付费的人群，强化平台向“习惯形成型”产品演化的统计趋势。
After burning roughly $8 billion in cash in 2025, OpenAI faces acute revenue pressure and has turned to what its chief executive Sam Altman labeled a “last resort” in 2024: advertising inside ChatGPT. The shift comes just a year after dismissing ads, underscoring financial strain. Ads will initially appear as banner placements for free users and the $8-a-month ChatGPT Go tier, without directly shaping model responses. The company pledges not to sell personal data and to keep conversations private.
The appeal of ads lies in their disproportionate payoff. Historical data show that modest engagement gains can translate into large revenue jumps. At Meta Platforms, an 8% rise in user engagement in the second quarter of 2025 coincided with a 22% increase in ad revenue. After tracking restrictions in 2021, Meta preserved a business where about 98% of revenue still comes from ads by relying on AI-driven modeling rather than personal data. This suggests that even subtle engagement tweaks, without explicit time optimization, can materially boost monetization while remaining hard to detect externally.
OpenAI promises it will not optimize for “time spent,” but this constraint is difficult to measure or enforce. Workforce and scale metrics amplify the risk: by October 2025, about 630 of OpenAI’s roughly 3,000 employees, or around 20%, were former Meta staff with expertise in engagement optimization. At the same time, ChatGPT reports about 900 million weekly users, average sessions of 15 to 20 minutes, and frequent daily returns. These figures are highly attractive to advertisers. With a $20-a-month subscription out of reach for many users, the ad-supported path statistically tilts incentives toward habit formation, reinforcing patterns long observed across ad-funded digital platforms.