OpenAI is hiring engineers, not ad sellers, first to build its ad business

"The The roles posted since the turn of the year make clear just how early and foundational the effort is. There are no ad sales chiefs with deep agency relationships, no account managers or creative strategists. Instead, most of the seven open roles focused on advertising are far more basic: engineers tasked with building monetization infrastructure, ad delivery and the internal tools needed to connect paid advertising to OpenAI's products."

"A trust and safety operations role tied specifically to monetization signals that OpenAI expects advertising in an AI assistant to be uniquely delicate. In fact, Fidji Simo, CEO of applications at OpenAI has said as much. She told Wired last year that brand safety, user experience and the risk of ads distorting responses are not afterthoughts in its pursuit of ad dollars. They are design constraints from the start."

OpenAI is recruiting engineering-focused roles to build monetization infrastructure, ad delivery, and internal tools needed to integrate paid advertising into its products. Current openings lack traditional ad-sales positions such as account managers, creative strategists, or executives with deep agency relationships. Commercial hires emphasize designing the platform’s commercial ecosystem rather than pursuing immediate agency outreach or sales execution. Job descriptions point to work on ad servers, targeting frameworks, measurement stacks, and ad formats before a sales organization is assembled. A dedicated trust and safety operations role linked to monetization indicates heightened attention to brand safety, user experience and response integrity.

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