OpenAI builds dedicated SMB ads unit, job postings show
A Lead Data Scientist for SMB Ads Growth role in San Francisco, paying $293K to $515K, tops six live job postings that show OpenAI building a dedicated small-business advertising unit, Digiday reports. The postings span growth, data science, demand strategy and sales operations, and call for candidates from Meta, Google, LinkedIn, TikTok, Amazon and Reddit who have already built ad growth functions elsewhere. A Growth Lead for SMB Ads pays $284K to $315K, and a Growth Marketing Manager beneath it pays $177K to $196K, tasked with moving advertisers from sign-up to first meaningful spend. In Dublin, OpenAI is hiring a Senior Vendor Manager for SMB Sales to hold outsourced sales vendors accountable through performance reviews and scorecards, the model Google and Meta have run for years. Two more San Francisco roles round out the build-out: a Senior Mid-Market & SMB Demand Strategist at $266K to $295K, and an Analytics Engineer for SMB at $220K to $335K, joining a brand-new go-to-market data team.
Smaller advertisers already generate the bulk of ad revenue at Google and Meta, and eMarketer principal analyst Nate Elliott expects OpenAI to chase the same money as it scales its ambitions. A self-serve SMB ads platform inside ChatGPT would open a new inventory pool for small and mid-size advertisers to test, and it would compete for budgets that currently flow to Meta and Google's automated SMB tools. Agencies handling mixed portfolios of enterprise and smaller clients should track the pace of this build-out, since a live product would arrive without established benchmarks for cost, reach or attribution.