OpenAI hires from Meta and Google to sell ChatGPT ads in Australia

OpenAI has appointed two senior ad sales executives to cover Australia and New Zealand, as first reported by AdNews. Andy Sinn joins from Meta, where he spent a decade as agency partner and global account lead for APAC managing a portfolio AdNews reports at more than $500 million. Mitch Pilar arrives from Google after almost 12 years, most recently as senior industry manager.

Both report to Dave Dugan, OpenAI's head of global ads solutions, himself a Meta veteran of more than a decade who joined OpenAI in March and reports to chief operating officer Brad Lightcap. The reporting line puts ANZ inside OpenAI's core monetisation structure rather than a regional outpost.

The hires land while OpenAI is already piloting ads in ChatGPT in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. According to industry sources cited by AdNews, the ANZ pilot is running on a sliding CPM scale of US$20 to US$60. OpenAI has also flagged expansion of ads to ChatGPT's free tier and its Go subscription in the US, and has announced plans to extend the pilot to the UK, Mexico, Brazil, Japan and South Korea, with multi-advertiser placements priced by second-price auction now in testing.

Pilar wrote on LinkedIn that he wants to shape how ANZ businesses show up in ChatGPT in a way that is "useful, trusted and additive". Sinn's new boss Dugan wrote that "we're still at the very beginning, and we're moving fast".

Why it matters for Australian marketers and agencies: Australia was one of the first four markets in the ChatGPT ads pilot, and it now has dedicated local sellers whose job is to move ChatGPT from experiment to line item on media plans. Agencies can expect direct outreach from people who know their business well, given Sinn managed APAC agency relationships at Meta. The open questions worth pressing them on are measurement, brand safety in generated answers, and whether early CPMs at US$20 to US$60 hold up against performance data.

AdNews broke this story. Further sources: openai.com, digiday.com, searchengineland.com