OpenAI is quietly laying the groundwork for its next big revenue stream — advertising — and it’s doing so by forming a brand-new ads integrity team designed to protect user trust while the business scales.
According to a recent job listing, this ads integrity group is a true “zero-to-one” effort. In simple terms, the team is being built from scratch to support OpenAI’s first serious move into ads inside ChatGPT. Its goal is clear: allow advertising to grow without compromising safety, compliance, or the credibility of ChatGPT’s responses.
Ads Are Coming — Carefully
Last month, OpenAI confirmed plans to begin testing ads in the U.S. for free users and subscribers on the $8-per-month Go plan. The company emphasized that ads will not influence ChatGPT’s answers. Instead, they will appear alongside or within AI-generated responses in clearly defined placements.
Advertisers hoping to participate early won’t be small players. OpenAI is requiring a minimum spend of $200,000, signaling a focus on large brands rather than casual ad buyers. As of now, testing hasn’t started, and there are still no ads live in ChatGPT.
Why OpenAI Is Betting Big on Ads
The timing makes sense. OpenAI’s user base exploded to roughly 800 million weekly active users by late 2025, and about 95% of them still rely on the free version. Advertising offers a way to monetize that massive audience without putting everything behind a paywall.
CEO Sam Altman has previously said the company expects to surpass $20 billion in annual revenue in 2025 and could reach “hundreds of billions” by 2030 — a figure that would place OpenAI among the highest-earning AI platforms in the world.
How Much Do Ads Integrity Engineers Earn?
The compensation is eye-catching. A San Francisco–based software engineer on the ads integrity team can earn between $230,000 and $385,000 in base salary, plus equity. That’s nearly triple the U.S. average software engineering salary of about $130,000.
These top-of-market numbers reveal just how central ads are expected to be to OpenAI’s future. The company is specifically seeking senior engineers with at least six years of experience, ideally with backgrounds in trust, safety, fraud prevention, or large-scale ad systems.
What the Ads Integrity Role Actually Does
Integrity engineers won’t be building ad creatives. Their job is to design and enforce systems that keep ads safe, accurate, and compliant before users ever see them.
That includes:
Reviewing ad content and landing pages for scams, misinformation, or policy violations
Deciding where ads appear inside ChatGPT so placements feel contextual and appropriate
Collaborating across internal teams to classify content and assess risk in real time
Because ads will sit close to AI-generated answers, integrity decisions will directly shape both user experience and advertiser performance.
Learning From Other Platforms’ Mistakes
OpenAI appears determined to avoid the problems that have plagued other ad-driven platforms. In December, Meta disclosed that it removed more than 134 million scam ads in a single year.
Other tech giants have long invested in similar teams. Google runs an ad traffic quality division, while TikTok and Amazon Ads both operate integrity-focused ad units.
By building integrity systems early, OpenAI hopes to prevent a flood of low-quality or deceptive ads before they ever reach users.
Will Integrity Remain a Priority?
Industry experts say the real test will come after launch. Ariella Garcia, COO of the Check My Ads Institute, notes that early ad programs usually face less risk simply because volume is low.
“The risk of a large volume of scam ads in the early days is far lower,” Garcia told Business Insider.
Whether OpenAI continues investing heavily in integrity as ad volume grows will determine whether ChatGPT’s ads feel trustworthy — or become another cautionary tale in digital advertising.
For now, one thing is clear: OpenAI is paying top dollar to get ads right from day one.
