OpenAI, the artificial-intelligence company behind ChatGPT, is expected to air its first TV commercial during Sunday’s Super Bowl, according to people familiar with the matter.
Founded in 2015, the OpenAI brand took off in late 2022 when it launched its wildly popular chatbot, ChatGPT. While Open AI has become one of the best known companies in the AI space, it achieved that feat with little help from paid advertising.
The big-game ad is, by far, OpenAI’s biggest foray into advertising as the race to build the world’s most powerful AI technology and win over users intensifies.
The sector is already jam-packed with many deep-pocketed companies and startups such as Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta Platforms, Amazon-backed Anthropic, Elon Musk’s xAI and others. And new entrants such as Chinese upstart DeepSeek continue to emerge.
OpenAI, the market leader, has 300 million weekly active users, but rivals are looking to challenge its dominance. Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai recently told employees that he wants the company’s chatbot Gemini to be used by 500 million people by the end of 2025, the Journal reported.
Though OpenAI has made minimal investment in advertising thus far, others in the sector haven’t shied away from marketing. Companies in the AI industry spent $332 million on ads last year, more than double their 2023 spending level, according to estimates from ad tracker Mediaradar.
Google, Anthropic and Microsoft ran ads during last year’s Super Bowl.
Google’s spot promoted Guided Frame, an AI-powered feature on its Pixel camera that helps blind and sight-impaired people take photos, while Anthropic aired a five-second ad that read: “Claude is a next-generation AI assistant.” Microsoft’s commercial highlighted how its AI assistant, Copilot, can empower humans to achieve more.
Still, selling AI to the masses isn’t easy. “There is a fear factor in this category,” Kathleen Hall, Microsoft’s former chief brand officer, told the Journal last year. Hall said Microsoft research from 2022 revealed that some consumers were extremely afraid of the technology, with some suggesting the tech is “going to kill me in my sleep and take over the world,” she said. Over time, she said, people’s sentiment improved as they began to understand the benefits that might eventually come from AI, such as helping cure diseases.
OpenAI signaled that it was beginning to lean more on marketing late last year when it hired Kate Rouch, the marketing chief at Coinbase Global, as its first chief marketing officer.
A well-respected marketer, Rouch oversaw an aggressive marketing push at the cryptocurrency exchange platform during her three-year tenure, which included a buzzy Super Bowl ad that featured a bouncing QR code. Before Coinbase, Rouch spent more than a decade at Meta.