OpenAI is coming for SMB advertisers

OpenAI is building a dedicated SMB ads unit, according to six live job postings reviewed by Digiday, with roles spanning growth, data science, demand strategy, and sales operations. The highest-paying role, Lead Data Scientist for SMB Ads Growth in San Francisco, offers $293K to $515K and seeks candidates from Meta, Google, or LinkedIn. OpenAI is also hiring a Senior Vendor Manager for SMB Sales in Dublin to oversee outsourced sales vendors, and an Analytics Engineer for SMB in San Francisco to build data infrastructure from scratch. eMarketer principal analyst Nate Elliott noted that SMBs make up the majority of ad revenue for Google and Meta, and any ambitious ad business will need to collect billions from smaller advertisers.

Want to know where OpenAI’s ads business is headed? Check its job listings. Smaller advertisers are next. The platform is currently building out a dedicated SMB ads unit, according to six live job postings reviewed by Digiday. The roles span growth, data science, demand strategy and sales operations. At the top of that stack is a “Lead Data Scientist for SMB Ads Growth” role in San Francisco, paying $293K to $515K. The job is to build the analytics function for smaller advertisers from scratch, spanning targeting, funnel optimization and forecasting. The listing wants candidates from Meta, Google or LinkedIn. In other words, OpenAI is hiring people who already know how to do this because they’ve done it somewhere else. Below that sits a Growth Lead for SMB Ads, paying $284K to $315K, and a Growth Marketing Manager underneath them, paying $177K to $196K, both in San Francisco. The first role, according to its job spec will “build and scale how small businesses discover, adopt and grow” on OpenAI’s ad platform, while the second, according to the posting, is to get SMB advertisers to move from “interest and sign-up to first meaningful spend & retention over time”. Like the data scientist role, OpenAI wants people who’ve worked on the ads teams at Google, Meta, TikTok, Amazon and Reddit. Then there’s Dublin. OpenAI is hiring a Senior Vendor Manager for SMB Sales there, though no compensation is listed. The job is to own performance across OpenAI’s outsourced SMB sales vendors — the outside firms handling inbound and outbound sales, API sales and other work on OpenAI’s behalf. The posting is blunt that this isn’t about managing relationships with those vendors. It’s about holding them to account: running regular performance reviews, building scorecards and putting underperforming vendors on corrective action plans. In simple terms, OpenAI won’t necessarily have a large SMB sales team. Rather, it’s going to pay outside vendors to do that work and hire someone to oversee them. It’s the same model Google and Meta have run for years. Two more San Francisco-based roles round out the picture. One is a Senior Mid-Market & SMB Demand Strategist, paying $266K to $295K. This sits inside B2B Marketing, which is a different team from the SMB Ads Marketing group the growth roles report into. The strategist’s job is to run demand generation for both mid-market and SMB customers at once. The other is an Analytics Engineer for SMB, paying $220K to $335K. This one is joining a brand-new data team inside OpenAI’s go-to-market organization. The posting calls itself an “early member” of that team, which tells you something: the data infrastructure for this business doesn’t exist yet. Whoever gets this job is building it from nothing. With OpenAI’s ads business, it’s rarely the move that’s interesting. It’s the speed. Going after smaller advertisers was always going to happen eventually. They’re the backbone of any ads business built to last — the must-have to enterprise advertisers’ nice-to-have. Take Meta. A Morgan Stanley survey back in 2024 found 75% of SMBs used Facebook for advertising. Since then, Meta has leaned hard on AI to automate as much of that advertising as possible. It’s a fair bet that SMB number has only gone up. “Depending on whose estimates you believe, SMBs make up the majority of ad revenue for Google and Meta,” said eMarketer’s principal analyst, AI in marketing and commerce, Nate Elliott. “Any slightly ambitious ad business will have to collect billions upon billions from these smaller advertisers every year, and ChatGPT is nothing if not ambitious.” OpenAI did not respond to Digiday’s request for comment. More in Marketing Zoom relies on creators to boost AI search results https://digiday.com/marketing/zoom-relies-on-creators-to-boost-ai-search-results/ As AI changes how brands are discovered, Zoom is leaning on creators and journalists to shape its reputation. Your favorite beauty brands are now also entertainment brands https://digiday.com/marketing/your-favorite-beauty-brands-are-now-also-entertainment-brands/ Many of today’s beauty brands are asking if entertainment and advertising can be one and the same. Data specialist Ideally wants research to be used at the start of the creative process https://digiday.com/marketing/synthetic-data-specialist-ideally-wants-research-to-be-used-at-the-start-of-the-creative-process/ Ideally is looking to reinvent research when serving the creative side of the industry by integrating consumer insights earlier in the creative process.