Media Trends Executive

Media Trends

Axios Media Trends

A stacked column chart shows projected U.S. search advertising spend from 2025 to 2029. Total spending is expected to increase from $148.6 billion in 2025 to $190.7 billion in 2029. AI search advertising spend is projected to rise from $1 billion in 2025 to $25.9 billion in 2029.

Projected U.S. search advertising spend

AI companies are leaning into advertising as rising infrastructure costs demand more revenue diversification.

Why it matters: The industry is navigating financial reckoning. 

It needs ads to keep products affordable and widely accessible. But it doesn't want to alienate users with a bad experience.

Zoom in: OpenAI's ChatGPT is making the boldest move into ads of any major AI platform.

It began testing ads for some U.S. users on both the free and paid subscription tiers in February.

The company expects to generate $2.5 billion in ad revenue this year and $100 billion by 2030, per Axios' Ina Fried.

Between the lines: Traditional search companies like Microsoft and Google are integrating their AI-powered answer platforms like Copilot and AI Overviews into existing search experiences and are including ads as a part of that experience.

Perplexity was testing sponsored answers on its platform but pulled back from that experiment this year. It has said that it has no current plans to put advertising in its answer engine, but is "continually experimenting."

Zoom out: AI ads can take on many formats, and for now, it's up to marketers and platform companies to test and iterate what works.

The most common ad format within ChatGPT is sponsored contextual answers, which appear within conversations as tinted response boxes.

Those ads, and other formats such as product recommendation cards, tend to serve marketers trying to target users at the bottom funnel of their marketing journey.

ChatGPT is also experimenting with higher-funnel brand ads that spotlight a brand when users are having exploratory conversations within the platform that are less intent-based.

Yes, but: Like the traditional search era, where most search ads were measured on a cost-per-click basis, measurement and attribution will continue to be a challenge in scaling ads for the agentic web.

Conversational ads aren't as explicitly designed to link out.

What's next: In order for agentic advertising to scale meaningfully and sustainably, there needs to be a reliable marketplace among publishers, brands and AI platforms.

Microsoft is in the early stages of building out a premium content marketplace, Axios has reported.

Amazon has also reportedly had similar conversations.

Go deeper: Media Trends Executive Platform Insights Report Q1 2026

AI companies lean into advertising as infrastructure costs rise

OpenAI's ChatGPT is making the boldest move into ads of any major AI platform.

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AI companies lean into advertising as infrastructure costs rise

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