Code updates to its conversion tracking pixels, which Digiday reviewed, show that the company is building the technical foundation necessary to run advertising in the European Union. This update adds a permission management system, which is essentially a mechanism that allows advertisers to ask users for permission before tracking them, and stop tracking if that permission is revoked.
Advertisers can flag or exclude certain actions – such as purchases, or registrations – from tracking. Additionally, this update also adds a country column to the pixel-collected data, indicating that OpenAI built it with handling of jurisdictional data in mind.
None of this is required to advertise in the US, where privacy laws apply on an opt-out basis — users can request that tracking stop but businesses do not require permission before tracking begins. In Europe, it works the other way around: explicit consent is required first before tracking pixels can be activated and users must be able to withdraw them at any time.
““OpenAI’s move into advertising seems to be built with European regulations in mind, and rightly so, as governments increasingly focus on the next phase of the platform’s social impact as we enter the AI era,” said Enthropy Consulting founder Alex Tait.
That scrutiny is sharpened by a public that is increasingly accustomed to mechanisms built to monetize their attention.
“Signals of consent must be conveyed clearly through every partner in an advertiser’s technology chain — and it’s that transmission issue that’s been a challenge for ad tech for years,” said Sourcepoint COO Brian Kane. “Each submission poses potential compliance risks, which will be closely watched by regulators and privacy groups.”
Signs that a pixel was on its way first appeared last month. This reflects a broader strategic choice born out of necessity. Third-party cookies – small files that advertisers have long used to track what users do after clicking on an ad – have been blocked by Safari and Firefox for years, making it difficult for advertisers to measure whether their campaigns are actually working.
Google and Meta have spent a lot of effort building a server-to-server alternative to the response, where data is sent directly between systems and not through the browser. OpenAI just skipped that chapter and built it from scratch.
Despite this, the conversion pixel is still in its mature stage. Initial advertisers in the ChatGPT ad trial had no pixels at all. They manually track how much traffic their ads generate using crude methods and spreadsheets. The pixel is still being rolled out, and in its current form only measures the last action a user takes before converting, such as clicking an ad. More advanced measurements, such as crediting ads that users saw but didn’t click on or adjusting how far back conversions can be attributed — are planned but with no firm timeline.
Until then, the pixel is deployed more like a managed service than a self-service product. OpenAI builds it for advertisers based on what they want to measure and assigns someone to help implement it. This needs to change if the advertising business is to grow.
“Now that OpenAI has got the conversion pixel, they will start implementing it,” said Jai Amin, chief solution officer, media activation at Jellyfish. “I imagine the narrative around these brands’ budgets will change once they start seeing conversion sales data and information come in.”
Currently, OpenAI’s ChatGPT ads trial is expanding outside the US and will soon include Canada, Australia and New Zealand in the coming weeks. Digiday also reported last week that the company was looking for executives for its advertising teams in London and Tokyo.
OpenAI did not respond to Digiday’s request for comment.
PakarPBN
A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection of websites that are controlled by a single individual or organization and used primarily to build backlinks to a “money site” in order to influence its ranking in search engines such as Google. The core idea behind a PBN is based on the importance of backlinks in Google’s ranking algorithm. Since Google views backlinks as signals of authority and trust, some website owners attempt to artificially create these signals through a controlled network of sites.
In a typical PBN setup, the owner acquires expired or aged domains that already have existing authority, backlinks, and history. These domains are rebuilt with new content and hosted separately, often using different IP addresses, hosting providers, themes, and ownership details to make them appear unrelated. Within the content published on these sites, links are strategically placed that point to the main website the owner wants to rank higher. By doing this, the owner attempts to pass link equity (also known as “link juice”) from the PBN sites to the target website.
The purpose of a PBN is to give the impression that the target website is naturally earning links from multiple independent sources. If done effectively, this can temporarily improve keyword rankings, increase organic visibility, and drive more traffic from search results.