Agencies & Marketing — OpenAI Enters Ad Market as IAB Data Shows Creator Marketing Overtaking Search, Signaling a Structural Shift in Media Buying

Agencies & Marketing · 2026-04-21

TODAY'S SIGNAL — The advertising industry's competitive map is being redrawn simultaneously from multiple directions. OpenAI is aggressively building an ad business with discounted rates to pull budgets from Meta and Google, just as IAB data confirms social and creator marketing now command 40% of digital ad spend while search growth decelerates. This isn't coincidental — it's the same underlying…