Yeah this whole thing is missing some crucial information.

The paragraph quoted in the post makes it sound like they are near $1b in revenue but i think they're just speaking rhetorically, "you want 100? You can't even get 1!"

In 2026, Emarketer projects that the combination of OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon will bring in under $1 billion in ad revenue. For context, OpenAI had projected that its AI ad revenue alone would hit $2.5 billion by the end of this year.

This makes it sound like openai is projected to make $250m this year, if they're 90% short of revenue projections for this year. That's a full 25% of the $1b total ad revenue that OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon make combined. Which is reasonable, but it does make their projections seem absolutely farcical. At least to me, but i don't know finances.

It would be good to check rhe original analysis the article cites but it's paywalled and begins with the same misleading comparison of 2030 to now.