09/24/2026
Your next customer might see your ad inside a ChatGPT conversation before they ever open Google.
The rollout has moved faster than most marketers expected.
OpenAI opened a self-serve Ads Manager in late July, letting advertisers set their own budgets and target users based on the context of their conversation instead of just keywords. Early advertisers already running campaigns include Best Buy, Lowe's, and VistaPrint. By mid-August, the ad program had expanded beyond the US into the UK, Mexico, Brazil, Japan, and South Korea, with more markets on the way before year end.
OpenAI has reported well over 900 million weekly active users, and ChatGPT now ranks among the most-visited websites in the world. Paying subscribers don't see ads, but the free tier alone is still a massive, largely untapped audience that's only just opened up to advertisers.
It's already showing up at real scale too. By early July, ads were appearing in roughly half of all US replies on the ad-supported tiers, a sharp jump from where the pilot started just months earlier.
This isn't the same kind of attention social feeds or search results capture. People aren't scrolling when they're in ChatGPT. They're mid-conversation, often mid-decision. That changes what a "relevant" ad even looks like, and it means optimizing for how AI models is becoming important.
Learn more: https://link.msgsndr.com/sp/4b22c0cf0ea