ChatGPT ads are finally here. After years of quiet speculation, the predictions of many marketing leaders have been definitively confirmed as OpenAI announced it was testing advertising within the ChatGPT experience for a small pool of users. But what does that mean for the average business?
For any advertiser, being at the forefront of such a disruptive change will offer access to an incredible number of users, with way less competition (=higher ROI!) than other ad platforms like Google and Meta, which are saturated with advertisers. It also grants businesses with an ear to the ground a head start, building data to better optimise their ads and outcompete late adopters.
Personally, I am sure that ChatGPT’s recent foray into the advertising game will become a durable feature of its business model in the near future, not just a short-lived experiment.
In this article, I’ll explain the recent developments, what it could mean for advertisers who adopt ChatGPT ads early, and how we all must prepare.
Skip to:
- ChatGPT Ads are Being Tested From February 2026
- Why OpenAI is likely to launch an ad platform
- When to expect ChatGPT Ads
- How to prepare and get ahead
- Potential downsides and delays
- Conclusion: Why being early matters
It Looks Like ChatGPT Has Taken the First Step: February 2026 Marks the Launch of Pilot Ads within Selected Plans
As of February 2026, OpenAI has begun piloting ads inside ChatGPT, initially limited to Free and Go plan users in the US. This isn’t a rollout, but it’s big news nonetheless.
As part of this early test, a handful of major brands – namely, Target, Adobe, Mazda and HelloFresh – are participating as OpenAI experiments with ads “so more people can benefit from [their] tools with fewer usage limits”.
Reportedly, the minimum spend is around $200,000, and early formats appear to be impression-based, with a reported CPM of approximately $60 per 1,000 impressions. While OpenAI has not announced a broader global launch, I still expect ChatGPT ads to expand to additional advertisers, markets, and eligibility tiers later in 2026.
Encouragingly, several ethical concerns I had around advertising in ChatGPT appear to have been addressed in this pilot: I’ve seen clear ad labelling, there’s no advertiser access to personal chats, ads won’t influence ChatGPT’s responses, and then there’s the usual no advertising to under-18s or about sensitive topics like health and politics.
If you want to learn more about advertising on ChatGPT, please reach out, and we’ll keep you posted when ads are rolled out to a wider advertising base and when you’re eligible (spend and location).
Why Do I think OpenAI will Launch an Official ChatGPT Ad Platform?
As of writing, there’s no official announcement from the company itself, but I feel my opinion is more than just wild speculation, especially now that the pilot scheme is well and truly here. And still, the groundwork has been there for a long time…
It all started two years ago when OpenAI’s founder, Sam Altman, reluctantly admitted that the company is considering ChatGPT Ads for non-paying users as a sort of ‘last resort’ for monetisation. At a talk at Harvard University, he said: “I’m not saying OpenAI would never consider ads, but I don’t like them in general, and I think that ‘ads-plus-AI’ is sort of uniquely unsettling to me.”
All the signs are there; it’s lining up… Advertisers, SMEs and big business alike should be on high alert.
Ad Platforms Generate Serious Money
Google made over $264 billion in 2024, the vast majority of the company’s revenue. That’s some serious coin, and we know ChatGPT’s owners, OpenAI, are actively looking to raise over a trillion dollars in the next 5 years.
It seems pretty simple that with users migrating from Google Search to AI, a new ChatGPT Ads platform would eat into Google’s rather sizeable advertising revenue, getting them a long way towards their $1t, 5-year target.
Shopify x Open AI Partnership
In the summer of 2025, Shopify announced a partnership with OpenAI, allowing merchants to sell directly through ChatGPT: no links, no redirects, just allowing purchases anywhere an AI conversation takes place.
I’ve long been a fan of Shopify from a digital marketing perspective; it’s just more intuitive and it makes marketing the client’s site a breeze. You can, however, rank, and perform with any website platform, so I’ve never suggested a platform before based on ability to rank or do business. Now, for me, with this partnership, Shopify is a clear leader and it should be the only realistic consideration for an e-commerce website.
What about ChatGPT Ads for Lead Gen?
It would make sense to lead with shopping ads. I feel there’s lots of money there, since it’s a more straightforward sale, while lead gen would likely need more integration or links leaving ChatGPT – less of a probability as, by the looks of this partnership, OpenAI might prefer to keep users on the platform.
Purely speculation, but I’d be surprised if traditional-style search ads are available on rollout. Though, I do think ChatGPT ads for lead gen will follow soon after. So if you’re looking to generate leads, you still need to prepare.
OpenAI is Recruiting
More specifically, they’re recruiting for a Growth Paid Marketing Platform Engineer. Someone to “build and scale the systems that power OpenAI’s marketing channels”, and be responsible “developing campaign management tools” and “integrating with major ad platforms”… That last bit could be taken two ways IMO:
- They’re building a platform that they’d like to scale to partners outside of ChatGPT
- Or they’re looking to allow data from other platforms to populate with ChatGPT, maybe Shopify could be considered one of these platforms?
I don’t think this means allowing other platforms to integrate and promote their ads within ChatGPT. If they were to do that, they’d have easily become a Google Display Network Partner ages ago.
Keeping People on the App
Social media companies have proved the value of keeping users active, engaged and on their app, network or website. Meta is now worth an approximate $1.8t at 3.43b daily active users (DAUs) compared to 10 years ago when it was worth ~$0.3t at 1.04b DAUs.
When Will ChatGPT Ads Happen?
As I mentioned earlier, there’s no official announcement on a ChatGPT Ads platform, but a pilot is underway. Something I suspected last year when poking around in several leaked charts, reports and internal documents that led many outlets to forecast 2026 for rollout ([1], [2], [3], [4]).
It seems to me that fully integrated advertising options are in the works, and not just for Free and Go tiers. This is, of course, speculation, but I feel some speculation grounded in truth. And something we all need to prepare for.
How to Prepare & Get Ahead of the Game
If you haven’t already, you need to plan for the AI revolution. It’s coming. We launched PromptRank in 2025 to help companies appear in AI and LLM responses.
So far, we’ve seen some exceptional results and high conversion rates from referral traffic for clients; it’s specifically brilliant for companies that sell a product or service that isn’t widely known but solves a particular problem. This makes sense to me: you can have a conversation with ChatGPT about a problem, and it’ll suggest solutions that fit the bill and warm up the referral for you!
Clean and Enrich your Data
Ensure your product, service and website data is clean and full of useful information that can be easily interpreted by AI agents. Things like:
- Properly implemented schema markup
- Correctly tagged images
- Elements that make your content easily understandable at a glance like TLDR summaries
- FAQs that help AI keep the conversation going
- Informative product descriptions and attributes that you can include in your product feeds
- Making sure all your content serves a purpose and pruning duplicate, irrelevant or outdated content
Ensure AI can crawl your site
Ask ChatGPT if it can access and crawl your site successfully. We have seen some big web hosts block AI as part of security measure – contact your web host if you run into a problem here.
If ChatGPT throws up an error when you ask it to crawl your site, contact your host with the error code and they should be able to find the cause. Note that I have seen (more than once) that ChatGPT throw up errors that never happened!
It seems to say it’s tried, when it hasn’t. If I get an error, I just respond “are you sure you got that error, did you actually try and access the URL provided? I’d like you to try again.” Then in its typical, enthusiastic way, it tries again – and more often than not, succeeds!
Build your Brand & Domain Authority
All AI SEO is an extension of high-quality SEO. Engage with an expert, create high-quality content and publish it on your own website and distribute to other high-authority websites (to get a link back, a backlink). The more content in more the more places, the better
- Make infographics that can be shared
- Create content for socials, from LinkedIn posts to YouTube videos
- Start a podcast, not forgetting to write show notes or transcripts that AI & search bots can scrape
- Engage in PR (preferably SEO-primed PR)
- Anything to get people talking about you
Build Trust
We’ve written about this so many times before, but get reviews! Reviews are so important in so many ways. Not just acquiring 5-star reviews but responding to them; simply thanking the user for their review or replying responsibly and with empathy to poor reviews to show others you care, and you are willing to help rectify the situation.
You’re building trust with humans and bots alike.
Monitor the situation
Monitor everything coming out of OpenAI, set up a Google alert for updates. Sign up to our newsletter, we’ll be sure to let you know as we’ll be signing up to any trials, betas or partnerships.
It wouldn’t be unusual for something like this to be rolled out with some select advertisers – we may not know about it until it’s happening so just use ChatGPT more!
There’s a lot goes into making ads profitable and we need to understand a lot about your business and what you sell to make it profitable. If you want to start that process, please contact us so we’re ready when the rollout happens.
Is there a downside? Why might they delay?
People use ChatGPT for all sorts, from researching a product to helping them with their personal life. As a result, ChatGPT has been a trusted companion for many of us. How would you feel if one of your mates started shilling you adverts in every conversation?! It reminds me of the Black Mirror episode “Common People” – you’d lose trust, and it might be very off-putting for users.
They’ll also have to battle with fairness, bias, privacy and regulator scrutiny. You also might find that it becomes profitable, quickly. For many advertisers, the assumption is that when the doors open to more users, the space will also hyper-competitive and unaffordable for a lot of SMEs.
It’s better to be early
If, like me, you see this as a massive opportunity for your business, get in touch with beefound’s hive of professionals or sign up to our newsletter. Let’s navigate this new, exciting and sometimes scary world of AI together.
