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ChatGPT ads reach 26 more countries: 100,000 companies have run them

Author
Viner Shakirov
Oct 23, 2026, 14:55 UTC
Reading time: 4 min
News & releases
ChatGPT ads reach 26 more countries: 100,000 companies have run them

On October 21, OpenAI brought ChatGPT ads to 26 more countries, and they now run in 89. In eight months, more than 100,000 advertisers have run campaigns in ChatGPT - in late August there were about 20,000. Only users on the free Free plan and the low-cost Go plan see them; Plus, Pro and Enterprise stay ad-free.

Where the ads arrived

OpenAI didn't publish the full list of new countries. After Mexico and Brazil, ads came to 14 more Latin American countries, including Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Peru. The other new markets are in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia: among them Nigeria, South Africa, Serbia, Ukraine, Cambodia, Bangladesh and Pakistan. Before that, OpenAI expanded ads in Europe, Southeast Asia and Taiwan. According to the company, more than 1.2 billion people use ChatGPT every week, and ads, as OpenAI explains, help keep access free and low-cost.

An ad looks like a separate block labeled as an ad below the answer. OpenAI promises that ads don't affect the answer itself, conversations aren't shown to advertisers and user data isn't sold. In addition, according to PPC Land, restrictions have applied since January: no ads for users under 18 or those predicted to be minors, and none next to conversations about health, mental health and politics.

How much it earns

OpenAI's ad business is growing fast. According to CNBC, in March it was at an annualized run rate of about $100 million, and in August already about $1 billion. Reuters links this to preparation for a possible stock listing. Anthropic chose the opposite strategy: in February it made ChatGPT ads the theme of its Super Bowl spot and promised that Claude will stay ad-free.

What it means for advertisers

Everyone now wants AI to mention their brand in its answers. The key thing to understand: a spot in a ChatGPT answer is not for sale. Paid ads live in a separate labeled block, and the model builds the answer itself without regard to advertisers. So there are two channels, and they work differently.

The first is paid ads. You can buy them through technology partners or yourself in Ads Manager at ads.openai.com. OpenAI itself describes why businesses need it: to show a product while a person is still choosing. The example from the announcement: someone training for their first marathon discusses meals for race week with ChatGPT, and next to it appears a grocery delivery service they hadn't considered. Instead of a keyword list, the advertiser sets "context hints" - topics where the ad fits. An auction decides the placement, and besides the bid it weighs how well the ad and the landing page fit the conversation. So a cheap irrelevant ad will lose. You can pay per impression or per click. In September, OpenAI began testing Sponsored Agents in the US - ads in the form of brand agents.

The second channel is organic mentions in the answer itself. You can't buy them: the model more often names brands that have plenty of clear information in open sources. Regular content works here - articles, reviews, clear product pages.

My take

An ad that understands the whole conversation is more precise than any banner: it sees not the query "sneakers" but "looking for sneakers for running on asphalt, mid-range budget". That's why OpenAI's most important promise is that conversations stay with it and advertisers don't see them. You can't verify that from the outside; all you can do is watch how the company keeps it. For businesses the takeaway is simple: paid ads in ChatGPT are a separate channel, not a way into the answer.

What it means for you

If you're on the free plan, ads will show up for you sooner or later. The only way to remove them is a paid subscription. If ads get in the way of working with OpenAI models, there's another route: in GPTunneL, models from OpenAI and other developers work via API, with no ad blocks and no subscription - you pay only for requests. And if you promote a product yourself, take a look at our roundup of AI tools for marketing and advertising.

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