ChatGPT advertising has moved beyond an experiment
OpenAI began testing advertising in ChatGPT in the US in February 2026 before announcing plans to extend the pilot to additional markets, including the United Kingdom. The advertising experience is focused on eligible Free and Go users, while paid plans such as Plus, Pro, Business and Enterprise remain ad-free. More recently, OpenAI has expanded the infrastructure behind the programme with an Ads Manager, CPM and CPC purchasing options, conversion measurement and dedicated advertiser guidance.
This matters because ChatGPT advertising is no longer simply a hypothetical future revenue model. OpenAI now describes a defined advertising system in which ads can contain a headline, description, image and landing page and appear below a ChatGPT response. Similarweb's 2026 AI search analysis reported that approximately 26% of the ChatGPT responses it analysed contained an advertisement, suggesting paid visibility is already becoming a meaningful part of some ChatGPT experiences.
ChatGPT Ads are not simply Google Ads inside a chatbot
Traditional paid search is heavily associated with keywords. An advertiser identifies a search term, bids around that query and attempts to appear when someone enters it. OpenAI's advertising model introduces a different input: conversational context. Its documentation states that ad delivery can consider the intent and context of the current conversation alongside the advertiser's landing page, creative and other information. Advertisers can also provide contextual hints describing the types of conversations in which an offer may be relevant.
Those hints are not exact-match keywords and do not guarantee placement in a particular conversation. This creates a potentially important distinction between search advertising and AI advertising. A user may never type the phrase "best accounting software for small businesses". They might instead spend several messages explaining the size of their company, current software, budget and reporting problems before asking what they should do. The commercial intent exists within the conversation rather than inside one neat keyword.