OpenAI Is Testing "Exclusion" Ad Settings for ChatGPT

OpenAI is testing an "exclusion targeting" feature for its ChatGPT advertising system with a small group of advertisers, company spokesperson Taya Christianson confirmed to Adweek. Details remain scarce, but according to OpenAI, the feature will give advertisers more control over the context they don't want their ads to appear alongside. The product is still in development, and the company declined to comment on a specific launch timeline.

The news came as welcome relief to some professionals who buy ads on ChatGPT. Adweek spoke with executives from four ad-buying operations and one AI-visibility platform, all of whom complained about the difficulty of explaining their target audience to ChatGPT, the limited ability to control where their ads do (or don't) appear, and the near-total lack of visibility into where their ads actually ran.

The ad-placement control issue is another reminder that the advertising market on AI platforms is still taking shape: unlike traditional digital ad systems, brand-safety tools on conversational platforms like ChatGPT remain underdeveloped. If the feature rolls out broadly, it could let brands shield their ads from unsavory or mismatched contexts — and become a key factor drawing more marketers into ChatGPT's ad system.