OpenAI brings ads to ChatGPT — starting in India, with 50 brands

As it prepares for an IPO, OpenAI has begun introducing ads to ChatGPT's free and "Go" tiers. According to TechCrunch, the company is starting in India, partnering with major ad agencies WPP and Omnicom to run ads for 50 brands — reaching roughly 100 million active users in the country.

"With ChatGPT Ads, businesses of any size can introduce themselves at the exact point where a user's decision-making process begins — in the most relevant context possible," said Dave Dugan, OpenAI's head of global advertising solutions. Ads will appear beneath ChatGPT's responses.

The company stresses that ads have no influence on ChatGPT's answers. Advertisers won't have access to users' conversations, chat history, memory data, or personal details — they'll only see aggregate statistics like impressions and clicks. Users, for their part, will be able to manage ad personalization and clear the data collected for that purpose.

The move is a significant signal of how monetization models for AI platforms are taking shape. If the experiment succeeds, marketers could soon have an entirely new advertising channel on their hands — contextual ads inside an AI chat interface, which will require a fresh set of rules and capabilities distinct from search and social advertising.