ChatGPT Ads: Everything You Need to Know as a Marketer or User (Launched Feb 2026)

ChatGPT crossed 300 million weekly active users in early 2026. That number alone makes it one of the most visited destinations on the internet. What makes it different from any other ad platform is the nature of how people use it. Users do not browse ChatGPT passively. They type specific questions, describe problems they need solved, and ask for product recommendations. That makes every session a signal of intent.

Google built a trillion-dollar business on search intent. Meta built one on behavioral targeting. ChatGPT ads combine both: you get the intent signal from what someone just asked, plus behavioral context from their chat history and saved memories. That is a targeting combination that has not existed before in advertising.

OpenAI began the pilot quietly on February 9, 2026. Ads currently show only to logged-in adult users in the United States on the Free and Go ($8/month) tiers. Users on Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Education plans see no ads at all. That means the addressable audience for this pilot is the tens of millions of people using the free version of ChatGPT.

OpenAI stated clearly in its announcement: "Ads do not influence the answers you get from ChatGPT. Your chats stay private." Advertisers receive only aggregate performance data. They cannot see individual conversations or personal information.

As of February 2026, there are two confirmed ad formats running inside ChatGPT. Both appear below the AI's response, clearly labeled as sponsored, and are visually separated from the organic answer.

Format 1: Shopping Product Carousel

This is the format most likely to run for e-commerce brands. When a user asks a question related to food, products, or shopping, a sponsored product card appears beneath the answer. The card shows the brand logo, a "Sponsored" label, the product name, price, stock status, and estimated delivery or prep time.

In the first live screenshot circulating from February 9, a brand called Heirloom Groceries appeared with a product called "La Mesa Roja Enchilada Kit" priced at $14.99 with a "25-35 minutes" preparation note. The card is scrollable, meaning multiple products can appear side by side.

OpenAI has confirmed partnerships with Etsy and Shopify for this format. Users can either check out directly inside ChatGPT via the shopping integration or click through to the brand's own website. This makes it a full purchase funnel, not just an awareness placement.

Format 2: Conversational Banner with "Ask ChatGPT About This Ad"

The second format is more experimental and potentially far more powerful for lead generation and B2B. It is a display-style card that includes a call to action and an "Ask ChatGPT about this ad" button.

When a user clicks that button, they enter a conversation powered by instructions the advertiser has pre-loaded, similar to how a Custom GPT works. The system prompt found inside the ChatGPT code describes it this way: "The user is referring to an ad shown to them. Your response must be about the ad shown since the user explicitly asked about them. You must reply to the user query using information about the ads which is data."

In practice, this means an advertiser can upload product information, FAQs, and service details, and ChatGPT will answer user questions on behalf of the brand. If someone asks "tell me more about this" or "what sizes do you have", ChatGPT pulls the answer from the advertiser's uploaded data. The conversation stays private from the advertiser, but the user gets a relevant, brand-informed answer.

This format is the reason marketers focused on lead generation and B2B are paying attention. A user who asks ChatGPT to help them find accounting software for their business, sees a sponsored result, and then has a real back-and-forth with that product's GPT is much further along the buying journey than someone who clicked a Google ad.

ChatGPT ad targeting operates on three layers that work together. Each layer can be adjusted by the user through the Ads Controls panel.

Layer 1: Current conversation context. The most basic targeting signal. If you ask ChatGPT about planning a trip to Japan, travel-related ads may appear. This targeting happens even with personalization turned off.

Layer 2: Past chat history. If you have previously discussed running a small business, home renovation, or cooking, those themes can influence which ads appear across future sessions. This is the layer that makes ChatGPT more powerful than keyword-based search targeting. Someone who has spent weeks discussing their startup plans is a different user than someone who mentioned business once.

Layer 3: ChatGPT Memory. If you have Memory enabled (where ChatGPT remembers facts about you across conversations), that saved information also influences ad selection. Your saved preferences, location context, and noted interests all feed into which ads appear.

OpenAI has confirmed that ads are excluded from: users under 18, Temporary Chats (where no history is saved), logged-out sessions, image generation conversations, and any sessions flagged as sensitive topics including health, mental health, and politics.

The user data used for targeting includes: current and past conversation topics, ad engagement history, general location, and language. What advertisers never receive: your name, email, precise location, IP address, health data, or political views. Advertisers see aggregate metrics only, views and clicks, not individual profiles.

OpenAI has built a reasonably complete set of user controls into the initial launch. To access them, go to Settings inside ChatGPT and look for "Ad controls". You will find four main options:

Ads History. A timestamped log of every ad you have viewed or interacted with. The first live screenshots showed ads from Power Sporting Goods, Heirloom Groceries, and ArcRun Shoes appearing at different times within the same day. You can clear this history at any time.

Interests. As you interact with ads (by clicking, dismissing, or asking questions), ChatGPT builds a profile of your interests. You can view and edit this list.

Personalize ads toggle. When on (the default), your past and current chats plus Memory influence which ads appear. When you turn this off, ads are targeted only on the current conversation topic, with no historical context.

Past chats and memory toggle. A separate control specifically for whether your saved Memory and chat history influence ad selection, independent of current-session targeting.

Delete ads data. A one-tap option to clear your full ad history and interests profile. This does not affect your regular ChatGPT conversations or settings.

Users also have per-ad controls on every sponsored card: Hide this ad, See more about this ad, Ask ChatGPT about the ad, and Report the ad. These controls are visible from the three-dot menu on each ad unit.

If you want no ads at all, upgrading to ChatGPT Plus ($20/month) removes all advertising from your experience.

The pilot is not open to all advertisers. OpenAI selected a small group of agencies and brands to work with during the initial testing phase. The minimum spend to participate is $200,000, which immediately limits this to large enterprises and agencies.

According to Ad Week reporting, three of the largest media agencies in the world have joined the pilot: Omnicom Media Group, WPP, and Dentsu. Omnicom confirmed in a statement that more than 30 of its clients have secured placements in the OpenAI ads pilot.

The clients of these agencies include some of the largest advertisers on earth: Apple, PepsiCo, McDonald's, Volkswagen, Unilever, Ford, Google, Dow, HSBC, Toyota, Canon, and American Express. Not all of these brands are necessarily running ads today, but they are within the agencies that have pilot access.

For small and medium businesses, there is no self-serve ads manager yet. OpenAI has not announced a timeline for when a public platform will open. The current phase is explicitly a pilot designed to generate feedback on formats, measurement, and the overall advertiser experience before a wider rollout later in 2026.

If you want to be notified when the ChatGPT Ads Manager opens for general advertisers, you can register your interest at openai.com/advertisers.

The reported pricing for the ChatGPT ads pilot is $60 CPM (cost per thousand impressions). For context, Meta's average CPM across its platforms runs around $14-20. Google Search ads do not use a CPM model but comparable placements run $8-15 CPM equivalent. At $60 CPM, ChatGPT is pricing itself at roughly three times the cost of Meta advertising.

The $200,000 minimum spend means a brand entering the pilot at minimum price would receive approximately 3.3 million impressions. For an enterprise brand with a large budget, that is not an unreasonable test. For most businesses, it is completely out of reach in 2026.

Marketing analysts who have reviewed the pricing argue the $60 CPM may actually represent good value given the targeting quality. A $60 CPM ad shown to someone who has been discussing buying a specific product type in their recent chat history is fundamentally different from a $20 CPM social feed impression shown to someone with a broadly matching demographic profile.

The pricing is expected to decrease as OpenAI scales the platform and introduces auction-based buying similar to Google Ads. The current high floor pricing is a deliberate strategy to work with a small number of premium advertisers who can provide quality feedback while generating meaningful revenue for OpenAI.

OpenAI reported $300 million in monthly revenue in early 2026, primarily from subscriptions. The ad business is intended to add a revenue layer that funds continued free access for the hundreds of millions of users who cannot or will not pay for a subscription.

If you cannot get into the pilot yet, there are concrete steps you can take today that will position you for success when the platform opens to all advertisers.

1. Register your advertiser interest. Go to openai.com/advertisers and submit your details. OpenAI is building a waitlist for when the broader platform launches.

2. Optimize for organic ChatGPT mentions now. The ads appear below organic ChatGPT responses. If your brand already appears organically when someone asks ChatGPT about your product category, a sponsored placement below that answer gives you two visible positions on the same page. This is the same dynamic that made owning both paid and organic Google results so valuable in the early search era. Start now by ensuring your website is crawlable, your product information is accurate on Shopify or your e-commerce platform (given the Shopify partnership), and your brand appears in ChatGPT's answers when you test relevant queries.

3. Prepare your product data feed. The shopping carousel format pulls product data including prices, stock status, and images. Having a clean, up-to-date product feed on Shopify or Etsy puts you ahead of competitors who will scramble to set this up when access opens.

4. Think about your conversational ad script. The "Ask ChatGPT about this ad" format requires advertisers to prepare a knowledge base the AI will use to answer user questions. Start drafting what that knowledge base would contain: your top 20 FAQs, product specifications, pricing, use cases, and objection handling. Brands that prepare this content now will deploy faster when access opens.

5. Watch the measurement story. OpenAI has not yet published a detailed measurement framework. As a marketer, push for clarity on attribution before spending. The CPM model measures impressions, but the conversational ad format may develop engagement metrics (conversation starts, questions asked, links clicked) that are more meaningful indicators of actual interest.