OpenAI have been pumping out the ads ads for free-tier ChatGPT users in the US for over a month now, and early testing suggests they’re more frequent and more targeted than many users might expect.
How often they appear. In a test of 500 questions across the mobile app, roughly one in five questions in a new conversation thread triggered an ad at the bottom of ChatGPT’s response — always as a website link button, always tailored to the topic of the question.
What kind of ads appeared. The range was broad — dog food, hotel bookings, productivity software, cruise vacations, streaming services, corporate credit cards, AI coding tools, and basketball tickets, among others. Travel questions triggered ads most frequently; asking for help planning a trip to Palm Springs surfaced a Booking.com ad that automatically searched for hotels in that location.
The “poaching” dynamic. When a question mentioned a brand by name — DoorDash or Netflix, for example — the ad that appeared was sometimes for a direct competitor. Marketing professors describe this as a longtime staple of digital advertising now migrating to AI.
Why we care. ChatGPT ads are appearing roughly once every five questions on the free tier, with targeting based on conversation topic and memory — making it an emerging channel advertisers should monitor, particularly given the “poaching” dynamic that allows brands to appear against competitor mentions, a tactic already proven in search advertising.
What OpenAI says.
- Ads do not influence ChatGPT’s answers
- Full conversation content is not shared with advertisers
- Ad targeting is based on question topic, past chats, and whatever ChatGPT has stored in memory about the user
- Early signals show low ad dismissal rates and no impact on consumer trust metrics
The irony. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman called ads “a last resort” in 2024, saying the mix of “ads plus AI is sort of uniquely unsettling.” The company is now expanding the rollout to Canada, Australia, and New Zealand after its US pilot.
The big picture. Neither Google’s Gemini nor Anthropic’s Claude currently features sponsored ad buttons in outputs — though Google has said it’s not ruling it out. OpenAI is essentially pioneering a new ad format, and how it handles the balance between monetisation and user trust will shape whether AI advertising becomes a lasting industry or a cautionary tale.
Spotted. Digital marketer Glenn Gabe, shared on X how the ads are showing on mobile and confirmed it isn’t showing on Plus accounts.
The bottom line. For advertisers, ChatGPT’s ad inventory is becoming real, even though there is still a long way to go to prove ROI. However the platform’s credibility depends entirely on whether users feel the ads are eroding the experience. That’s a tension worth watching closely as the rollout scales.
Dig deeper. I Asked ChatGPT 500 Questions. Here Are the Ads I Saw Most Often – Wired (subscription needed).
Search Engine Land is owned by Semrush. We remain committed to providing high-quality coverage of marketing topics. Unless otherwise noted, this page’s content was written by either an employee or a paid contractor of Semrush Inc.
