Advertising in ChatGPT represents an emerging opportunity within the broader shift toward AI-driven discovery and decision-making. While the environment offers strong contextual intent and brand-safe conditions, it currently lacks the measurement maturity, transparency, and scale required to function as a core media channel for advertisers. We recommend approaching ChatGPT advertising with intentional experimentation rather than broad adoption, ensuring clear objectives, guardrails, and learning agendas.
Where ChatGPT Advertising Stands Today
ChatGPT plays an early role in the discovery and consideration portion of the customer journey, functioning as a consultative search and planning environment rather than a social or display platform. Users engage with high intent, seeking guidance, recommendations, and solutions. This creates opportunities for brand messaging to add value within key decision-making moments.
That said, its advertising ecosystem is still emerging. Buying tools, measurement, and standardized formats continue to evolve, requiring advertisers to balance innovation with disciplined risk management.
Early indicators suggest initial value will be strongest in commerce and planning-driven categories, particularly food and travel, with potential in home improvement and services where contextual recommendations align naturally with user behavior. Advertising access remains limited to testing phases with no self-serve option currently available. We are actively monitoring developments, have submitted for early access, and are working closely with Microsoft Ads to evaluate future activation opportunities for clients.
Why Advertisers Should Consider ChatGPT
- High-intent environment: Users arrive with explicit questions, enabling strong contextual alignment and a shift in online search behavior to favor AI responses. Recent studies show that 1 in 5 (21.6%) of ChatGPT interactions now demonstrate some degree of commercial intent, with 7.1% showing high purchase intent.
- Brand-safe intentions: Current guidance under the Beta ad opportunity stresses that ads will not display alongside sensitive categories, such as health, mental health, politics, or towards users predicted to be under the age of 18, but third-party brand safety integrations are not currently available for validation.
- Native, non-disruptive formats: Ads can be integrated as helpful recommendations rather than forced placements.
- Upper- and mid-funnel strength: Particularly effective for research, planning, and consideration stages, but will likely influence online conversion and even store visitation. Recent studies show 47% of consumers have used artificial intelligence to help make a purchase decision.
- Early vertical opportunity: Food, travel, and commerce-related categories may benefit first.
- First-mover learning: Early tests provide insights before the space becomes saturated.
Why Advertisers Should Be Cautious
- Limited transparency and control: Dynamic responses reduce the predictability of placement and messaging, and early signs show that manual targeting is not yet available to advertisers.
- Nonverifiable brand safety: While this may eventually change once third-party brand safety partners (like DoubleVerify) are able to tag ad impressions through the platform, there is no current roadmap for this type of integration.
- Measurement and attribution gaps: Performance tracking and benchmarking are not yet standardized.
- Underdeveloped buying infrastructure: Fewer formats and optimization levers than established platforms, meaning less control in driving performance efficiencies.
- User trust sensitivity: Over-commercialization risks undermining credibility in an advisory context.
- Scale limitations: ChatGPT currently does not support mass reach or high-frequency campaigns. While estimates suggest 70–77MM monthly US users on the free and lower-tier plans, overall audience size and true reach remain unverified.
Where To Start
- As of late January 2026, the advertising Beta is closed to the public, but select advertisers may be eligible to participate through application and a commitment to spend “less than $1MM over a several-week trial period, with ads launching in early February,” according to Reuters.
- Interested brands can submit an application directly through OpenAI’s Partner Interest Intake form to get started, but eligibility isn’t guaranteed.
How Brands Should Approach ChatGPT Advertising
ChatGPT advertising is poised to complement traditional search programs, while also building upon intent data and ABM-driven targeting. However, at this stage, ChatGPT advertising should be approached as a test and learn opportunity, not a default line item. Investment should come from experimental or innovation budgets, supported by clearly defined success metrics, and prioritized for brands and categories where contextual utility and planning behavior play a meaningful role in the consumer journey.
Scale and performance objectives should continue to be anchored in established platforms, while advertisers closely monitor the evolution of AI-driven advertising environments. Recent reporting shows that while Google has confirmed there are no ads currently running inside the Gemini app and no plans to introduce them in the near term, this does not mean AI-driven advertising isn’t already happening within Google’s ecosystem.
Google has explicitly stated that ads are eligible to appear in AI Overviews, similar to Bing’s Microsoft Copilot and Snapchat’s My AI (which both utilize Microsoft’s technology). The company also continues to test ad placements in AI Mode. Both of these operate within Google’s AI-enhanced search experience rather than inside the Gemini chat interface. These placements extend commercial opportunity into AI-powered search contexts where users are already exploring content and solutions.
Google is also actively testing commerce-focused ad formats within AI responses. These early executions closely resemble what we are seeing in ChatGPT, with product recommendations embedded directly into AI-generated outputs. While access is currently concentrated among large national retailers such as Walmart, the trajectory signals expanding performance-driven opportunities for retail advertisers over time.
Bottom Line
ChatGPT shows meaningful promise, but broad adoption will require more time. A disciplined, insight-led testing approach allows advertisers to explore their potential thoughtfully, without overextending budgets or introducing unnecessary brand risk. While it may not replace search or commerce media entirely, AI search products like ChatGPT will continue to reshape online behavior. Brands that test this early will help define the blueprint for a larger industry shift in the future.
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