ChatGPT Ads timeline
Everything that has changed about advertising in ChatGPT, newest first: announcements, pricing, minimum spend, country launches, ad formats, tools, partners and policy.
Countries where ChatGPT Ads are available
Minimum spend to advertise in ChatGPT
2026
Multi-image ads open beta in Ads Manager
4–6 square images sharing one title and body.
26 more countries; 100,000+ advertisers
ChatGPT Ads reaches 89 countries; more than 100,000 advertisers have run campaigns.
Multi-image visual format during image generation
OpenAI rewrites its ads help article and introduces a multi-image ad format.
Asia expansion takes ChatGPT Ads past 60 countries
Seven more Asian markets including Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines.
Equativ joins as technology partner
Equativ launches Ad Studio for ChatGPT Ads.
Shopify storefront integration
ChatGPT Ads integration announced for Shopify merchants.
Sponsored Agents: first AI-native ad format
Select clients test ads that open a chat with the brand's own AI agent; Wayfair in pilot.
AI image and audio tool ads restricted
The Information reports OpenAI stopped approving ads for standalone AI image/audio tools.
Self-serve opens in India
Indian advertisers get Ads Manager access.
$1B annualised run rate in under 200 days
OpenAI cites 1B+ weekly users, 40+ countries and a $500 credit match for new advertisers.
India launch with ₹725 daily minimum
Ads reach logged-in adults on Free and Go in India; WPP and Omnicom named launch agencies, 50+ brands live.
ChatGPT ads launch in 31 European countries
Consent-first rollout including Germany, France, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands.
Ads live in UK, Mexico, Brazil, Japan and South Korea
OpenAI confirms the five-market expansion.
Product carousels, oCPC and URL macros ship
Multi-product carousel, oCPC beta for product feed campaigns and dynamic URL macros.
Product ads gain prices and star ratings
Product feed ads begin showing price and review data.
Policy update opens finance and health categories
Certain US financial-services and health categories become eligible case by case.
Active advertisers jump 46% in a week
Similarweb tracks 2,585 → 3,770 weekly active advertisers; 5,171 unique since 30 March.
UK becomes first European market
Ads go live in the United Kingdom.
CPA (conversion-optimised) bidding activated
Conversion-optimised campaigns become available in the US self-serve beta.
Self-serve minimum spend removed
The $50K minimum is dropped for self-serve; daily budgets start at $25.
Expansion plan for UK, Mexico, Brazil, Japan, South Korea
OpenAI says the pilot will reach five more markets within weeks.
Self-serve Ads Manager beta opens to US advertisers
CPC bidding, a pixel and Conversions API launch; Dentsu, Omnicom, Publicis and WPP plus Adobe, Criteo, Kargo, Pacvue and StackAdapt named partners.
Privacy policy updated for ads
OpenAI's US privacy policy discloses receipt of advertiser purchase data.
Ads extend to logged-out users
AdExchanger reports ads appearing for logged-out ChatGPT sessions.
OAI-AdsBot documented
OpenAI adds the OAI-AdsBot landing-page verification crawler to its public bot docs.
CPMs fall from $60 to as low as $25
Digiday reports buyer CPMs of $25–$35; Ad Age reports some as low as $15.
StackAdapt joins as DSP partner
Ad Age reports StackAdapt is selling ChatGPT inventory.
Self-serve Ads Manager quietly launches; minimum drops to $50K
CPC bidding appears with $3–$5 recommended bids; minimum commitment cut from $250K to $50K.
$100M annualised revenue; pilot expands
Reuters reports a $100M annualised run rate six weeks in. Pilot opens in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Former Meta executive hired to lead ad sales
Dave Dugan joins OpenAI to lead global ad solutions.
Ads Manager dashboard enters testing
A small group of partners gets an early Ads Manager.
Criteo becomes first ad tech partner
Criteo connects its advertiser base (~17,000) to the US pilot.
First independent ad sightings measured
Adthena finds ads in 0.8% of 500+ analysed prompts; Expedia, Qualcomm, Best Buy and Enterprise Mobility among confirmed advertisers.
US pilot goes live
Ads begin showing to logged-in adult Free and Go users in the US. Launch agencies include Omnicom, WPP and Dentsu; reported minimum commitment $200K–$250K.
Albertsons, Target and Williams-Sonoma confirm participation
Retailers announce they are among the first advertisers in the OpenAI ad pilot.
$60 CPM pricing reported
The Information reports a $60 CPM baseline for ChatGPT placements.
OpenAI announces ads are coming to ChatGPT
Testing planned for adult Free and Go users in the US; Plus, Pro, Business and Enterprise stay ad-free. ChatGPT Go launches at $8/month the same day.
2025
"Code red" pauses ad work
OpenAI redirects resources toward ChatGPT product quality, pausing advertising development.
OpenAI job listings signal an in-house ads platform
Job postings describe building advertising infrastructure for ChatGPT.
Related: ChatGPT Ads benchmarks · brands advertising on ChatGPT
About this dataset
What it covers
Dated milestones for advertising in ChatGPT: announcements, pilot terms, pricing and minimum-spend changes, country launches, ad formats, tools, partners and policy, from OpenAI's first ad job listings in September 2025 to the latest expansion.
How it was built
Events were extracted from news coverage, OpenAI announcements and help-center changelogs, then written by hand. Each event keeps the most authoritative source available, preferring OpenAI and trade press.
Limitations
Dates are when an event was announced or first reported, which can lag the actual rollout by days. Gradual rollouts are dated to their announcement.
Columns in chatgpt-ads-timeline.csv
- date
- Date announced or first reported (YYYY-MM-DD)
- title
- One-line summary of the change
- detail
- What changed, with figures where reported
- type
- announcement, launch, pricing, expansion, format, tooling, partners, policy, measurement, milestone
- sourceUrl / sourceDomain
- Where it was reported
Questions
When did ads launch in ChatGPT?
OpenAI announced ads on 16 January 2026 and began showing them to logged-in adult Free and Go users in the United States on 9 February 2026.
Which countries have ChatGPT ads?
As of 21 October 2026, ChatGPT Ads are available in 89 countries, including the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, 31 European countries, India, Japan, South Korea, Brazil, Mexico and much of Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and Southeast Asia.
When did ChatGPT Ads Manager launch?
A self-serve Ads Manager was tested with partners from March 2026, quietly opened to some advertisers in April, and launched as a broad US beta on 5 May 2026 with CPC bidding, a pixel and a Conversions API.
What ad formats does ChatGPT offer?
Text-and-image units below answers, product ads with prices and ratings, product carousels, multi-image ads, and Sponsored Agents, which open a conversation with the brand's own AI agent.
Analysis using this data
How to cite this data
This dataset is free to use, including commercially, under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. The one rule is attribution:
- Credit the source as “Kuldeep Paul, kuldeep.cc” wherever you use a figure, chart or table from it.
- Link to this page (https://kuldeep.cc/data/chatgpt-ads/timeline), not to the download file, so readers can check the source of every number.
- Include the date. These figures change; say “as of Oct 29, 2026” or link to the version you used.
- Mark changes. If you filter, recalculate or chart the data yourself, say so (“analysis based on data from…”).
- Cite the original source for single figures when you quote one reported number; it is linked in every row.
In running text: according to Kuldeep Paul's ChatGPT Ads timeline (kuldeep.cc). More in the methodology.
Paul, K. (2026). ChatGPT Ads timeline [Data set]. kuldeep.cc. https://kuldeep.cc/data/chatgpt-ads/timeline
Paul, Kuldeep. "ChatGPT Ads timeline." kuldeep.cc, 29 October 2026, https://kuldeep.cc/data/chatgpt-ads/timeline.
Paul, Kuldeep. 2026. "ChatGPT Ads timeline." Dataset. kuldeep.cc. Updated Oct 29, 2026. https://kuldeep.cc/data/chatgpt-ads/timeline.
@misc{paul2026timeline, author = {Paul, Kuldeep}, title = {ChatGPT Ads timeline}, year = {2026}, howpublished = {\url{https://kuldeep.cc/data/chatgpt-ads/timeline}}, note = {Dataset, CC BY 4.0, updated 2026-10-29} }
<a href="https://kuldeep.cc/data/chatgpt-ads/timeline">ChatGPT Ads timeline</a> (data: Kuldeep Paul, kuldeep.cc)