OpenAI started showing ads inside ChatGPT.
Not in a sidebar. Not in a banner. Directly below the AI's answers — the same place users have been reading organic recommendations for the past three years.
The ad era of AI search has officially started.
Who sees ads
Ads are currently live for Free and Go tier users in the United States.
Go is OpenAI's entry-level paid option at $8/month — still includes ads.
If you're on Plus ($20/month), Pro ($200/month), Business, or Enterprise, you won't see any. OpenAI has been explicit: premium subscribers stay ad-free.
That leaves the majority of ChatGPT's 800 million weekly active users in the ad-supported tier.
What they look like
There are two confirmed formats.
Product cards
When a user asks about food, products, or shopping, a sponsored card appears beneath the answer.
It shows the brand logo, a "Sponsored" label, the product name, price, stock status, and estimated delivery or prep time. Think of it as a Google Shopping card, but embedded in an AI answer.
Sponsored text recommendations
The second format is text-based — a labeled recommendation that reads like part of the answer but sits visually separated below it.
First-wave advertisers include Target, Ford, Adobe, Expedia, and Qualcomm.
The aggressive part: first-message placement
Ads can appear after your very first message — before any conversation context has been established.
That's more aggressive than traditional ad platforms, which typically wait for intent signals before showing ads.
Users can dismiss individual ads and adjust personalization settings, but there is no opt-out on free tiers.
The price tag
OpenAI is charging $60 CPM — $60 per 1,000 impressions.
That's 3× what Meta charges for similar placements, and on par with what Netflix asked for at its ad-tier launch.
The minimum advertiser commitment is $200,000. This is not a self-serve platform — it's a closed beta for large-budget brands only.
Platform | CPM | Min. Commitment |
|---|---|---|
ChatGPT | ~$60 | $200,000 |
Meta (Facebook/IG) | ~$20 | No minimum |
Google Search | variable (CPC) | No minimum |
Netflix (2022 launch) | ~$65 | $10M annually |
Advertisers receive only high-level performance data: impressions and clicks. No granular audience analytics — at least for now.
What OpenAI says about data and neutrality
Two public commitments cover how ads work.
User data won't be sold. Targeting is contextual — based on the topic of the current conversation, not personal data profiles.
Sponsored content won't influence organic answers. What ChatGPT recommends organically stays separate from what advertisers pay for.
Sam Altman was direct about why ads exist at all: keeping the free tier alive at scale requires revenue. At 800 million weekly users, the compute bill is not small.
What this means for your AI visibility
Organic recommendations now share the screen with paid placements. The answer ChatGPT generates about your category is still there — but it sits above a sponsored card from whoever paid $60 CPM to be there.
That changes the calculus for every brand thinking about AI search.
Organic mentions are more valuable, not less
Paid placements are labeled. Users trust organic mentions precisely because they're not paid for.
Brands that appear organically in ChatGPT answers hold a credibility advantage that $60 CPM can't replicate. But only if you know you're there.
Most brands still have no visibility into whether ChatGPT mentions them at all, how often, or in what context. That gap is now more expensive to ignore.
Who should pay attention
Advertisers with big budgets: the $200k minimum means this is for established brands. If you have the budget, early access to 800M users at premium intent is a real opportunity.
Everyone else: organic AI mentions are your only play. Knowing your AI share of voice — how often your brand appears in ChatGPT answers across the prompts your buyers use — is now a baseline metric, not a nice-to-have.
Airefs tracks your organic visibility inside ChatGPT across hundreds of prompts, shows you where competitors appear, and surfaces the community discussions that drive AI recommendations — starting at $24/month.
Citations
[1] OpenAI — Testing ads in ChatGPT
[2] Adweek — OpenAI Confirms $200,000 Minimum Commitment for ChatGPT Ads
[3] Search Engine Land — ChatGPT ads collapse the wall between SEO and paid media