What Are ChatGPT Ads? Everything You Need to Know

In 2024, Sam Altman called advertising a "last resort" business model for OpenAI. On February 9, 2026, his company launched what may be the most contextually sophisticated ad format in the history of digital marketing.

The reasoning window

ChatGPT advertising reaches a third state that search and social formats miss: active reasoning. The user has asked a question and is processing the answer. They are not passively consuming — they are engaged, focused, working through something.

Call this the reasoning window. It is the cognitive moment that every previous ad format missed.

The format

The current ad unit is called a chat_card. It appears below the AI's response in a visually distinct, tinted container clearly labeled "Sponsored." The card carries a headline, description, image, and URL.

OpenAI's foundational commitment is the Answer Independence principle: ads run on a separate system from the AI response. The AI generates its answer first. The sponsored card appears after. No ambiguity.

How targeting works

There are no keywords to bid on. ChatGPT's targeting system works on contextual intent matching: it reads the active conversation and matches it to ads submitted by advertisers.

Advertisers receive aggregate metrics — impressions and clicks — and nothing traceable to an individual conversation. You're bidding on topical proximity, not phrases.

What the early performance data shows

The honest version is mixed. Similarweb showed ChatGPT ads averaging 0.68% CTR overall, with the best performers at 1.57% and a peak of 5.4%. Google Search CTR averages around 6.4%, so ChatGPT looks lower on this metric.

But Criteo found that users referred by ChatGPT convert at approximately 1.5 times the rate of users arriving from other referral channels. Fewer clicks, significantly higher quality per click.