As OpenAI advances with trialling an advertising model on its flagship chatbot, retail and grocery ads are dominating. A month into the trial, app analytics provider Sensor Tower revealed that 44% of ad impressions served on ChatGPT fell under these categories. Retailers involved in the testing include Target, Sephora, and Wayfair, among others.
Ads have officially come to ChatGPT. OpenAI has started testing out paid advertisements on both its free model and lowest-priced tier, which costs $8 a month. (Users that opt to pay $20 or more per month or use ChatGPT through a work account will never see ads, the company says.) The pilot program includes major retailers, such as Target and Williams Sonoma, technology companies such as Adobe, and well-known consumer brands such as Audible, Ford, Mazda, Mrs. Meyers, HelloFresh, and Factor.
OpenAI has begun asking a small group of advertisers to commit a minimum spend of USD$200,000 (£148,000) as it tests advertising on ChatGPT, the company has confirmed. The initiative is being run as a tightly managed beta, with participation limited to a select number of brands. According to an OpenAI spokesperson, the restricted rollout is intentional and designed to assess which types of advertising deliver meaningful value to users within the ChatGPT experience.
The logic is straightforward. The same user intent brands have been trying to capture organically inside ChatGPT will inevitably be monetized widely. All the unglamorous groundwork of the past two years - cleaner data, consistent messaging and learning how the models interpret it all - becomes the rehearsal for a paid campaign in a chat-first internet. First marketers learn how to recommend organically. Then they figure out when it makes sense to buy their way into the conversation.
