What it is
On 10 September 2026, Amazon Ads and OpenAI (the company behind ChatGPT) announced a partnership: advertisers can now show ads directly inside ChatGPT conversations, set up and optimised through the familiar Amazon DSP (Demand-Side Platform, a tool for buying ads programmatically) 1. The division of labour is clear: Amazon handles campaign setup and bid optimisation, while OpenAI decides exactly where in a conversation an ad appears and who is allowed on the platform at all. The first pilot advertiser was Delta Vacations, a travel company testing vacation offers directly inside ChatGPT dialogue 1.
Technically, advertisers can upload a structured product feed, and the system automatically generates ad copy, images and prices from that catalogue, with no manual creative work per ad 2.
This is not the only way into ChatGPT advertising. OpenAI also runs its own self-serve Ads Manager, where an advertiser sets up a campaign without Amazon’s involvement at all 3. The difference: going through Amazon gives an advertiser access to Amazon’s shopper behaviour data and to the buying infrastructure it likely already uses for other channels, while OpenAI’s own dashboard offers no comparable depth of data.
Who can access it and what it costs
The Amazon-ChatGPT pilot is currently limited to advertisers in the United States. Neither company has given a timeline for expanding to other countries 2.
OpenAI’s own Ads Manager is far broader: as of early September, self-serve campaign setup is available in 52 countries, including Australia, India and 31 European countries (the European Economic Area and Switzerland) 3,4. The minimum daily budget varies by currency: for example, 15 euros a day for eurozone countries, $25 for the US, 725 Indian rupees 4. In practice, a campaign can launch with a relatively small budget — roughly 450 euros a month at the minimum.
Payment model: OpenAI initially offered only cost-per-thousand-impressions (CPM) pricing, then added cost-per-click (CPC), and now promises a view-through model that also counts views without a click 5. Ads are shown only to users on ChatGPT’s free tier and its Go tier (the basic paid subscription); users on Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Education tiers see no ads at all 3.
Self-reported figure: on 31 August 2026, OpenAI said ChatGPT’s ad business had reached a $1 billion annualised revenue run rate (a projection of yearly revenue if the current sales pace continued for twelve months) in roughly 200 days of operation 6. This is a company-reported number with no external audit behind it.
What we saw when we tried it ourselves
We at Wideworks ran test campaigns in ChatGPT Ads Manager ourselves rather than simply relaying press releases. What follows is what actually shows up in the dashboard, not theory.
Clicks are expensive, and that’s a product design issue, not a setup mistake. In the campaigns we ran and saw among peers, a click costs $10–20, and CTR (click-through rate, the share of people who clicked an ad) sits at 1–2%. The reason is simple: a person came to ChatGPT for an answer and already got it. Why would they click away? The ad sits right next to a finished answer and loses to it by design.
There is one format, and it’s cramped. An ad is a single line of text up to 48 characters and a square 512×512 pixel image. Most advertisers just drop a logo in, because nothing else fits that square. It feels like Google’s early pay-per-click advertising the year it launched: text, an image, no extensions, no video, no product cards.
Targeting is done through a prompt. There are no keywords. There are no demographic audiences. The field is called “context hints”: you describe in plain text what kinds of conversations your ad is relevant to, and the system decides whether the current conversation matches your description. It’s interesting as an idea and awkward as a tool: there’s no keyword-level reporting and no way to understand why a given ad showed up where it did.
There’s nothing here for B2B yet. Ads are shown only to users on the free and Go tiers, while Plus, Pro, Business and Enterprise users see none 3. That means business owners, marketers and executives who pay for ChatGPT on a company card drop out of the audience before the first impression. Just Global cites a survey finding that 74% of SaaS marketers are already on paid plans 9. For high-ticket B2B, that means your audience is there, but it won’t see the ad.
We’re not the only ones finding this. Longhouse, a Canadian agency testing ChatGPT Ads since April, puts it cautiously: it sees “the potential for strong visibility, but fewer immediate conversions than we would expect from a mature Search campaign.” Its conclusion: for now, this is a top-of-funnel awareness channel, not a direct-response one 10.
Our director Danielle Lurie puts it this way: the channel is interesting precisely because none of your competitors are there yet, and uninteresting to everyone else for exactly the same reason. An expensive click is forgivable if a buyer is behind it. Here, what’s behind it is someone who already has their answer.
Why not everyone is celebrating: OpenAI keeps the right to shut competitors out
On 10 September, the same day it launched the Amazon partnership, OpenAI updated its ad policy to version 1.6. The new wording gives OpenAI the right to reject or remove any advertiser whose campaign “conflicts with OpenAI’s advertising principles, business interests, or competitive position” 2. The wording is broad enough to cover rival image-generation, audio, or other AI products. In practice: the platform that controls ad placement also decides which competitors don’t get to advertise on it.
For comparison: another major player in AI search, Perplexity, dropped advertising altogether. The company began testing ads in November 2024, but in February 2026 it publicly announced it was winding the ad programme down by year’s end, citing risk to user trust: “The user starts to doubt everything,” a company representative told the Financial Times 7. Google also shows ads inside AI Overviews and AI Mode (its AI-powered search features), but as a matter of principle does not place ads directly inside its Gemini chatbot itself 8.
What to do about it
- If you don’t have a US legal entity, or a presence in one of the supported countries, and a budget for a global campaign, this channel isn’t a usable tool for you yet — it’s a signal of where the market is heading.
- If your brand targets a Western audience and has budget for international campaigns, OpenAI’s self-serve Ads Manager is technically accessible and the entry budget is low. Test with a small amount and measure awareness, not clicks: based on our experience, it’s too early to expect direct sales.
- If your client is a business, not a consumer, wait. As long as ads don’t run on paid tiers, there’s almost no B2B audience in this channel.
- Watch whether OpenAI expands its geography and formats: the first expansion to 31 European countries happened less than a year after the US pilot launched, and the pace is fast.
Sources
- ↑Amazon Ads, 10 September 2026 — Amazon Ads announces new integration to support advertising in ChatGPT
- ↑Bushletter, 11 September 2026 — Amazon ChatGPT ads launch as OpenAI bans rival advertisers
- ↑OpenAI, 31 August 2026 — ChatGPT Ads expands across Europe
- ↑Index Lab, 7 September 2026 — ChatGPT Ads Update: an Ads Manager Plugin, Looser Custom Audiences, and a Euro Minimum
- ↑Index Lab — same source as [4], payment models section
- ↑Reuters / MMM Online, 31 August–2 September 2026 — OpenAI’s ad business hits $1 billion annualized revenue run rate
- ↑Campaign Asia, 20 February 2026 — Perplexity pulls the plug on ads, citing trust concerns for AI
- ↑Techloy, 19 February 2026 — Perplexity Abandons Ads, Says Advertising Undermines User Trust in AI
- ↑Just Global — ChatGPT Ads best practices guide and B2B playbook
- ↑Longhouse — ChatGPT Ads in Canada: early strategy and findings
