ChatGPT Ads now run in over 60 countries, but only Free and Go users see them
ChatGPT Ads have started rolling out across seven more markets in Asia, which takes the product past 60 countries, and OpenAI says ads are shown only to people on the Free and Go plans. Plus, Pro and Enterprise subscriptions stay ad-free.
OpenAI introduced Sponsored Agents and new Ads Manager tools on September 16, a week before this expansion. Image: OpenAI
The seven markets, announced on September 23, are Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and Taiwan. They follow Asia Pacific launches in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea and India.
OpenAI puts the business at $1 billion of run rate
At the end of August the company said ChatGPT Ads had reached $1 billion in annualised revenue run rate in less than 200 days after launch, and it now counts tens of thousands of advertisers. Run rate annualises recent trading, so it is a projection of what a year would look like if nothing changed, not money booked over a year.
Advertisers reach the product through OpenAI's own Ads Solutions team, through agency partners including dentsu, Havas Media, Omnicom Media, Publicis Groupe and WPP, and through a self-service Ads Manager for eligible businesses. Dave Dugan, OpenAI's Vice President and Head of Global Ads Solutions, pitches the expansion at "businesses of every size, from global brands looking for new ways to grow to entrepreneurs and startups running their first campaign".
OpenAI says advertisers never see your conversations
The stated policy is that OpenAI keeps conversations private from advertisers and never sells customer data, that ads are "always clearly labeled and separate from ChatGPT's answers", and that "advertising does not influence the answers ChatGPT provides". Ad personalisation is user-controllable, and the Privacy Center OpenAI opened to five plans on September 22 carries the data and export settings that go with it.
Those are statements of policy from the company selling the ads, not an audited finding. Go is a paid plan and paying for it does not switch the ads off, which leaves Plus, Pro and Enterprise as the only way out of the format.
OpenAI's own framing is that ads "help democratize access to intelligence by supporting free and low-cost access to ChatGPT", which is its argument for running them on the free tier and the cheap paid one and nowhere else.
The formats are still changing
OpenAI is separately testing ads that open a chat with a brand's own AI agent, a test that turns an ad unit into a conversation rather than a link and that is running with selected advertisers in the US. It says it will keep expanding into new markets over the next few months and building new formats, optimisation tools and measurement.
None of those new markets is named, and nothing in the announcement points to ads reaching Europe, the UK, Plus or Pro. For a reader on the free tier anywhere in the 60-odd countries, the practical position is unchanged: the ads are the price of the plan.
