Advertising in ChatGPT has gone from experiment to global business in under a year. OpenAI is taking ChatGPT Ads to 26 more countries, bringing the total to 89, and says more than 100,000 advertisers have run campaigns since ads launched a little over eight months ago. For the free users who make up most of its audience, that means ads tied to what they are talking about are becoming a normal part of the product.
The new markets are mostly outside the rich countries where the format started. After Mexico and Brazil, ads are coming to 14 more Latin American countries, including Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Peru. Others span Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia, with Nigeria, South Africa, Serbia, Ukraine, Cambodia, Bangladesh and Pakistan named. Advertisers can buy through technology partners or a self-service Ads Manager. OpenAI says more than 1.2 billion people use ChatGPT each week.
The rule on who sees ads is unchanged. They appear only on the Free and Go plans; Plus, Pro and Enterprise stay ad-free. OpenAI's own example shows how the format works: someone planning meals for their first marathon narrows options over several messages and is shown an ad for a grocery delivery service. A separate post on the ad system says ChatGPT Ads passed a $1 billion annualised revenue run rate less than 200 days after launch, and that a dedicated model picks ads outside the system that writes answers.
Next on OpenAI's list are more ad formats, objectives, buying options and measurement tools, and what it calls more native ways for businesses to reach users inside ChatGPT. That phrase is worth watching. The current design keeps ads visibly separate from answers; formats woven more tightly into conversation would make the boundary harder for users to see.
For readers on a free plan, the practical question is what the ad system knows. OpenAI's technical write-up says ad sessions can remember context across turns and, for users who opt into personalised ads, draw on non-sensitive information from past conversations. That is a reasonable trade for a free service if it is clearly explained in each new market, but it is a trade, and users should check their ad settings. The speed of this rollout suggests ads are now a core revenue line for ChatGPT, which makes independent scrutiny of how they are chosen more important, not less.