UK to get ChatGPT ads imminently as OpenAI expands pilot to other territories
OpenAI is expanding its ChatGPT ads pilot to the UK “in the coming weeks”.
Ads will be served to both free and ChatGPT Go (its “low-cost” $ 8-per-month subscription tier) users. Ads are currently placed at the bottom of answers in ChatGPT “when there’s a relevant sponsored product or service based on your current conversation”. Brand categories surfaced include retail and travel.
“We’re excited to begin expanding the ChatGPT ads pilot into additional regions following strong interest from businesses looking to reach users in a more conversational, intent-driven environment,” said Dave Dugan, OpenAI’s head of global solutions.
He continued: “As we expand thoughtfully, we’re focused on learning what works best for users and advertisers in each region while staying grounded in the principles that matter most to us: answer independence, privacy and user control.”
Ads are “clearly labelled” and “separated from the organic answer”. To preserve user trust, OpenAI claims paid ads “do not influence the answers ChatGPT gives” to users, and the company has committed to “never sell your data to advertisers”. Users have also given some controls over their ad experience, such as the ability to turn off personalisation and clear the data used to serve ads.
OpenAI’s current ad placement policy is to “allow ads to be placed near chats that are safe, appropriate, and consistent with user trust and brand safety”, though it’s not clear how and to what extent OpenAI is capable of guaranteeing such measures.
The company claims to disallow ads for adult content, alcohol and tobacco, gambling, graphic sexual or violent content, recreational drugs, and politics. It also says it restricts ads for medical, legal and financial advice in most circumstances.
OpenAI also says it will not serve ads to users that are registered or “predicted” to be under the age of 18, and will not serve ads to users in “sensitive contexts”, which they describe as “involving personal, high-stakes, or emotionally vulnerable situations”.
The AI giant has been testing ads in the US since February, with initial expansion occurring in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Apart from the UK, the pilot is also set to extend to Brazil, Japan, South Korea and Mexico.
Clients have so far included brands working with major global agency groups Publicis, WPP, Omnicom, and dentsu.
OpenAI has made several adaptations during the ongoing pilot, including this week introducing a self-serve Ads Manager to allow advertisers of all sizes to sign up and purchase ads directly. The company has also introduced cost-per-click (CPC) bidding on top of the extant cost-per-mille impressions (CPM) model. As Digiday reported, ChatGPT’s CPMs dropped from $60 at launch to as low as $25 by April as the company adjusted to advertiser demand.
OpenAI is also developing “more robust measurement” to provide advertisers with performance data. This includes through the launch of its Conversions API and “pixel-based measurement”.
It has further partnered with other tech companies including Adobe, Criteo, Pacvue and StackAdapt to allow advertisers to use third-parties to support campaign budgeting, bidding and ad creative.
Advertisers have expressed interest in the pilot to The Media Leader. Sarah Healy, deputy head of media investment at People’s Postcode Lottery, said in January that ads on ChatGPT “present a new opportunity to reach audiences who are becoming increasingly difficult to engage with through traditional search platforms.”
On a panel at last week’s Future of Brands conference in London, Publicis’ head of AI operations Marcos Angelides, Heineken’s global media and data director Olya Dyachuk, and Havas Media Group chief data and product officer Laura Kell likewise indicated they were curious to see how OpenAI’s ad model develops, agreeing that ultimately the value for advertisers will depend on the data OpenAI is able to deliver, to what extent it can provide audience insights, and whether it is sufficiently transparent in reporting campaign performance.
OpenAI has been squeezed by competitors, including Google’s Gemini in AI search and Anthropic, which has become popular in the enterprise market via products like Claude Code.
As The Wall Street Journal reported last month, OpenAI missed its own targets for revenue and user growth in Q1, with chief financial officer Sarah Friar privately warning that the company may fail to pay for future computing contracts if revenue growth doesn’t accelerate.
The company has thus turned to advertising to begin driving revenue. As the Financial Times reported in November, its partners have reportedly amassed $100bn in debt to help fund its growth.
CEO Sam Altman told investors that OpenAI would require an additional $1.4tn in infrastructure spending to fund its compute, though he subsequently walked this figure back to $600bn.
OpenAI expects advertising revenue to reach about $2.4bn this year and quadruple to nearly $11bn next year, according to The Information. However, within the first six weeks of its pilot, it recorded just $100m in annualised revenue. Hence, rolling the pilot out to more markets should increase its opportunity to drive further revenue.
The company has optimistically projected that its ad business will generate $100bn in revenue by 2030.
As OpenAI seeks to rapidly scale its advertising business amid such pressures, it also faces a potentially fraught legal and regulatory environment amid increased pressure on governments to address online harms. Several suicides and violent crimes have been linked to chatbot use, and OpenAI has been sued by several plaintiffs alleging that ChatGPT has encouraged people to kill themselves.
Speaking at this week’s Professional Publishers’ Association (PPA) Festival event in London, Jake Dubbins, co-founder of the Conscious Advertising Network, warned that OpenAI’s embrace of advertising is likely to create the same business incentives that have caused addiction and harm on social media platforms.
He asked: “Does it mean that the purpose of ChatGPT is then to keep you on the platform for longer in order to monetise more of your time and attention away from your human consciousness?”