As OpenAI gears up to launch ChatGPT ads, marketers try to keep up
By Krystal Scanlon • January 20, 2026 •
Ivy Liu
Just as marketers were beginning to sketch out playbooks for turning chatbots into brand building machines, OpenAI made it clear the honeymoon was over. The company confirmed that advertising will start rolling out in ChatGPT in the U.S. over the coming weeks.
That doesn’t mean marketers need to toss out everything they’ve learned about showing up organically in conversations. Those early experiments are likely to become the scaffolding for what comes next. The shift is more practical than existential: the next phase arrives with rate cards and media plans attached.
“Our approach to paid ads will be informed by our GEO expertise, which we already apply to help clients structure content that is clear, authoritative and machine-readable, so AI systems can accurately understand brands and surface them in relevant conversation,” said Paula Hijosa, AI and performance lead at Space & Time.
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.
“The native experience will be conversational,” said Dept’s global evp of strategy Isabel Perry. “It would be extremely weird if the brands don’t support conversation.”
If that premise holds, the coming tests will be instructive. OpenAI announced that ads would be “clearly labeled and separated from the organic answer,” while users will have the option to indicate if they want to see more or less of them in the future. The platform also made a point to add that ads won’t be shown to users under 18, and they aren’t eligible to appear next to sensitive or regulated topics such as health, mental health or politics. An example of this early iteration that was shared was an embedded sponsored post for a grocer retailer, featuring products readily available to purchase.
“It’s a mindset issue for me,” said Chris Pearce, managing director of search and social agency Greenpark. “ChatGPT Ads will reward brands that already have strong AI trust, category authority, and AI-ready narratives. Just like SEO and PPC work well together when considered holistically, the duality of organic LLM visibility and paid ads will have to be planned and executed as one harmonious approach. One must enhance the other or your brand simply won’t exist as far as ChatGPT is concerned.”
Which is why so much of the current scramble inside agencies is about preparing marketers for questions they have never had to consider. Once ads arrive in ChatGPT, will brands be bidding to participate in AI conversions, competing for their own agents to answer questions and jockeying to fulfill services directly inside the interface. That is a very different game for banners, search ads and social posts, and it will require a new set of instincts to match.
What’s more, the learning curve won’t stop there. Instead, the future will blend advertising, transactions and actual service delivery.
As Perry explained: “Advertising won’t stop at display or bidding at impressions. No, it will encompass commerce and, ultimately, a service layer too.”
OpenAI hinted at this in its announcement, noting that conversational interfaces open the door to experiences beyond static messages and links. Soon, the company said, a user might see an ad and immediately ask the question needed to make a purchase decision — all without leaving the conversation.
“For marketers, the key issue is less about specific formats in the short term and more about whether conversational interfaces can support long-term brand building alongside performance outcomes,” said Jon Mew, CEO at IAB U.K. “That will depend on how these environments balance user trust, transparency and creativity, and whether advertising is positioned as a value add to the experience rather than a distraction from it.”
So far marketers have treated AI like a new kind of search engine. Over the past two years, marketing teams have launched what they call generative engine optimization pilots, testing prompts and trying to influence how models recommend their products. That work matters but it’s no longer enough. If anything, it’s the baseline for marketers getting their head around a larger shift in advertising.
An AI assistant is not a newsfeed or a results page. It is perceived as an advisor. If a chatbot offers a confident recommendation, users assume the answer is impartial. Introducing paid influence into that interaction risks undermining the trust that makes the experience useful in the first place. Which is why so much of the early work has gone into understanding the questions that underpin that dynamic. How are LLMs portraying their models today? Why do those models favor certain messages or competitors? Which problems can be solved organically through better content and distribution, and where might placements eventually play a complementary role.
“The real question for 2026 isn’t ‘how do we advertise in AI?’, but ‘why would an AI recommend us at all?’ said Buttermilk’s global head of brand marketing Lucy Robertson. “Brands that are repeatedly referenced by trusted creators, cited in authoritative media, and show up coherently across culture are far more likely to be surfaced in AI-generated responses than brands optimized purely for search.”
