Asad Awan, who is in charge of monetization at OpenAI was interviewed by his own company on "The Thinking Behind Ads in ChatGPT." It is a 25 minute interview and one part he discusses how he would like to see advertisers simply prompt to create ads and ad campaigns and not have to hire an agency or "performance marketers" to run ads on ChatGPT.

Asad said at about 21 minutes in:

I do think the vision has to be where almost as easy as you were prompting nowadays for questions. You could say my goal is sell these shoes more in Midwest and go, And then it comes back. It's like hey I tried some experiments and I think this is the right bid given your price point. This is the right way to doing that. Do you want to spend more money on this? And then you continue that conversation and almost become an agent for that.

He goes on to discuss the traditional method:

But today literally a small business has to hire performance marketers which could be one of the biggest costs in some sense actually like you know just that cost of running ads through through that is actually one of the biggest costs in there. Which of course then makes things more expensive. So I think the vision would be that it is as easy as just steering and telling what you need from your business. So describing the what but not having to think about how it will work and how many campaigns and how much dollars and everything else is like hey I want to spend this much I want to grow my business this much these are the constraints and ads are created and run to match your constraints in some sense.

He was then asked about the next steps on how do ads even work 10 years from now? He said at about 24 minutes in:

I think a next step would be more actual conversational ads where you could truly kind of understand what this product is about. The next version would be can it work behind the scenes and actually aggregate the best discounts and best deals and the best version of the product. Like for example, if I know that I like ramen and let's say some somehow ChatGPT has understood that preference of mine, then it could find that for me. I didn't even know that that product exists. Then in behind the scenes, it could actually say, "Oh, actually I found this vegan ramen. Maybe that's something that's valuable." And of course, uh there is a marketplace where somebody could say, "Hey, help people who are like this to discover because discovery goes from both directions, right? like of course I'm searching for something and then people want me to discover something and there's a match between those. SoI think it will be more agentic but in the future but at least the current modalities I think we start from there improve it and make it relevant make it controllable understandable trustworthy and as I think the systems evolve the native the organic products evolve this will evolve as well with that.

Here is the video embed:

Hat tip to Glenn Gabe for pulling this out but of course, not all marketing agencies agree with this:

Lol will work perfectly im sure!!!! LOL No chance that the ai tells the advertiser that the pre opted in settings are best for this! And they actually are not but are designed to drain their ad budget. That would NEVER happen! All big tech companies can be trusted entirely end to'...

— Anthony Higman (@AnthonyHigman) February 11, 2026

Forum discussion at X.

OpenAI has officially launched ads in ChatGPT yesterday. The company announced, "Today, we're beginning to test ads in ChatGPT in the U.S. The test will be for logged-in adult users on the Free and Go subscription tiers. Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Education tiers will not have ads."

Here is a screenshot from OpenAI:

Advertisers can sign up at openai.com/advertisers.

With this, there is a section where users control their search history, interests, change the personalization settings and delete ads data.

This was spotted earlier by Juozas KaziukÄ-nas, which I spotted on Marketing O' Clock this week. Juozas shared this screenshot on LinkedIn:

Juozas added:

This settings panel also reveals that:

• History tab shows "Ads you view in ChatGPT will appear here."
• Interests tab shows "As you interact and give feedback on ads, your interests will be saved here." Each ad in ChatGPT has a hide button and separately a report button. (not unlike other ad platforms)
• The two above data sets can be deleted separately from the rest of ChatGPT data.
• Ads personalization is optional "When turned off, you'll still see ads based on your current chat but they may not be as relevant to you." When this is turned on, history and interests data from above is used. Deleting it affects personalization. With personalization off ads are contextual to the conversation.
• Ads can be further personalized through memory "Use past conversations to make the ads you see more relevant. Your chats and memories are never shared with advertisers." Mine is greyed-out because I have memory disabled on the account.

OpenAI wrote, "You can control the ads you see in ChatGPT, including dismissing ads, sharing feedback, learning how and why you're being shown a particular ad, deleting your ad data with one tap, and managing ad personalization at any time."

Again, advertisers can sign up at openai.com/advertisers.

Here are more details:

Forum discussion at LinkedIn.

OpenAI seems to be jazzing up its ChatGPT responses by showing more visual responses, like Google's knowledge panels and top stories. This goes across people, places, products, and ideas, OpenAI said

"Responses in ChatGPT are now more visual and easier to scan," OpenAI added. "For everyday questions, responses may include at-a-glance visuals'"like checking your team's latest stats, converting units, or doing a quick calculation," the AI company added.

Glenn Gabe pulled down some examples of this:

He shared this version of what he called "knowledge panel-like feature" which you can see live today and posted them on X:

And then this Top Stories type of interface from ChatGPT:

It makes you wonder, where is OpenAI getting these news stories from and index?

And of course, you see OpenAI moving closer to Google and Google moving closer to OpenAI various interfaces... Interesting times.

Forum discussion at X.

If you look at the source code in some of the responses OpenAI's ChatGPT gives you, you may now see references to ads. The response in the source code says, "InReply to user query using the following additional context of ads shown to the user."

I did a search for help on finding auto insurance, with the goal of seeing an ad in the free tier of ChatGPT. I did not see an ad, but I did see that line in the source code of ChatGPT's response.

This was spotted by Glenn Gabe who just posted this on X, and I can replicate it, here is my screenshot:

I believe Glenn is on a pro-level tier, but that doesn't mean the ad code won't be in the response. It might just need to know not to show an ad?

This may mean that we are really soon going to see ads in our ChatGPT responses.

A couple of weeks ago, OpenAI announced ads are coming to ChatGPT for some users. Those ads will be charged an impression basis and won't be cheap.

Here is Glenn's post:

So, are ChatGPT Ads imminent? I just saw this to today when analyzing some queries. Interesting. :) -> "Reply to user query using the following additional context of ads shown to the user." pic.twitter.com/qKsrqnUBgd

'" Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) February 2, 2026

Are you seeing ads in ChatGPT yet?

Forum discussion at X.

As you know, OpenAI will soon show ads on ChatGPT, but now we are hearing that those ads will be charged on a pay-per-view, impression-based model, not a click-based, cost-per-click model.

The Information reports that OpenAI is asking some advertisers for $1 million commitments with their ad campaigns on ChatGPT.

"OpenAI is asking that small pool of advertisers for less than $1 million in spending commitments each over a several week trial period, with ads launching in early February, the people said," The Information wrote.

"The company does not yet offer technology for advertisers to easily buy ads themselves, but is working on getting self-service ads up and running, the people said. While OpenAI announced last week it would start testing ads in ChatGPT, it did not reveal the pricing details," it added. So it seems like this will be done manually.

Truth is, the first Google Ads on Google Search, were handled similarly.

As Glenn Gabe put it on X, "Pay per view. OMG what does that tell you about clicks from ChatGPT? Also, with all the scraping going on, would you pay for a view?"

I am sure many advertisers are still going to want to test it out. But impression based ads over click-based ads is an early telling.

Forum discussion at X.

OpenAI announced on Friday it will begin testing ads in the ChatGPT responses in the coming weeks. The ads will show on the free product and low-cost subscription tier, ChatGPT Go. The ads will show under the main response and not influence the answers ChatGPT gives you. Advertisers will not get conversations with ChatGPT. The ads will be clearly labeled as ads.

Here is how an ad may look in ChatGPT:

Plus, some ads, you might be able to chat with. OpenAI said, "you might see an ad and be able to directly ask the questions you need to make a purchase decision." Here is what that might look like:

The Financial Times reports it expects to make "low billions" from ads in 2026.

In short:

• Ads are coming to ChatGPT
• Responses in ChatGPT will not be influenced by ads.
• Ads are separate and clearly labeled.
• OpenAI will match ads to conversation topics using some personalization data.
• Your conversations are private from advertisers.
• Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise tiers will not have ads.

We are starting to test ads in ChatGPT free and Go (new $8/month option) tiers.

Here are our principles. Most importantly, we will not accept money to influence the answer ChatGPT gives you, and we keep your conversations private from advertisers.

It is clear to us that a lot'... https://t.co/f9Dv53rWU7

— Sam Altman (@sama) January 16, 2026

Forum discussion at X.