OpenAI Expands Advertising Platform to 31 Countries
OpenAI has announced that it is expanding ChatGPT ads to more than 30 countries – including Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Austria – following a highly publicised debate around the use of advertising on chatbot platforms.
The company first started testing ads in ChatGPT with a pilot in the US six months ago, having since expanded to eight additional markets. This latest expansion is the company’s biggest to date.
Initially, advertisers will be able to access ChatGPT Ads through the OpenAI Ads Solutions team agency partners and technology partners, before launching self-service access through Ads Manager at an undisclosed point later in the summer.
According to OpenAI, the company is looking to “democratise” AI access through the launch of advertising – with ads supporting the company’s free and “Go” plans.
Its Plus, Pro and Enterprise subscriptions will remain ad-free.
Advertising expands to new markets
OpenAI is introducing advertising across new markets as AI makes fundamental changes to the way consumers discover new products.
In the 2025 holiday season, traffic from AI platforms to retail sites grew almost 700%, according to Adobe – with shoppers arriving from these platforms having a conversion rate of 31%.
This, OpenAI says, is because “people come to ChatGPT with goals – ranging from choosing software for their business to figuring out how to start a new hobby.
Through ChatGPT ads, the company says it is giving marketers an opportunity to reach this high intent audience across the customer journey – helping to spur product discovery, shape decisions and make purchases.
However, the company has stressed that advertising will not influence responses from ChatGPT. Ads shown in the platform, the company says, will always be clearly labelled and separate from answers, and advertising will not influence the answers provided by ChatGPT.
This is in line with its advertising principles, which cover answer independence, conversation privacy from advertisers and choice and control – with users having the option to turn off personalisation – among others.
Who are OpenAI's key partners?
OpenAI partners with several key organisations, including:
Microsoft: A key cloud and AI infrastructure partner, providing Azure computing power and multibillion-dollar strategic investments to scale its GPT models.
Apple: Integrates ChatGPT directly into iOS, iPadOS and macOS via Siri and Writing Tools for system-wide AI capabilities.
Enterprise Consulting: Collaborates with Bain, Accenture, McKinsey, and PwC through the OpenAI Partner Network to deploy custom AI enterprise solutions.
- 31 Expansion Markets: OpenAI is scaling ChatGPT ads across 31 countries – including key European territories such as Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Austria.
- Six-Month Pilot Window: The global rollout comes six months after OpenAI launched its initial ad testing program in the US market, which previously expanded into eight secondary test markets.
- 700% AI Retail Traffic Surge: Adobe Digital Insights recorded an approximate 700% year-over-year increase in consumer web traffic driven from AI platforms to retail sites during the 2025 holiday season.
- 31% E-Commerce Conversion Rate: Consumers navigating to merchant sites directly from conversational AI prompts achieved a 31% purchase conversion rate due to high search intent.
- Four Commercials: Competitor Anthropic launched a campaign featuring four Super Bowl ads in 2026 to emphasise its pledge to keep the Claude AI platform 100% ad-free.
OpenAI and Anthropic: The AI ads debate
The decision to include advertising on chatbot platforms has been of significant debate as of late – particularly between OpenAI and Anthropic.
Anthropic has taken the stance that Claude will remain completely ad-free, with the company previously saying that ads would be “incompatible” with the goals of the platform.
This came to a head at the 2026 Super Bowl, when Anthropic released four ads doubling down on this position, with each ad ending with the tagline ‘Ads are coming to AI. But not to Claude’.
"We also feel strongly that we need to bring AI to billions of people who can't pay for subscriptions.”
Sam Altman, CEO and Founder of OpenAI, criticised these ads on X following their release.
“I guess it's on brand for Anthropic doublespeak to use a deceptive ad to critique theoretical deceptive ads that aren't real, but a Super Bowl ad is not where I would expect it,” he wrote,
“Anthropic serves an expensive product to rich people. We are glad they do that and we are doing that too, but we also feel strongly that we need to bring AI to billions of people who can't pay for subscriptions.”
