OpenAI to Launch ChatGPT Ads in February 2026: What to Know

OpenAI is hastening the process of converting its flagship chatbot into a sizable advertisement business, also testing out a model that can potentially redefine digital advertising spending in the AI interfaces.  There is a lot at stake with the company looking to finance growing computing and infrastructure costs.

Chatbot ads go live

OpenAI has already opened advertisements to its new chatbot to many advertisers, asking them to make a trial commitment of less than $1 million in several weeks, with campaigns to start at the beginning of February 2026. 

The adverts cost per view and not per click, which resembles traditional impression-powered models in the context of conversational AI.

From subscriptions to ads

This will replace the practice of ad-testing users of its free ChatGPT tier and the nearly $8 per month ChatGPT with Go plan, although it will continue to offer an ad-free experience to Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise subscribers. 

Adverts are below chatbot reactions as well as separate those of the models; OpenAI has claimed that no user discussions would be sold to advertisers.

Revenue pressure and scale

By augmenting the yearly analysis of the income to over $20 billion in 2025, OpenAI had tripled the income it had in 2024, expanding the computing potential by approximately 60 fold as 0.6 GW became 1.9 GW. However, currently its estimated 800 million weekly users only pay in a tiny 5% of them, which reinforces the strategic need to monetize attention by advertising.

CEO Sam Altman wrote on X that

A lot of people want to use a lot of AI and don’t want to pay.

positioning ads as a way to fund accessibility. The company maintains this move aligns with its mission to ensure AGI benefits all of humanity, with “user trust first” as a stated priority.

What happens next?

The openAI currently does not have a full-fledged self-service buying platform, but it is working on tools that will allow marketers to book and optimize campaigns on their own, a necessity in the event it wants to tap into mid-market budgets in large volumes. 

In case early tests will boost effective cost per thousand impressions and give advertisers a quantifiable conversion, advertising-based monetization would become a core pillar of revenue, and reshape over the next decade of online advertising expenditure as compared to search, social feeds, and retail media.

Such a shift makes OpenAI not only a supplier of artificial intelligence, but a nascent digital attention gatekeeper, who can directly compete with Google, Meta, and Amazon over ad dollars.