OpenAI Pitches AI-Native ChatGPT Ads That Open a Brand Chat, Not a Website

OpenAI has begun offering select clients a new kind of AI-native ad built specifically for its chatbot app, according to a Digiday report published on September 14. Instead of turning an ad click into a browser tab, the format turns it into a conversation with a brand's AI agent. Digiday says it viewed the format via video and verified it.

Advertisers can attach a branded business agent to an ad. When a user taps the call-to-action button — a message such as "Chat to us" — they land in a branded chat inside ChatGPT and interact with that brand's agent, rather than being sent to the advertiser's website.

The format is an early iteration of what OpenAI has described as AI-native advertising: ads designed around the way people interact with AI assistants. It goes beyond the basic units OpenAI currently serves beneath ChatGPT responses for users on its free and Go plans, because the ad itself becomes the entry point into a conversation.

Speaking at Goldman Sachs' Communacopia and Technology Conference in San Francisco on September 8, OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar described those response ads as "the basic starting point" and said the company is already seeing "early indications" of what a more AI-native format could look like. "This is all before we've really launched a format that feels truly endemic to AI," she said.

It is unclear how many advertisers have been given access. A screenshot of the ad viewed by Digiday shows Wayfair trialing it. Farhad Divecha, group CEO of Accuracast, compared it to Meta ads that send people to WhatsApp: a way to open lines of communication with prospects, then qualify the ones who need customer service or sales — or route them to the page where they can buy.

For OpenAI, the format could also address a practical problem. Seven months into ads in ChatGPT, participating advertisers still describe the platform as promising but unproven, and most say it is too early to judge its role in a media plan. Until returns improve, spending stays inside incremental or experimental budgets. Shamsul Chowdhury, svp of paid media at Zeno Group, put it bluntly: ChatGPT has been a hot new platform for advertisers, but "the ROI just hasn't been there for the most part."

The new format raises a trade-off of its own, particularly for retailers: is there a benefit to keeping a potential customer inside ChatGPT rather than sending them to their own site? Chowdhury said retailers want user data through their owned properties, but they also know the consumer journey can happen anywhere and that they have to vie for those eyeballs and dollars.

Timing matters too. With the holiday shopping season approaching and advertisers facing rising costs and flat returns on platforms such as Google and Meta, OpenAI could become an alternative channel for some of that spending — provided the agent experience is seamless. OpenAI did not respond to Digiday's request for comment.