OpenAI’s next ChatGPT ad format: click to chat, not to site

OpenAI wants ads in ChatGPT to open a conversation with a brand, not a browser tab.

The AI company has introduced to select clients a new type of AI-native ad specifically for its chatbot app, letting brands turn an ad click into a conversation with an AI agent rather than sending users to their websites.

The format, which Digiday has viewed via video and verified, allows advertisers to attach a branded business agent to an ad. When a user clicks the ad’s call-to-action button, which will be a message such as “Chat to us”, they are taken to a branded chat within ChatGPT, where they can interact with the brand’s AI agent.

It’s an early iteration of what OpenAI has described as AI-native advertising — specifically ads designed around the way people interact with AI assistants. The forma, moves beyond the basic ad format that OpenAI currently serves underneath ChatGPT responses to users on its free and Go plans. Instead, the new AI-native ad itself becomes an entry point into a conversation with the brand’s AI agent.

During Goldman Sachs’ Communacopia and Technology Conference in San Francisco on Sept. 8, OpenAI’s CFO Sarah Friar said the current ads under ChatGPT responses are the “basic starting point”, and added that the company is already seeing “early indications” of what a more AI-native ad format could look like.