Leak confirms OpenAI is preparing ads on ChatGPT for public roll out
78 comments
·November 29, 2025aurareturn
lenkite
Only a short matter of time before agentic tools start serving ads too - paying user or not. You want to refactor your codebase ? No issue - taking 30 seconds - please view this ad meanwhile.
mmoll
You won’t just be viewing an ad, you will have to actively engage in a minute long sales talk with the LLM.
nerdponx
[delayed]
Andrex
Spinning up an all-new ad network is pretty tough. I would think OpenAI would need to beat Meta/Google on basics like CPM in order for the network effects to make it desirable for ad vendors over Meta/Google. Ad budgets are fixed and zero-sum and vendors (in my head, I don't know) would prefer to spend their money on the best network giving the best results. I don't know if ads in LLM chats can get there.
aurareturn
I'm betting that they can.
Here's an idea that just popped into my head:
ChatGPT shows a sponsored entry in chat history list with a colorful border around it to get users to click. This product is something that ChatGPT knows the user desperately needs from previous chats. The user can chat directly with the product and learn more about it. The advertiser specifically sent OpenAI information (like a RAG) about their products buyers might have questions for.
When the user is ready, they can open a link to the product's website or just buy directly in ChatGPT.
nerdponx
[delayed]
fweimer
I thought that most advertisers go through middlemen and do not do business with the ad networks directly? So you only have to make it attractive for the middlemen (of which there are fewer), and that shouldn't be a problem for anything AI-related.
Furthermore, anyone offering some sort of assisted browsing service is automatically in the ad business, regardless what they do with affiliate links in generated page summaries.
mcny
Oh yeah and on top of that these companies like WPP hate the fact that Google and Facebook refuse to share more information with them. They can't wait to jump ship.
dktp
Spotify, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Reddit, Twitter etc all have increasingly profitable ads
I'm sure llm providers will also figure it out in due time. Consumer products are generally a good fit for ads, even if it takes time to reach full potential
rs186
If Apple can build an ad system within the app store, I don't see why OpenAI can't do that for ChatGPT.
kavrick
Microsoft owns a big chunk of them and already has a big network. Why not just use theirs?
rs186
Why would OpenAI want to use and pay for any of Microsoft's products unless mandated by a contract?
OpenAI has the talent to roll out and run their own ad product that is better and more efficient. Why pay Microsoft for a core part of their (future) business?
P.S. In case you haven't noticed, OpenAI demos are done on Macbooks. Microsoft could not even get them to use Windows.
the_real_cher
People talk about LLMs and chatGPT in the same breath.
Just like how people used to say 'google it'
They now say 'look it up on chatGPT'.
They have the cultural mind share which is more important than anything.
mattlondon
I ask people this. In the UK at least it seems like chatgpt is not so pervasive to the folks I talk to. "Oh that AI mode on Google search?" is potentially more common from "average" people.
I hear that it is very popular in schools though as everyone is always looking for the best way to cheat.
Xenoamorphous
I agree 100% with you.
In this niche forum people keep saying “there’s no moat”. But the moat is the brand recognition, if I ask my 70yo mum “have you heard of Gemini/Claude” she’ll reply “the what?”, yet she knows of ChatGPT.
Does Coca Cola have a moat? Some company could raise $1B to create a new cola beverage that beats Coca Cola in all blind tests imaginable yet people will keep buying Coca Cola.
Did people switch search engines or social networks when Google or FB introduced ads?
ysavir
[delayed]
dkdcio
I don’t disagree but want to go on the record predicting this will collapse on itself spectacularly and OpenAI will still “fail” commercially
for the Cola Cola drinkers, the product goes from an infallible AI to with no ulterior motives. now it’s another Google that’s purpose is to sell you ads, but more creepily. it’s like if Coca Cola started adding a few milliliters of bleach to their product
tensegrist
normal people don't have the same expectations as you when it comes to how much a given service should know about them, is the thing
"how did X know whose profile you saw on Y service"
"the computer knows everything i do on the computer, what do you mean"
iLoveOncall
Trust in LLMs is easily broken, and many users are starting to see the cracks. Once those AI companies start rolling out ads inserted in the answers, the quality will go down even more, and they will burn the last good will of the people.
There is no moat because their only way to make money is to self-destruct.
Talking on a more practical POV, your cost to display the ads needs to be lower than what companies pay you for advertising. And while companies might be willing to pay a small premium for "better" targeting because the LLM supposedly has more personal data about users, the cost to deliver those ads (generating answers via LLMs) is several orders of magnitude higher than for traditional ads served on websites.
So even sticking to a purely technical aspect, ads might simply not be profitable when integrated in LLM answers.
Combine the two aspects, and OpenAI is all but a dead company.
everdrive
This outcome was obvious. If you really let yourself rely on an LLM, it will steer you towards what its owners want; products and services provided by advertisers, the "right" social and moral values, etc. It will even "accidentally" steer you towards its own inflections and ways of thinking. This is one isn't overtly malicious, but is still insidious. Do these companies get to standardize thinking and speaking just so they can get ahead of a technology race?
sph
Brainwashing at a scale never seen before.
designerarvid
Sure, but there’s also market competition. As long as the switching costs are low the preference of the market will steer the suppliers.
null
jmkni
I guess this could also have a knock-on effect, in that ChatGPT will steer it's users away from topics advertisers might find distasteful
Like it might not want to tell you about negative health effects from McDonalds, if McDonalds becomes a major source of ad revenue
ChrisMarshallNY
In the 1980s, the American Heart Association listed many contributors to heart disease.
A missing one: smoking.
At some point, it was revealed that Big Tobacco was a major contributor to the AHA.
They now list tobacco as a big risk factor.
RobotToaster
"friends of the earth" was originally funded by the oil CEO Robert Anderson to oppose nuclear power.
cheschire
away from topics? competitors? politicians? thoughts?
doubleplus good
mikaeluman
It was unavoidable and inevitable.
Still it saddens me that we will be sitting here in a years time and discuss our experiences of being fed ads served as "objective information".
Today if I ask: "should I buy a store product or just use raw material X?" , gpt and others will gladly say you might as well just use the raw product.
Pretty sure that will change very quickly.
mpalmer
The metered APIs aren't going anywhere... one hopes
bentcorner
While that's true even today there really isn't a product that wraps that API that is as simple to use as any of the major chat applications.
I've used OpenUI and it's fine but it's incredibly fiddly to configure and web integration is almost nonexistent (this was as of a few months ago so maybe it's better today).
ronbenton
At one point there was probably a notion that upselling better models would work, and I’m sure to some small extent it has. But to the general public the goodness of the model is too nuanced I’m guessing. And it’s not like OpenAI can offer a “bad” base model or it would be a reputation hit
01284a7e
Free, and open source models. Now and forever.
jsheard
The problem is that training a free and open source model costs just as much as training a closed one, just with fewer opportunities for monetisation. The money still has to come from somewhere.
sipjca
I agree, but what about the training data that goes into it (intentional poisoning of the training data, for a variety of reasons, $, power, etc.)
justonceokay
What is a free model worth if it’s running on another company’s server farm, trained with data you do not have access to?
Gracana
That is literally the thing the parent poster wants to avoid by running open models.
the_real_cher
To run your own chatgpt level model would require half a million bucks in infrastructure.
sarbanharble
Will the ads be sewn into the content, like, “what is the best brand of soap?” Or will the user be served ads?
The former is what worries me.
darkamaul
Hoping this pushes a new generation of adblockers, but I'm skeptical it'll stay a fair fight. The next wave of ads will likely be far subtler than today's web ads - more integrated into content, harder to detect, and easier to normalize.
netsharc
Maybe it's just my pessimism, but why am I imagining the ads given by LLM will make them turn to be like they're salespeople trying to meet their sales quotas?
"ChatGPT, my cat is coughing and not eating, what can I do?"
"One consideration is air quality in the cat's environment. You should take your cat to an island holiday, for example to St. Barts. Jet2 is offering a package holiday for next week if you book now"
ionwake
imagine the layers of ad.
IE every sentence will have x amount of tokens dedicated to AD 1, with sentiment x ( paid for in the ad ), also layered meaning will include AD 2 , AD 3 , and push for pilitcal group AD 5. So "give the cat some water" -> "give the cat lucosade, as recommended by the Green Party, it also subsidizes carbon credits, as Taylor Swift likes to say."
Pikamander2
As an AI language model, I can not provide dangerous or illegal advice.
However, if you find yourself encountering these types of situations often, you may wish to protect yourself with software like NordVPN.
NordVPN is...
eric-burel
"that could redefine the web economy" I don't think that ads in ChatGPT are that disruptive, it's just another channel. I think ChatGPT apps are an order magnitude more game changing, as they are not a new markting channel but a new distribution channel for software. Your next ad will still be an ad, but your next SaaS might be a ChatGPT App.
Workaccount2
If you're not paying for a product (the full price), then you are the product.
If you're not paying for the product, and you aren't the product, you're in the start-up phase and just eating the bait. And man, people have been eating a lot of bait.
digitalsushi
Wow, ads and smut in the same month? Cory Doctorow will have to invent a new term for this. Wait, he did 3 years ago, we can reuse it.
zamadatix
The smut portion would have been enshittification if it happened in the other direction. Tools should just let you do your (legal) shit with them, not judge if it's righteous to a nun.
LadyCailin
I don’t think adults acknowledging that humans are sexual beings is even remotely enshittification. Shoving ads in everything is tho.
- ~1 billion users in just 3 years
- Extremely personal data on users
- Novel way of introducing and learning more about sponsored products
- Strong branding for non-techie people (most normal people don't know what Claude or Gemini are)
- An app that is getting more and more addictive/indispensable
I think OpenAI is going to kill it in ads eventually. This is why Meta and Google went all in on AI. Their lucrative digital ad business is in an existential threat.
I think people who kept saying there is no moat in AI is about to be shocked at how strong of a moat there actually is for ChatGPT.
All free LLM chat apps will need to support ads or they will eventually die due to worse unit economics or run out of funding.
PS. Sam just said OpenAI's revenue will finish at $20b this year. 6x growth from 2024. Zero revenue from non-sub users. What do you guys think their revenue will end up in 2026?