ChatGPT Ads Are Here — What It Means for Your AI Visibility

On February 9, 2026, OpenAI started showing ads inside ChatGPT for the first time. Sponsored placements from brands like Expedia, Ford, and Adobe now appear below AI-generated answers for free-tier users in the US. This changes how businesses think about AI visibility — because for the first time, there's a paid lane sitting right next to the organic answers you've been optimising for. This guide breaks down what happened, how ChatGPT ads work, what it means for AEO strategy, and what Australian businesses should be doing now.

What Actually Happened

OpenAI launched a limited advertising beta inside ChatGPT on February 9, 2026. Ads appear for logged-in adult users in the United States on the Free and Go ($8/month) subscription tiers. Users on Plus ($20/month), Pro ($200/month), Business, Enterprise, and Education plans don't see ads.

The ads show up below ChatGPT's organic answer, clearly labelled as "Sponsored" and visually separated from the response. They're contextual — matched to the topic of your current conversation rather than built from a long-term advertising profile the way Google or Meta ads work.

Early brand advertisers include Expedia, Ford, Adobe, Target, Mrs. Meyer's, and Qualcomm, working through agency groups like WPP, Omnicom, and Dentsu. The entry barrier is steep: a $60 CPM (cost per thousand impressions) and a minimum $200,000 advertiser commitment. That's roughly three times what Meta charges and comparable to Netflix's ad tier pricing at launch.

This isn't a small experiment. ChatGPT now has over 800 million weekly active users, and the majority of them are on the free tier — which means the ad-eligible audience is enormous.

How ChatGPT Ads Work (The Technical Bits)

Understanding the mechanics matters if you're thinking about AI visibility — either as someone optimising content to be cited, or as someone considering advertising.

Ad targeting is context-based, not profile-based. ChatGPT matches ads to the topic of your current conversation. If you're researching project management tools, you might see an ad for Monday.com or Asana. If you're asking about travel, Expedia might appear. This is fundamentally different from Google Ads, which uses search history, browsing behaviour, and demographic data to build persistent advertising profiles.

Optional personalisation goes deeper. If a user enables personalised ads, ChatGPT can also factor in previous chat threads, past interactions with ads, and saved memories. But this is opt-in and users can turn it off, clear their ad data, or dismiss individual ads at any time.

Ads don't appear near sensitive topics. Health, mental health, and politics are excluded. Advertisers in regulated industries like dating, health products, financial services, and politics can't advertise on ChatGPT at all during this beta.

Advertisers never see your conversations. They receive only aggregate metrics — impression counts, click rates, and similar performance data. No chat content, no personal details, no browsing history.

There's no public self-serve ad platform yet. Right now, you can't just sign up and run ChatGPT ads the way you would with Google Ads or Meta. It's a closed beta with hand-picked enterprise brands.

Why This Matters for AEO

If you've been following our earlier posts on AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation), you know the goal is to become the source that AI platforms cite when generating answers. ChatGPT ads change the landscape in several important ways.

1. Organic and Paid Now Coexist in AI Answers

Until now, AI-generated answers were purely organic. If ChatGPT cited your website or recommended your service, it was because the model determined your content was the most relevant, authoritative, and well-structured answer available. There was no way to pay for that placement.

Now there's a sponsored section sitting directly below the organic answer. Users will see the AI's best answer and a paid recommendation in the same view. This mirrors what happened with Google Search over the past 20 years — organic results gradually shared space with ads until paid placements dominated above-the-fold real estate.

The immediate implication: if you're not appearing in the organic answer, a competitor who pays for the ad slot gets the only brand mention the user sees.

2. "Citation Dominance" Becomes Even More Valuable

The term "citation dominance" describes how often AI systems reference your content as an authoritative source. With ads now present, organic citations become the trust signal that differentiates you from paid placements.

Users already understand the difference between organic search results and Google Ads. They'll learn to distinguish organic AI answers from sponsored content in ChatGPT too. Being cited in the organic answer — not the ad — carries more credibility. This makes your AEO work more valuable, not less.

3. The Trust Question

OpenAI has stated clearly that ads don't influence the answers ChatGPT gives. The organic response is generated independently, and the ad is selected separately based on conversation context.

But perception matters. As Anthropic pointed out in their own TV advertising (poking fun at ChatGPT's ad rollout), users may start questioning whether AI recommendations are genuinely neutral once ads appear in the same interface. This trust dynamic makes it even more important for businesses to build authority through content that AI systems want to cite organically — because that organic citation carries an implicit endorsement that a paid ad never will.

4. Zero-Click Gets More Complicated

One of the biggest shifts in search over the past two years has been the rise of zero-click results — where users get their answer directly from AI without visiting any website. With ads in the mix, there's now a financial incentive for OpenAI to keep users within ChatGPT longer (more conversations = more ad impressions). This could accelerate the zero-click trend rather than reverse it.

For businesses, this reinforces the AEO playbook: if users aren't clicking through, your brand needs to be in the answer, not waiting for a click that never comes.

What This Means for Australian Businesses

ChatGPT ads are US-only for now. But if you're an Australian business, here's why you should be paying attention today rather than waiting.

Ads Will Expand Beyond the US

Every major ad platform follows the same pattern: US launch, then expansion to English-speaking markets (UK, Canada, Australia), then globally. When ChatGPT ads reach Australia, the businesses that have already built strong AI visibility through AEO will have a head start. Those that haven't will face a choice: pay for the ad slot, or be invisible.

Your AEO Foundation Is Your Competitive Moat

Right now, while ads aren't available in Australia, the only way to appear in ChatGPT's responses for Australian queries is through organic citation. This is the window to build your authority. Every piece of well-structured, answer-first content you publish now is an investment in organic visibility that becomes harder to replicate once competitors can simply buy their way in.

The $200K Minimum Won't Last Forever

The current $200,000 minimum commitment makes ChatGPT ads inaccessible for most Australian SMBs. But this will change. Google Ads started as a premium product too. Self-serve platforms always follow. When the barrier drops, early organic authority will still be the differentiator — because users trust organic citations more than paid placements.

What You Should Be Doing Now

Whether or not you plan to advertise on ChatGPT in the future, the arrival of ads makes your AEO strategy more urgent, not less. Here's a practical checklist.

Keep Building Answer-First Content

Structure your pages so AI systems can easily extract and cite your answers. Lead with a direct answer in the first paragraph. Use clear headings that match the questions your audience asks. Include FAQs with concise, authoritative responses.

This is the foundation that makes your content citable in organic AI answers — the section users trust most.

Strengthen Your Schema Markup

Structured data (JSON-LD) helps AI platforms understand what your content is about, who wrote it, and why it's trustworthy. Prioritise FAQPage, Article, Organization, and LocalBusiness schema on your key pages. If you haven't implemented schema yet, our schema markup guide walks through the process step by step.

Monitor Your AI Visibility

Start testing how AI platforms reference your brand. Ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews the questions your customers ask. Are you being cited? Are competitors? This manual audit gives you a baseline to measure improvement against.

Build Brand Mentions Across Trusted Sources

Research consistently shows that AI systems prioritise brands that are mentioned across multiple trusted sources — not just on your own website. Contribute to industry publications, get listed in relevant directories, encourage customer reviews on Google, and participate in forums and communities where your expertise is relevant.

Don't Panic About Ads — Lean Into Organic Authority

The single most valuable position in AI search is the organic answer, not the ad slot below it. Ads can buy visibility, but they can't buy the trust that comes with being the source the AI chose to cite on merit. That's what AEO delivers, and it's what your competitors can't shortcut by writing a cheque.

The Bigger Picture

ChatGPT ads represent a structural shift in how AI platforms monetise attention. The pattern is familiar — it's exactly what happened with Google Search, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Free access subsidised by advertising, with organic visibility gradually sharing space with paid placements.

The businesses that built strong SEO foundations before Google Ads saturated the search results were the ones best positioned to compete. The same logic applies now. The businesses that build strong AEO foundations before AI advertising becomes widespread will have a structural advantage that's difficult and expensive to replicate.

The window is open. The tools are available. And the playbook — answer-first content, schema markup, structured authority — is the same one that works for both organic AI visibility and traditional SEO.

Start now, while organic is still the only game in town.