OpenAI will begin placing visual display ads alongside the images people ask ChatGPT to create, starting later this month in the U.S. with a first group of test advertisers, TechCrunch reported Monday. The company is also adding measurement and brand-safety partners so marketers can track how the ads perform.

What Happened

The new unit is image-based rather than text-based. According to 9to5Google, the ads show products through pictures, such as inspiration for how an item might be used, and appear while an image prompt is still processing. They are labeled and kept separate from the image ChatGPT generates. OpenAI says advertising does not shape the answers ChatGPT gives, a commitment it has attached to every ad product so far.

The test is limited to U.S. users for now. TechCrunch said the format is intended to reach ChatGPT's 1.2 billion weekly users once it rolls out globally, though no date for a wider launch has been given.

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Alongside the format, OpenAI widened its roster of measurement partners. Attribution firms AppsFlyer, Triple Whale, Adjust, DV Rockerbox, Northbeam, Branch, Singular, Kochava, Airbridge and Tenjin are joined by Fospha, Measured and INCRMNTAL. Haus, Measured and WorkMagic will help run geography-based experiments that compare regions where ads run against regions where they do not. DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science are working with OpenAI on pilots to evaluate brand suitability, the question of whether an ad sits next to content an advertiser would want to avoid.

Why It Matters

OpenAI introduced ads earlier this year to help pay for its free and low-cost subscription tiers, then expanded them to India in August, TechCrunch noted. Earlier tests placed ads below text replies, 9to5Google said, with grocery delivery offers shown under recipe answers as one example. Image generation is among ChatGPT's most popular uses, so putting ads there opens a much larger set of placements than text alone.

The partner list matters as much as the format. Large advertisers generally will not move meaningful budgets into a new channel without independent attribution and brand-safety checks. By plugging into tools that marketers already use for mobile apps and e-commerce, OpenAI is trying to make ChatGPT inventory easier to buy and to compare with search and social ads. 9to5Google reported that OpenAI claims early advertisers have seen lower customer acquisition costs and more new customers, figures the company has not broken out publicly.

Competitive Pressure

The launch comes shortly after Meta released Muse, a free agentic AI app that TechCrunch described as a growing competitor to ChatGPT. Ads give OpenAI a way to earn money from users who never pay, while TechCrunch suggested they may also push some casual users toward a subscription to avoid them. That tension, between monetizing free users and keeping them from switching to a rival that costs nothing, will shape how aggressively OpenAI expands ad placements.

What to Watch

The first test ads are due to appear in the U.S. before the end of October. Key questions are how prominently the visual units are displayed during image generation, which brands sign on first, and what the DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science pilots show about where ads can safely run. OpenAI has not said when the format will reach other countries, including India, where its text ads are already live.