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 with 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 format 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.

“This is all before we’ve really launched a format that feels truly endemic to AI,” she said.

While it’s unclear just how many advertisers have had access to this format, Wayfair is trialing it, per a screenshot of the ad viewed by Digiday, and confirmed by the brand.

“Yes, Wayfair is participating in OpenAI’s Sponsored Agent pilot to explore how conversational commerce can help customers make more informed, confident decisions,” said Morgan Brown, director of paid media at Wayfair. “We’re always testing new technologies that can improve the shopping experience, and this pilot will help inform our approach to AI-native commerce. We’re testing at limited scale with guardrails around product accuracy, transparency and service handoffs.”

The format could give advertisers another way to interact with consumers beyond simply sending them to their websites.

“This is similar to Meta Ads that send people to WhatsApp,” said Farhad Divecha, group CEO of Accuracast. “It’s a way to open lines of communication with prospects, and then advertisers can qualify the ones who need to talk to customer services and sales reps or be directed to the correct page to make a purchase.”

Seven months in, ads in ChatGPT are still promising, still unproven

The launch comes as advertisers are still determining the value of ChatGPT as an ad platform. Until now, each time Digiday has checked in with advertisers that are participating in ChatGPT ads, the consensus has been it’s promising, but still early to make any firm conclusions about its role on a media plan. Until that changes, and a better return can be achieved on ChatGPT ads, investment in the platform will remain relatively lean, within incremental or experimental budgets.

“It makes sense that OpenAI is opening up their ad products,” said Zeno Group’s svp paid media Shamsul Chowdhury. “While they’ve been a hot new platform for advertisers, the ROI just hasn’t been there for the most part.”

The new format could offer OpenAI a way to address that problem by giving advertisers something more akin to an in-platform shopping experience. But it also raises a question, particularly for retailers, over whether there’s a benefit to keeping a potential customer inside ChatGPT rather than sending them to their own site?

“Retailers want to get user data through their owned sites, but they know the consumer journey can happen anywhere and they need to vie for those eyeballs and dollars,” Chowdhury said.

The timing also plays a part as the holiday shopping season approaches, and advertisers ready themselves for the most important quarter of the year. With many facing rising costs and flat returns on platforms such as Google and Meta, Chowdhury said OpenAI could become an alternative channel for some of that spending, provided the agent experience is seamless.

“That’s the big ‘if’,” he said.

Every major ad platform has a signature format that came to define it and, in turn, shapes how advertising worked during that era. Google had the text link ad that turned search into an auction. Facebook had the News Feed ad that made social scrolling monetizable. Tiktok had the in-feed video that blurred content and commercial. OpenAI is now searching for its own version of that, a format native to conversation rather than scroll or search, and this agent-to-agent chat may be an early attempt at it.

OpenAI did not respond to Digiday’s request for comment.