OpenAI to test visual ad format in ChatGPT

OpenAI is testing a new visual ad format in ChatGPT built around images. In an official blog post on October 5 (local time), OpenAI said the ads will first appear during image generation in ChatGPT, with testing starting later this month in the US with an initial group of advertisers. In the same announcement, OpenAI said it is expanding its ad measurement tools and partners and preparing brand suitability evaluation pilots with outside firms. The announcement opens one more ad surface while trying to answer, all at once, the questions advertisers ask before moving budget: how to prove impact, and which conversations an ad will appear next to.

OpenAI said ChatGPT reaches 1.2 billion people each week, calling itself the world's largest AI-native consumer platform. The company described advertising as a strength of its business that lets it serve a far larger market than subscriptions alone, and as a way to bring the benefits of AI to more people. METAL has previously reported on OpenAI testing sponsored agents in ChatGPT ads and the expansion of ChatGPT ads to Southeast Asia and Taiwan.

The new visual ad format shows product inspiration, product usage and the experiences a product makes possible through images. OpenAI said the format is meant to help people discover a new brand, understand what makes an offering distinctive and decide what to buy. Ads will be clearly labeled and kept separate from the image the user is creating. OpenAI added that, as with its other ad formats, advertising does not influence the answers ChatGPT provides.

The bigger change is in measurement. Under a philosophy of supporting both in-house and partner-led measurement, OpenAI added integrations with Hightouch, Tealium and LiveRamp so advertisers can more easily send conversion data from their existing systems to ChatGPT Ads. It named ten partners supporting Conversions API, reporting and click attribution, including AppsFlyer, Triple Whale, Adjust, DV Rockerbox, Northbeam, Branch, Singular, Kochava, Airbridge and Tenjin. Fospha, Measured and INCRMNTAL were listed as full-funnel and advanced measurement partners.

OpenAI itself said its work on incrementality measurement, which separates out purchases that would have happened without an ad, is still in its early stages. The company is partnering with Haus, Measured and WorkMagic to explore geo-based experiments that compare ad exposure across regions, aiming to show the causal impact of ChatGPT Ads.

Early partner figures were also released. According to DV Rockerbox, WeightWatchers' attributed cost per acquisition on ChatGPT Ads was 15.3% lower than its blended paid-search benchmark. WorkMagic reported a statistically significant lift for wellness brand Dose, with 67% of incremental purchases coming from net-new customers. Triple Whale found that 93% of Portland Leather's visitors from ChatGPT Ads were new. In the announcement METAL reviewed, each of these figures is attributed to the respective measurement partner, and OpenAI did not publish an overall average of its own.

OpenAI also addressed where ads appear. Its placement guardrails assess whether a conversation is appropriate for advertising, keeping ads out of emotionally vulnerable or sensitive contexts, while automated review, human oversight and ongoing monitoring catch policy violations. For brand-specific placement requirements, a Negative Phrases feature that excludes conversations containing certain expressions is now available to qualifying advertisers. OpenAI is also developing brand suitability evaluation pilots with DoubleVerify (DV) and Integral Ad Science (IAS), in which the two firms assess how OpenAI's safety standards are applied in a controlled testing environment without accessing real user conversations.

"As advertising expands into AI-native environments, marketers need confidence that brand safety protections are durable, consistent, and built to operate at scale," said Lidiane Jones, CEO of IAS. Mark Zagorski, CEO of DoubleVerify, said "ChatGPT is creating a fundamentally different advertising environment, where context is defined by the conversation itself rather than a page or video," adding that "as advertising in these environments scales, delivering ads next to conversations that align with advertisers' suitability goals becomes essential."

Seen through a content marketer's eyes, the weight of this announcement lies less in the new ad surface than in measurement. Ad budgets move when impact can be verified on existing dashboards, and instead of asking advertisers to build new ones, OpenAI plugged ChatGPT Ads into more than a dozen attribution and customer data tools they already use. Attaching ads to the creative moment of image generation rests on the same calculation. OpenAI said these features are consistent with its ads principles that answers stay independent, conversations stay private and users remain in control of their experience, and that it will keep evolving its ad platform with new formats and capabilities. From later this month, when testing begins, whether those principles hold in the ad slot next to an image becomes something both advertisers and users will be checking.