OpenAI’s artwork for the ChatGPT Ads expansion. Image: OpenAI
OpenAI is switching on ads in ChatGPT in 26 more countries, from Argentina and Peru to Nigeria, Pakistan and Ukraine, taking the total to 89. The company announced the expansion on Wednesday and said more than 100,000 advertisers have now run campaigns on ChatGPT in the eight months since ads launched.
That is a big jump from the “tens of thousands” it was quoting only weeks ago, and it comes as OpenAI works to show it can make money from the hundreds of millions of people who use ChatGPT for free.
Which 26 countries are getting ChatGPT ads
OpenAI says 14 of the new markets are in Latin America, following earlier launches in Mexico and Brazil, and names Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Peru among them. It also names Nigeria, South Africa, Serbia, Ukraine, Cambodia, Bangladesh and Pakistan.
Its Ads Manager availability page now lists 89 countries. Set against the 63 it listed in late September, the 26 additions are:
- Latin America and the Caribbean: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico and Uruguay
- Africa: Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa
- Europe and Central Asia: Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Serbia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan
- South and Southeast Asia: Bangladesh, Cambodia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka
Strictly, that page lists where a business must be based to buy ads itself, but it matches OpenAI’s count of 89. The new countries join the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, India, Turkey, much of the Middle East and North Africa, Southeast Asia, Taiwan and the 31 European countries added in August (the 27 EU members plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland). China and Russia, where ChatGPT isn’t officially offered, are not on the list.
Who sees the ads, and who doesn’t
Ads appear only on the free tier and on Go, OpenAI’s low-cost plan. Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Edu accounts stay ad-free, according to OpenAI’s ads help page, and accounts it believes belong to under-18s don’t get ads at all.
OpenAI says ads are clearly labelled, kept separate from ChatGPT’s answers and don’t influence them, and that advertisers can’t see people’s conversations. Ads are matched to the chat in front of you, and depending on the country and your settings can also draw on your wider ChatGPT use, the company said in August. Our privacy comparison covers what each AI company does with your chats.
Businesses in the new countries can buy ads through technology partners or sign up themselves in Ads Manager, OpenAI’s self-service tool, which opened outside the US at the end of August. That has already drawn scammers: earlier this month, fake ChatGPT ad portals were used to steal advertisers’ logins.
From tens of thousands to 100,000 advertisers
When OpenAI said in August that ChatGPT Ads had reached a $1 billion annualised revenue run rate in under 200 days, it described its advertisers as “tens of thousands”. It used the same phrase when it launched in Southeast Asia and Taiwan. The run rate was $100 million in March, CNBC has reported. OpenAI gave no new revenue figure on Wednesday.
Ads testing began in the US on February 9. OpenAI now puts ChatGPT’s weekly users at more than 1.2 billion, up from “more than 1 billion” in August.
The company says the next phase will bring more ad formats, objectives, buying options and measurement tools, and that it is exploring “new ways for businesses to interact with consumers in more native ways in ChatGPT”. It has already announced picture ads shown while ChatGPT makes images, to be tested in the US this month.
A business to show investors
OpenAI calls advertising one pillar of a “diversified business model”, alongside subscriptions, enterprise deals and its API. That story matters as it gets ready for the stock market: OpenAI has filed confidentially for an IPO and its executives have pointed to a 2027 listing, CNBC reports. Not everyone expects one: Palantir’s Alex Karp says OpenAI will never go public.
Rival Anthropic, which has been meeting IPO investors ahead of its own listing, has taken the opposite line. It pledged to keep Claude ad-free and made ChatGPT’s ads the target of its first Super Bowl campaign in February.
Why it matters
Ads are now how OpenAI pays for free ChatGPT across most of the world, and the jump to more than 100,000 advertisers suggests businesses are buying in fast. The missing number is revenue: OpenAI hasn’t updated its $1 billion run rate since August, and investors will want it before any IPO.
Sources: OpenAI announcement; OpenAI, Ads Manager availability; OpenAI, ads in ChatGPT FAQ; OpenAI, August update; OpenAI, Europe expansion; OpenAI, Southeast Asia and Taiwan expansion; CNBC.
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