ChatGPT Ads Expands to 26 Countries: Over 100,000 Advertisers Already On Board

OpenAI's advertising business is accelerating its global expansion. ChatGPT Ads has announced expansion into 26 new countries, while disclosing that more than 100,000 advertisers have already used the platform. That figure would be impressive at any digital advertising platform's early stage, but what's more worth noting is the signal behind it: conversational AI is transforming from an "information tool" into an "entry point for consumer decisions."

From Exploration to Decision: Why ChatGPT Can Carry Ads

The official wording on this expansion is restrained—"from local businesses to global brands, more advertisers can now reach people as they explore, compare, and decide what to buy." The keyword in this sentence isn't "ads" but "explore, compare, decide."

The logic of traditional search advertising is keyword matching plus bidding rank: users arrive with clear intent, and the platform handles distribution. ChatGPT's scenario is different: users often gradually clarify their needs through open-ended conversation, and ads can be embedded into this process of "need formation." For advertisers, this means intervening earlier in the decision funnel; for users, the risk is that the boundary between recommendations and ads becomes blurred.

The scale of over 100,000 advertisers shows the market side has already voted with action. The participation of local small and medium-sized businesses is especially noteworthy—this group is typically extremely sensitive to advertising platform ROI, and their willingness to experiment means early campaign data is most likely not unimpressive.

Intent-based Advertising refers to matching ads based on the demand signals users express in the moment, rather than relying solely on keywords or audience tags. In traditional search advertising, intent is explicitly expressed through query terms, and the platform only needs to match and bid; in conversational scenarios, intent emerges gradually—users first describe the general problem, then narrow it down through follow-up questions. This requires the ad system to understand multi-turn context, judge the stage of need, and provide relevant content without interrupting the conversation. It's technically harder, but once done right, the fit between ads and users' current goals is also higher—which is exactly why ChatGPT Ads is seen as a new track.

What the 26-Country Expansion Means

Looking at "26 new countries" alone makes it easy to underestimate the significance. ChatGPT's user distribution is inherently global, but the advertising business is constrained by local sales teams, payment systems, compliance review, and advertiser ecosystems, so its rollout is far slower than the product itself. Rolling out 26 markets at once shows that OpenAI has already achieved considerable standardization in its advertising infrastructure.

For global brands, this solves a long-standing pain point: previously they could only test ChatGPT ad performance in a handful of markets, making cross-border budget allocation difficult. Now they can run and compare campaigns by region, and only now does the advertising business truly meet the conditions for scaled operations.

Standardization of advertising infrastructure refers to the platform distilling account opening, billing, payment, creative review, targeting, and performance attribution into replicable processes and systems, so that new markets can go live without building local teams from scratch. For a global advertising platform, this is the watershed between "project-based pilots" and "scaled operations": the pace of market expansion no longer depends linearly on manpower but on system maturity. Covering 26 countries at once usually means the platform has completed generalized upgrades to its compliance framework, local payment channels, and self-service advertising tools, and the marginal cost of adding new markets going forward will drop significantly.

The Tension Between Advertising and the AI Experience

The core contradiction of conversational advertising lies in trust. When users ask ChatGPT questions, they default to expecting relatively neutral advice; once ad content is mixed into answers, the boundaries of the experience need to be clearly defined. OpenAI has not yet disclosed the specific presentation format or labeling method for ads, which will be a key point to watch going forward.

Another variable is advertiser structure. If performance ads dominate early on, the platform will tend to optimize for conversion rates, and pressure on user experience is relatively manageable; once brand advertising floods in on a large scale, both the display logic and the content ecosystem will change. Within the base of 100,000 advertisers, the ratio of these two types of players will determine the future tone of ChatGPT advertising.

Ad labeling and the boundary of native advertising is the most sensitive compliance and experience issue in conversational advertising. At the regulatory level (such as the US FTC and the EU DSA), paid promotional content is generally required to be clearly identifiable and not confused with organic results; at the product level, the labeling method directly affects user trust—explicit labels (such as "Sponsored") are more transparent but may reduce clicks, while weak labeling may trigger negative perceptions of being "misled." Conversational scenarios are especially tricky because the answers themselves are generative; if ads are blended in as natural language, users find it hard to tell which sentence is a recommendation and which is an ad. OpenAI has not yet announced the specific format, and this choice will determine both compliance risk and user acceptance.

Impact on the Digital Advertising Landscape

ChatGPT Ads' expansion won't immediately shake the foundation of search advertising, but it has opened a new track: intent-based advertising carried by conversation. For advertisers, there's one more channel worth testing; for existing platforms, the real long-term threat is the migration of user habits—"ask AI first, then search."

100,000 advertisers and 26 new markets—added together, these two figures show that OpenAI has already treated advertising as a long-term business rather than an experiment. What's worth watching next is three things: how ad formats evolve, when performance data from regional markets will be published, and the curve of user acceptance for in-conversation ads.

Performance advertising and brand advertising are the two basic types of advertiser campaigns, with fundamentally different logic. Performance advertising targets conversions (clicks, sign-ups, purchases), measured by CPA/ROAS, with flexible budgets and rapid testing; brand advertising targets impressions and mindshare, pursuing large-scale reach and long-term awareness, with larger individual budgets and longer decision cycles. Platforms typically attract performance advertisers early on because data is quantifiable and the cost of trial and error is low; brand budgets follow only after traffic scale and user time spent are validated. The ratio of these two types determines the platform's display logic, content tone, and user experience pressure, and is also a key indicator for judging when ChatGPT advertising enters its mature stage.

One-line Summary

ChatGPT Ads expands to 26 countries with over 100,000 advertisers, as conversational AI becomes a new entry point for consumer decisions.

Paragraph Summary

OpenAI's ChatGPT Ads has announced expansion into 26 new countries and disclosed that more than 100,000 advertisers have used the platform. The article notes that the significance of this expansion goes beyond the numbers themselves: conversational AI is transforming from an information tool into an entry point for consumer decisions, with ads embeddable in the conversational process where users explore, compare, and decide what to buy—distinct from traditional keyword search advertising. Rolling out 26 markets at once shows that OpenAI's advertising infrastructure already meets the conditions for standardization and scale; the active participation of local small and medium-sized businesses also reflects market recognition of early campaign results. At the same time, defining the boundary between ads and AI answers, and the structural ratio of performance versus brand advertising, will determine the long-term tone of ChatGPT advertising and user trust.