ChatGPT Ads Goes Global: 26 New Countries, 100,000 Advertisers

OpenAI announced on Wednesday that ChatGPT Ads will expand into 26 new countries, and that more than 100,000 advertisers have run ads on the platform since launch. Fourteen of those new markets — more than half — are in Latin America, including Argentina, Chile and Colombia.

The regional push is no accident. Brazil, which joined the ads expansion back in August, currently has the third-largest share of ChatGPT visitors behind the US and India. OpenAI wants to double down on the region.

How big is the business, really?

The 100,000-advertiser figure comes with an asterisk. It counts everyone who has ever run an ad, not who's active today. The Information recently reported that as of early October, ChatGPT had about 60,000 active advertisers, citing research from Dan Salmon at New Street Research.

That gap suggests many advertisers who tried the platform haven't stuck around. The churn points to a familiar problem: there's no perfect playbook for building an ads business from scratch.

Revenue tells a stronger story. Earlier this year, OpenAI announced a $1 billion annualized run rate for ChatGPT Ads — meaning that at the current growth pace, the platform would earn $1 billion in revenue over a year. That's lofty, but short of the company's initial prediction of $2.4 billion in revenue this year.

In roughly eight months since launch, the business has grown fast. Keeping it growing is the harder part.

What's holding advertisers back?

Measurement is the sticking point. As AdExchanger has previously reported, many advertisers want stronger measurement solutions before committing more budget to ChatGPT Ads.

OpenAI says it's addressing that head-on. One of its biggest challenges has been "making sure the experience works well for both people and businesses," an OpenAI spokesperson told AdExchanger. "That's why we're building out measurement alongside the expansion," the spokesperson said.

The company is also focused on "privacy, clear labeling and keeping ads separate from ChatGPT's answers," according to the spokesperson. Ad Age-caliber skepticism applies here: those priorities come from the company itself, and advertisers will judge them by results.

How are the ad formats changing?

The formats have evolved quickly — and quietly. Earlier this month, OpenAI announced a new, more visual ad format with larger images. Those ads will be served to people using ChatGPT for image generation and will be tested first in the US.

OpenAI is also "exploring additional formats," the spokesperson noted, but declined to elaborate on what those will look like.

The visual evolution has been fast. Over the past few months, ads went from a shaded box with unmissable "sponsored" text at the top to the latest format, which drops the structured box entirely and labels the ad only obliquely off to the side.

OpenAI remains adamant that "people shouldn't have to guess whether something is an ad" and that its ads stay "distinct" from ChatGPT's responses, the spokesperson said. The latest iterations just require users to be a bit more discerning.

What's next?

Watch the measurement build-out and the US test of the visual format. If active advertiser counts catch up to the 100,000 who've tried the platform, the $1 billion run rate becomes a floor, not a ceiling.

By James Calloway