OpenAI began showing ads to free ChatGPT users across 31 European markets on August 24, the company said — its largest advertising expansion since ads first appeared in the United States six months ago.
Who sees the ads
The rollout covers all 27 European Union member states plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland, according to OpenAI’s announcement. Ads appear only for people on the free tier and the lower-cost Go plan; subscribers on Plus, Pro, and Enterprise plans continue to see none. OpenAI says the ads are clearly labeled and kept visually separate from ChatGPT’s own answers, and that advertisers get no access to users’ conversations and cannot influence what the chatbot says in response.
Why OpenAI is pushing ads now
The company points to scale as the rationale: ChatGPT has more than 1 billion weekly active users, and OpenAI estimates roughly a fifth of their queries show “commercial intent” — the kind of purchase-minded searches advertisers pay to reach. OpenAI also said ad revenue has grown more than 25% since the start of August, as it looks to diversify income beyond subscriptions and enterprise contracts.
OpenAI’s enterprise chief marketing officer, Colin Fleming, called the move a “material expansion” of the company’s nascent advertising business, which launched quietly in the US earlier this year before expanding to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Japan, South Korea, Brazil, and Mexico. For now, European advertisers must work through OpenAI’s Ads Solutions team or an agency and technology partner to run campaigns; self-service access through Ads Manager is expected later this year.
The expansion follows a broader push to widen ChatGPT’s free-tier features — OpenAI recently lifted message limits for free users on text chats, a change that also grows the pool of people who could now see ads.