Flash: Sam's Ready to Press the Magic 'Turn on Ads' Button and Make💰 Flood in for ChatGPT: Upcoming 'Ads Test' Announced - We have the Details.

On an unusual Friday afternoon 'trial balloon' type post via OpenAI's X account, details of an 'ad test' in the 'coming weeks' are revealed with 2 example's. Let's cap the week with a dive into it.

Here we were at Retailgentic HQ kicking back, j-chillin’ and sailing into the weekend after a frenetic week of Agentic Commerce News - in that post NRF vibe - Ah, a nice quiet Friday…. <RECORD SCRATCH>. Nope.

In this post we’ll cover:

• Two Examples of the ChatGPT Experimental new Ad formats

• ChatGPT’s Principles around Ads (this is interesting)

• Details of who and when for the the Ad Experiment.

• What we don’t know yet..

Two Examples of the ChatGPT Experimental Ads

In their X post (here), they reveal two ad formats.

ChatGPT Ad Example 1: Shopping

The first hits home for Retailgentic readers - a CPG/Grocery example:

In this ad, the ChatGPT user is chatting about a dinner party and wants some Authentic Mexican food ideas. ChatGPT offers a couple of dishes and at the bottom in the new ‘bottom ad gutter’ we have fictional grocery retailer: “Harvest Groceries” selling ‘Ember Co. Hot Sauce’ - it’s in stock and 25-35mins away.

When you see this, if you’re like me, this looks a lot like an Instacart ad. Remember where now ChatGPT CEO worked perviously? Yep, Instacart. This is ‘page one of the Fidji playbook’.

The examples provided are static, but there’s a visual clue this is ad unit is like a product card carousel, but compressed and I imagine you can scroll horizontally through other options

ChatGPT Ad Example 2: Travel

The second example ad is in the travel category:

Here the ChatGPT user is learning about Sante Fe - ChatGPT infers that they maybe considering a trip and shows a hotel/cottage/airbnb type advertiser. Like the shopping example there’s a carousel.

In this example, it looks like the user clicked on the three dots and initiated a chat with the advertiser which is interesting. This is a popular type ad system you’ve seen in China for at least 10 years now and I’m sure it’s going to be powered by ChatGPT - kind of a merchant/advertiser chat system on ChatGPT.

Here’s an interesting blurb they provided about this ad concept:

“The best ads are useful, entertaining, and help people discover new products and services. Given what AI can do, we're excited to develop new experiences over time that people find more helpful and relevant than any other ads. Conversational interfaces create possibilities for people to go beyond static messages and links. For example, soon you might see an ad and be able to directly ask the questions you need to make a purchase decision.”

ChatGPT’s Principles Around Ads

In the X post, there are already hundreds of people saying they are now cancelling their ChatGPT accounts. People are bound to jump to conclusions here that this is the end of ChatGPT, but remember, Sam has said very clearly they know their position of trust with the consumer and will not put that at risk. Let’s see what they say about it. In the post they put this image (clearly from what I infer is a presentation they created they are sharing with potential pilot advertisers)→

I want to call this one out, because I get in arguments about it and Naysayers are going to miss it:

“Ads to not influence the answers ChatGPT gives you.” - OpenAI

If that doesn’t convince you, they give a very clear rationale as to why - this is nearly word-for-word what SamA has said for the last 2yrs:

People trust ChatGPT for many important and personal tasks, so as we introduce ads, it’s crucial we preserve what makes ChatGPT valuable in the first place. That means you need to trust that ChatGPT’s responses are driven by what’s objectively useful, never by advertising. You need to know that your data and conversations are protected and never sold to advertisers. And we need to keep a high bar and give you control over your experience so you see truly relevant, high-quality ads—and can turn off personalization if you want.

Other observations:

• They do not optimize for time spent on ChatGPT, they are optimizing for UX over revenue (will be interesting to see how they measure this over time as they reveal more).

• Ads are separate and clearly labeled

• Advertisers never see your chats (what about if you chat with their business agent?)

Here’s another paragraph their long form announcement added that many will miss:

“Ads also can be transformative for small businesses and emerging brands trying to compete. AI tools level the playing field even further, allowing anyone to create high-quality experiences that help people discover options they might never have found otherwise.”

Details of The ChatGPT Ad Experiment.

Another handy graphic:

Concurrent with this, ChatGPT announced a new $8/m version called Go that ads some pieces not in Free ($0) and in Plus ($20).

Think of Go as cheaper plus with ads and Free is going to get ads too (I’d imagine more than Go to cover the $20/m hole. Plus and Pro ($200/m) won’t get ads. Here’s a graphic:

Note: Free is still available and Go will be ad supported soon.

Timing-wise they mention: “coming weeks” which in AI time means next Tuesday 😜.

Questions Raised

At this point until we see these live in the wild and advertisers in the test share/leak some information, we have more questions than answers.

The questions we’re looking to answer:

• What’s the targeting like?

• What’s the ad builder like?

• What’s the monetization mechanism (CPA, CPC, CPM?)

• How do you build/prompt/put data into the ‘advertiser agent? Google’s UCP announcement included the ‘business agent’ capability (remember the Lowes example?). Will there be an advertiser-facing ‘studio’ to build this and upload answers to the questions potential buyers will ask?

• If a consumer chats with your ‘advertiser agent’ - can they see those?

We’ll be tracking this very very closely - stay tuned as we unleash our agents to look for example of this in the wild. I’d also be remiss if I didn’t point out Prediction #2 from my 2026 predictions:😉

We’re 16 days into 2026 and have 3 new formats:

• Google’s Direct Offers

• ChatGPT Product carousel

• ChatGPT Advertiser chat

I bet this experiment will have a very large number of variants of these and experiments. I can imagine 15-20 core new units with 5-10 variants each for a combination of 75-100 unique tests in the experimental period, maybe more. Remember in AI we don’t have A/B testing or MVT, we have ‘AI created tests’. I imagine the ad engine will be AI native and building these variants and maybe core types on the fly.

Buckle up true believers, it’s going to be a weird, exciting and scary year!