ChatGPT Ads Are Live. Here's What Happens Next.
February 13, 2026 · 4 min read
Two months ago, we wrote that ads were coming to ChatGPT. We laid out the economics. We said advertising was the only model that could fund inference at global scale.
On February 9, OpenAI began testing ads inside ChatGPT. The era of ad-supported AI is no longer theoretical. It is live.
What This Proves
The biggest AI company in the world just told the market that subscriptions alone cannot sustain free AI at scale. Omnicom committed more than 30 clients on day one. WPP and Dentsu followed. Adobe signed up. The demand side did not hesitate.
That signal matters more than the format details. Advertisers are now allocating real budget to conversational AI as a channel. That reframes every AI product with a free tier from a cost center into a potential revenue surface.
The Super Bowl Made It a Wedge Issue
Four days before the ads went live, Anthropic aired its first Super Bowl campaign. The spots depicted AI assistants pivoting from earnest advice into absurd product pitches. The tagline: Ads are coming to AI. But not to Claude.
Claude climbed from number 41 to number 7 on the App Store. Downloads jumped 32 percent.
Sam Altman fired back, calling the ads dishonest. Scott Galloway compared the spot to Apple's 1984 commercial. AI advertising went from an industry discussion to a consumer debate in a weekend.
The second-order effect is more important than the drama. Millions of people who never thought about how AI gets funded are now thinking about it. That awareness accelerates the entire category.
The Competitive Map Is Splitting
OpenAI is live with ads. Building its own stack. No programmatic partners announced.
Microsoft Copilot already runs ads through Performance Max. Copilot Checkout now turns conversations directly into commerce.
Meta started using AI chat data for ad targeting in December 2025. Over a billion users. No ads inside conversations yet. The signal is already flowing.
Google says no ads in Gemini. Ads are live in AI Overviews. The trajectory is obvious.
Perplexity launched ads in late 2024, paused new advertisers by October 2025. Measurement and scale problems remain unsolved.
Anthropic committed to keeping Claude ad-free.
Every major platform is building a walled garden. None of them are building infrastructure for anyone else.
The Gap That Matters
OpenAI can negotiate directly with Omnicom. Google and Microsoft have decades of ad infrastructure. They do not need help.
But there are thousands of AI apps serving millions of users today. Travel assistants. Coding copilots. Education tools. Health companions. Each generates high-intent conversations. Each needs to fund inference. None of them can build an ad business from scratch.
OpenAI's pilot requires $200,000 from advertisers. That works at 400 million users. It does not work for a startup offering a free tier.
Every one of these apps now has proof that their conversations are monetizable. What they lack is the pipe.
The Infrastructure Layer
Imprezia is the pipe. Any AI app, running any model, can connect to our network and earn through contextual ads inside conversations.
No ad sales team. No holding company negotiations. No $200,000 minimums. Real-time bidding. OpenRTB-compliant infrastructure. Intent signals extracted from conversations. Revenue from the first impression.
OpenAI proving this model works is validation, not competition. Every advertiser learning that conversational AI is a high-value surface benefits every publisher in our network.
What Comes Next
The money is moving. The format is proven. The supply side is fragmented.
OpenAI will serve OpenAI. Google will serve Google. Microsoft will serve Microsoft.
The rest of the ecosystem needs an open monetization layer. That is what we are building.
If you are building an AI app and want to win distribution, or you are a forward-thinking advertiser, create an account to join the AI ad network.
This is the second post in our series on advertising in AI. Read the first: Ads Are Coming to ChatGPT. Here's What It Means for the Future of AI.