Get ready for ads in ChatGPT
Like death and taxes, ads are an inevitability. This is something that applies to the world of technology, but particularly anything even remotely connected to the internet.
Proving the above, as well as the old adage that there is no such things as a free lunch, OpenAI is planning to bring advertising into ChatGPT. This is not something that the organization has officially announced, evidence that ads are coming has been uncovered.
On X, Tibor Blaho shared the discovery that the ChatGPT Android app 1.2025.329 beta version includes various references to ad content in its code, such as "ads feature", "search ad" and "search ads carousel".
With no official announcement about plans for injecting advertising into ChatGPT, it is hard to determine precisely what OpenAI has planned, but the findings of Blaho are pretty clear:
In a follow post which acknowledged the explosion of interested in the revelation about ads, Blaho says:
My recent post about the new "ads feature" in the ChatGPT Android beta got a lot more attention than I expected, so I want to share a bit more context and my first thoughts
- I work on AIPRM for ChatGPT and Claude, so I regularly look inside new web and mobile app builds and compare versions to spot small changes and hints of upcoming features, keep AIPRM working smoothly and share what is coming next with people who care about ChatGPT and Claude news
- In the latest publicly available ChatGPT Android beta app on Google Play I unpacked the APK and, when I compared it to the previous version, I saw new strings like "ads feature", "bazaar content", "search ad" and "search ads carousel" that were not there before
- OpenAI has been talking for a while about maybe trying ads in a careful way, and these references are the first clear hint that this is now in active development
- My guess is that ads will start around search, shopping and recommendation answers, with "bazaar content" and "search ads carousel" pointing to marketplace style product cards, not inside every normal chat
- This brings ChatGPT closer to what we already see from Google and Microsoft, where Google shows ads inside AI Overviews and AI Mode results and has talked about native ad ideas for Gemini, Copilot already shows ads in chat for shopping and other commercial questions, and Perplexity shows sponsored follow up questions next to the answers
- This could help OpenAI give free users more generous usage and features, while users on paid plans stay ad free, which fits with the high costs of running ChatGPT and the revenue they expect from shopping and ad related features
It is likely that advertising will only affect users of the free tier of ChatGPT, and this is a fairly typical way of both raising money and encouraging people to take out paid-for subscriptions.
How does this news land with you? If you are a ChatGPT user, would the appearance of ads make you jump ship or take out a subscription? Would it make a difference if the ads were tailored based on your interactions with ChatGPT?
Share your thoughts below.
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