OpenAI is testing ads in ChatGPT that talk back

What changed

In OpenAI's own words, Sponsored Agents "give users the option to go deeper. After seeing a relevant ad, a user can choose to start a clearly labeled conversation with a business-sponsored agent in ChatGPT." From there the user can "explain what matters to them, ask follow-up questions, and follow a link to the business's website" — OpenAI's announcement →

OpenAI says the sponsored conversation is "distinct from ChatGPT's independent answers". It shipped alongside an Ads Manager plugin that writes campaigns from natural-language prompts, AI-suggested creative pulled from your landing page, and HubSpot and Shopify integrations — the Shopify app going international on 23 September. Search Engine Roundtable broke the story →

What this means for marketers

This is the first ad format where the creative is not a fixed asset — it is a conversation your brand does not fully script. Whatever you feed the agent becomes the pitch, which makes your product data, pricing pages and FAQ content the real creative brief. That is a very different asset list from a Meta campaign.

Two cautions. It is a US test with no published India timeline, so nothing here is buyable from an Indian account today. And the format has critics — The Register's Brandon Vigliarolo argued the labelling may not be enough when the agent sits in the same interface as ChatGPT's own answers (his write-up). Either way, the work that pays off is what already makes you quotable inside AI answers: clean product data, real specifics, pages an assistant can read — our guide to getting cited by ChatGPT covers it.