OpenAI Brings ChatGPT Ads to 31 European Markets in Largest Rollout Yet

OpenAI brings ChatGPT ads to 31 European markets

OpenAI is expanding ChatGPT ads to 31 European countries next week, its largest ad rollout so far. The ads reach only Free and Go users, and OpenAI says conversations stay private from advertisers. Its ad revenue has risen more than 25% since the start of August. OpenAI is bringing ads inside ChatGPT to 31 European countries, in its largest expansion of the ad business so far. The rollout starts next week, the company said in a blog post. The list runs from Germany, France, Spain and Italy to Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Ireland, Belgium, Austria, Poland, the Czech Republic and Portugal, according to Adweek. The move extends a pilot that OpenAI began in the United States in February. Over six months it added eight more markets, Adweek reported. They were Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Japan, South Korea, Brazil and Mexico. The European launch is much larger than any step before it. It roughly quadruples the number of countries where the ads run, and adds several of Europe's biggest advertising markets at once. Advertisers will get in through OpenAI's own sales team and its agency and technology partners at first. A self-service tool, called Ads Manager, will follow later this summer, the company said. That would let smaller advertisers buy ads without going through OpenAI's sales team. Who sees the ads The ads will reach only some users. OpenAI said they appear only for people on its Free and Go plans. The Plus, Pro and Enterprise subscriptions stay ad-free. Go is OpenAI's cheaper paid tier, so the ads will reach both free users and some paying ones. OpenAI framed the ads as a way to fund cheap access to its tools. Ads support free and low-cost use of ChatGPT, it said, which it tied to its stated mission of widening access to AI. People on paid tiers who prefer no ads can still avoid them. OpenAI said a set of advertising principles it published earlier this year guides the ads. The company also pitched the format as useful. People come to ChatGPT with a goal, it said, such as planning a trip or choosing software for a business. Ads let marketers reach those people as they explore and compare their options, according to the post. OpenAI cast the chatbot as a place where buying decisions take shape, rather than a place people simply search. OpenAI's privacy promises OpenAI used the announcement to set out how it says the ads will work. Protecting user trust is "foundational" to its approach, the company said. The claims below are OpenAI's own. Conversations are kept private from advertisers, and customer data is never sold, according to the post. ChatGPT labels ads and keeps them separate from its answers. Advertising does not influence the answers the chatbot gives, OpenAI said, and users can control ad personalisation. The company said ads are separate from ChatGPT's responses, rather than woven into them. Those points matter because the product is a chatbot people treat as an assistant. OpenAI has leaned on that trust as it moves into advertising, a business it only entered this year. At the Cannes advertising festival in June, the company said it was "clearly in the advertising business now", though its ad revenue was still small at the time. The company did not publish figures in the post to back the privacy claims, which are its stated principles rather than audited facts. Why OpenAI is pushing ads The expansion comes as the ad business grows quickly. OpenAI's ad revenue has risen more than 25% since the start of August, its enterprise marketing chief, Colin Fleming, said on a briefing call reported by Adweek. He called the European launch a "material expansion" for the company. Adweek reported the figure and the quotes from that call; OpenAI did not put a revenue number in its own post. The scale of ChatGPT is the draw for marketers. Fleming said the chatbot now has one billion weekly active users, and that 20% of them show commercial intent. Tens of thousands of marketers have already advertised on ChatGPT, OpenAI said. Commercial intent means a user is weighing a purchase, the kind of moment marketers pay most to reach. The push also fits OpenAI's wider hunt for revenue. The company has been building out its sales operation, including a reshuffle of its revenue leadership this month. Fleming is a former ServiceNow ads executive who now serves as OpenAI's enterprise marketing chief, according to Adweek. Building the ad machine OpenAI has been adding the tools a modern ad platform needs. It moved beyond simple cost-per-impression and cost-per-click bidding to let advertisers optimise for conversions, it said. It added geo-targeting and custom audiences to help them reach specific customers. Those are standard features on established ad platforms, and OpenAI has been assembling its own version quickly. It has also expanded how it measures results. New tools include the OpenAI Pixel, a Conversions API and third-party measurement integrations, which the company said give advertisers a fuller view of what its ads deliver. OpenAI said it is still early in the effort and plans new formats and markets. Its stated goal is for ads to be useful to people pursuing a goal and effective for the businesses that buy them. The European rollout puts that machine into one of the world's stricter markets for data and advertising. OpenAI is expanding as the EU tightens its rules on AI and online services. Whether the ads sit comfortably with those rules, and with users, will shape how far the business can grow. For now, the rollout gives OpenAI a much bigger pool of advertisers, and a much bigger test of whether people accept ads inside a chatbot.

ChatGPT to start showing ads across Europe next week

Millions of ChatGPT users across Europe will start seeing adverts from Monday, as it remains unclear how regulators will approach ads in AI chatbots. Starting Monday, tens of millions of ChatGPT users across Europe will see adverts inside their conversations with the chatbot for the first time, as OpenAI rolls out its recently launched advertising programme to its largest market yet. The company is extending ChatGPT Ads to 31 European countries from 24 August, and the rollout brings the total up to 40 markets. OpenAI began testing ads in the US in February, then extended the programme through the year to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Mexico, Brazil, Japan and South Korea. Ads will only show up on ChatGPT's Free and Go plans, the cheapest tiers, while Plus, Pro and Enterprise subscribers will not see any. The move gives European marketers "a new way to reach people while they are actively exploring, comparing, and making decisions," the company said in a statement. Ads in chatbots? OpenAI says protecting user trust is foundational to how it approaches advertising. It says it keeps "conversations private from advertisers and never sell[s] customer data." "Ads in ChatGPT are always clearly labelled and separate from ChatGPT's answers, and advertising does not influence the answers ChatGPT provides," the statement continued. The reassurances follow criticism that has dogged the ad programme since it was first announced. In January 2026, US Senator Ed Markey wrote to Sam Altman and six other tech CEOs warning that advertising in AI chatbots risked exploiting the emotional connection users form with them, and asked how OpenAI would stop ads targeting sensitive conversations about health, mental health or politics. When ads first appeared in the US in February, some users also objected to seeing them on the paid Go tier, which costs $8 a month, arguing that paying for a service should mean going without adverts, not just fewer of them. Users will be able to control ad personalisation, and anyone who would rather not see ads at all can pay for the pricier ad-free plans. Where the AI Act comes in The rollout raises a question the EU's AI Act was partly built to answer: when does personalised persuasion tip into manipulation? The Act bans AI systems that use subliminal or deliberately manipulative techniques, or exploit people's vulnerabilities, in ways that cause significant harm. Researchers and consumer groups say conversational AI is a particularly hard case for that rule. An advert dropped into a personalised, trusted chat exchange is harder to spot as persuasion than a banner ad or a sponsored search result, precisely because it arrives in the same conversational tone as the advice on either side of it. Chatbot ads have not yet been fully tested by regulators or courts. A separate fight over platform status A different regulatory question sits alongside that one, this time under the Digital Services Act (DSA) rather than the AI Act. The European Commission is weighing whether ChatGPT's search function should be designated a very large online search engine, a status triggered once a service passes 45 million monthly users in the EU. Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier told Reuters in July that such a designation was "definitely possible" and could come "sooner or later". That label would bring much heavier obligations: annual risk assessments, independent audits, a public advertising repository and closer data-sharing with regulators.

ChatGPT's Free Version is Getting Ads in Several European Countries

OpenAI recently announced that it's rolling out ChatGPT Ads to users in 31 European countries next week, which includes Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Austria, to name a few. This follows initial launches in the United States and eight other global regions, which were carried out over the past six months. With that in mind, ads will be displayed exclusively to users on Free and Go plans, while Plus, Pro, and Enterprise subscribers will continue to experience an ad-free environment. OpenAI says that by displaying ads during conversational search, marketers can better connect with consumers as they actively use the AI model. The European launch follows a number of updates to ChatGPT's Ads ecosystem, which include conversion optimization alongside traditional CPM and CPC bidding, introduced geo-targeting and custom audience segmenting, and rolled out new attribution tools via the OpenAI Pixel, Conversions API, and third-party measurement integrations. READ: OpenAI's New ChatGPT Won't Just Do Your Teen's Homework OpenAI adds that conversations remain strictly private, and user data is never sold. Furthermore, ad placement supposedly does not influence ChatGPT's generated answers, advertisements will be clearly labeled, and users retain direct control over their ad personalization settings.