OpenAI says ChatGPT Ads now runs in 89 countries

OpenAI said on Wednesday, October 21, that it is taking ChatGPT Ads to 26 more countries, bringing the total to 89. OpenAI counts over 100,000 advertisers running campaigns since the format went live just over eight months ago. Two OpenAI engineers also published a technical account of the ad system, which says the business passed a $1 billion yearly revenue pace within its first 200 days.

Where the ads now run

According to the expansion announcement, the new markets include 14 Latin American countries beyond Mexico and Brazil, among them Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Peru. Other named additions are Pakistan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Ukraine, Serbia, South Africa and Nigeria. Brands can buy through technology partners or on their own through Ads Manager. Only Free and Go users see ads; Plus, Pro and Enterprise stay ad-free, OpenAI says. OpenAI says it is now developing more ad formats, campaign objectives, buying options and measurement tools.

How OpenAI says the ad system works

The engineering post describes a pipeline run by a custom, post-trained model OpenAI calls the orchestrator. The system keeps an ad session that remembers context across turns and conversations. The orchestrator condenses buying intent into short summaries, calls tools that pull candidates from embedding indices, filter them on budget, pacing, targeting and policy and score them for relevance and predicted engagement, then nominates a shortlist for an auction. The auction, not the model, picks the winner and sets the price.

OpenAI says ad selection runs in a separate service, with its own models and code, from the one writing ChatGPT's answer, which it says keeps ads from shaping responses. If the reply is finished first, the ad is skipped for that turn, and OpenAI treats a turn with no ad as a success, not a failure. An ad that makes it in time appears under the reply with a sponsored tag and a brief model-written preamble linking it to the chat. Users who opt into personalization may see ads informed by nonsensitive details from past chats.

OpenAI is also testing visual ads inside ChatGPT image generation.

What we don't know yet

• Pricing, minimum spend or typical costs in the new markets.
• How many of the 100,000 advertisers are still active, and what they spend.
• Whether the test-period limits OpenAI set out in January, such as no ads near health or politics or for users thought to be under 18, still apply in every new country.