Almost a year ago, in Future-Proofing for the AI-Native Web, I wrote:
AI search platforms are already evolving to include links back to sources, and future monetization models may resemble Google Ads.
Fast forward to this week, when ChatGPT showed me an in-product notice about ads appearing in chats, linking to OpenAI’s Testing ads in ChatGPT announcement. OpenAI began testing ads in the U.S. in February, and this week’s update expands ChatGPT Ads to the UK, Mexico, Brazil, Japan, and South Korea.
The ads appear below ChatGPT responses, clearly labeled as sponsored and separate from the answer itself. But here’s where the Google Ads comparison gets interesting: when multiple ads are eligible, OpenAI says it considers both relevance and advertiser bids when deciding which one appears first.
Much like businesses have spent decades competing for paid visibility alongside search results, they’ll now need to think about paid visibility alongside AI-generated answers. OpenAI is already offering advertisers campaigns, budgets, targeting, bidding, and cost-per-click or cost-per-thousand-impression buying models. Google Ads for LLMs isn’t theoretical anymore. The future is here.
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