The global AI application leader, OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, announced on Friday that it will begin displaying advertisements to some US-based AI users on the ChatGPT platform. This move intensifies efforts to generate larger-scale revenue from the globally popular AI chatbot, aiming to help OpenAI fully counter the immense competitive pressure from Google's Gemini 3.0 AI application series. This is crucial as OpenAI's development of more advanced artificial intelligence technologies relies on increasingly high research, development, and AI computing power costs, and provides some degree of financial support for its cumulative approximately $1.4 trillion AI computing infrastructure construction process. OpenAI stated on Friday, Eastern Time, that the advertising will initially be tested targeting almost all of its free-tier users and its lower-priced "ChatGPT Go plan users," which it is expanding globally, including in the US market. It is understood that the ad model will be rolled out in the coming weeks and will be separated from ChatGPT-generated answers, not affecting normal user interaction with ChatGPT or the answers it outputs. This also signifies that OpenAI officially launched ChatGPT Go in the US market on Friday, with a US subscription fee of $8 per month, and will begin testing ads within the ChatGPT app for some American users. Analysts say this marks a significant step for the company in boosting its revenue. The company stated that compared to the free version, ChatGPT Go users will have greater access to the latest model, GPT-5.2 Instant, receive more message credits, more file upload capabilities, and more image generation features. The "Go" plan was first launched in India and is now available in 171 countries and regions. The company clarified that users on the higher-priced Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise ChatGPT plans will not see advertisements. OpenAI also emphasized that the advertising content model will not influence ChatGPT's content output, and user conversations will not be shared with marketers.
Furthermore, OpenAI's embrace of an advertising model serves as a powerful catalyst for GEO, a novel concept or new investment theme recently gaining traction in global stock markets. This move is sufficient to ignite an "answer economy based on AI responses" and spearhead a new wave of brand traffic revolution. OpenAI's ad model resonates industrially with the logic of the GEO concept. It enables the AI chatbot platform to not only generate answers but also display commercial content within the same user interaction, essentially aligning with GEO's emphasized AI commercialization direction: having products "prioritized for citation/display within search or answer results provided by AI chatbots." The introduction of ads on the ChatGPT platform by OpenAI strengthens the trend of commercial expansion for generative AI platforms. This trend aligns with the logic of the GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) mechanism regarding brand visibility and commercial exposure, helping to stimulate market attention and investment enthusiasm for GEO-related investment sectors.
This move by OpenAI marks a significant strategic shift for the company—moving away from the "pure subscription era" towards embracing an advertising model that CEO Sam Altman had previously expressed disdain for. Previously, OpenAI relied heavily on revenue from expensive paid subscriptions for ChatGPT. This shift demonstrates the pressure OpenAI faces to increase revenue, as this AI unicorn is aggressively building massive AI data centers across the US and preparing for a highly anticipated initial public offering (IPO) on the US stock market. The persistently loss-making AI unicard plans to spend over $1.4 trillion on AI computing infrastructure construction by 2030 but has not provided specific details on how it will finance such a colossal scale. Some Wall Street veteran analysts suggest that the advertising model could unlock a substantial revenue stream from ChatGPT's vast user base of up to 800 million weekly active users. However, this move might also annoy some customers and damage user trust in the AI application. This latest step also signifies, to some extent, a strategic pivot under CEO Sam Altman's leadership; Altman had publicly expressed his personal aversion to ads, describing them as a "last resort." Altman had previously worried that if users perceived the AI chatbot as promoting products, it could undermine trust in its answers. Two years ago, during a fireside chat at Harvard University, he stated, "The idea of ads plus AI makes me deeply uneasy. I've always viewed advertising as a last resort in our business model." Analyst Jeremy Goldman from Emarketer noted that if ad placements feel clumsy or overtly opportunistic, users could easily switch to competitor AI chatbots, such as Google's Gemini 3.0 or Anthropic's Claude. But he added that this move might also force competitors to "clarify their own monetization philosophies, especially those positioning themselves as 'ad-free by design'." OpenAI stated it will not show ads to users under 18 years old. The company also plans to block ads related to sensitive topics, such as health and politics. The AI unicorn said in a statement, "We plan to test ads at the bottom of ChatGPT answers, showing them when there is a relevant sponsored product or needed service based on the users' current conversation." Advertisers are optimistic about AI's potential to significantly enhance commercial advertising efficiency in search and social ads, hoping to achieve strong returns through the implementation of this technology in ad recommendation systems.
With the global proliferation of AI applications like ChatGPT and Gemini 3.0, advertising logic is being fundamentally reshaped: increasingly advanced large AI models are rendering "click-to-search" obsolete, accelerating the migration towards GEO (Generative Engine Optimization). Its core is making content easier for large AI models to recall and trust: structuring information, specifying data, citing authoritative sources, and aligning with Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) mechanisms. Therefore, what brands will compete for in the future is not "ranking" but "being cited by large AI models." For commercial advertising models, it is undeniable that GEO is becoming the traffic gateway and essential marketing survival rule in the "AI + search" era. As generative AI technology centered around ChatGPT gradually becomes a new entry point for user search and information acquisition, brands, advertisers, and marketing agencies are investing heavily in GEO strategies, competing for "AI answer visibility" within the AI application ecosystem. This is effectively forming a new advertising/content optimization sector. GEO is a specialized optimization strategy targeting generative AI platforms (like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, etc.), with the core objective of having brands, products, or services cited or recommended more frequently within AI-generated answers, thereby enhancing visibility and commercial monetization opportunities. This is not traditional Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for ranking, but an optimization method aimed at making large models "actively mention" certain content when generating answers.
OpenAI's introduction of advertising is entirely consistent with the broader market logic of GEO, which leverages artificial intelligence for larger-scale commercialization. The core motivation behind OpenAI's ad model is based on the need for more stable and diversified revenue streams to support massive investments in AI computing infrastructure and high R&D costs (with projected enormous infrastructure spending by 2030), especially under the significant pressure from Google's Gemini. With over 800 million weekly active users, ChatGPT undoubtedly represents a "high-frequency entry point" for ad display and commercialization. Specific ad content will be instantly matched to ChatGPT user conversation content using AI technology, thereby increasing relevance. This恰好 aligns with the core scenario for GEO applications: simultaneously satisfying user queries and commercial exposure through "AI-generated relevant content + ads." GEO is a strategy for optimizing how content is presented in AI-generated results, and the appearance of ads within the ChatGPT AI chatbot signifies the initial implementation of this novel advertising model combining "AI visibility + commercial monetization." The emergence of ad placements on generative AI platforms shifts the path to commercial exposure within the AI application ecosystem from "passive search" to "passive answering + ad display." Under this model, brands and marketers will place greater emphasis on how to get "more frequently cited/recommended by generative AI" on platforms like ChatGPT, which is the core purpose of GEO. If large-scale model commercialization expands, marketing budgets and placement strategies will increasingly migrate to the new advertising ecosystem where AI results serve as the entry point. This could lead to GEO, as a technology/service approach, receiving greater attention from financial markets and attracting more substantial capital investment.
Comments