The news: OpenAI is asking select advertisers to commit upfront spending of roughly $200,000, with proposals reportedly ranging from $100,000 to $250,000, per Adweek.

• Ads are priced at a $60 CPM and sold on impressions rather than clicks, per The Information, diverging from performance-based models used by Google Search or Amazon Ads.
• Initial test campaigns are expected to run from early February through March, with expansion dependent on advertiser feedback and user response.
• The beta is focused on categories like retail, streaming, and internet services, where contextual relevance in conversational prompts may be easier to demonstrate.

Advertiser interest in OpenAI is driven by scale. ChatGPT is estimated to reach roughly 900 million weekly users, and US monthly visitors nearly doubled YoY to 75.7 million by October 2025, per Comscore.

Why it matters: ChatGPT’s ad test reflects OpenAI’s financial reality and the growing influence of conversational interfaces on discovery.