By PYMNTS | October 21, 2026
OpenAI says it is expanding the reach of its ChatGPT Ads to 26 new countries.
The expansion brings the advertising offering to 80 countries around the world, and comes as more than 100,000 advertisers have run campaigns on ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence (AI) company announced Wednesday (Oct. 21).
“Advertising helps support free and low-cost access to ChatGPT for people around the world,” the company said. “Our mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. Ads will appear only on the Free and Go plans. Plus, Pro, and Enterprise subscriptions will remain ad-free.”
The expansion follows launches in Mexico and Brazil, with OpenAI now bringing ChatGPT Ads to 14 additional Latin American countries, including Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Peru. The company also launched in more markets across Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East, including Nigeria, South Africa, Serbia, Ukraine, Cambodia, Bangladesh and Pakistan.
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“With ChatGPT Ads now available in 89 countries, our next phase of growth will include the development of additional formats, objectives, buying options, and measurement capabilities,” the announcement said. “We are also continuing to explore new ways for businesses to interact with consumers in more native ways in ChatGPT.”
OpenAI said in September that ads inside ChatGPT had begun bringing in money at a pace equal to $1 billion a year, a milestone the company said it achieved less than 200 days after introducing the advertising product.
OpenAI is on its way to taking in $2.5 billion in booked ad revenue for the full year, a pace it took Google’s ad business around four years to reach, per a report by Fortune.
PYMNTS wrote at the time that this growth rests on an audience that advertisers already can’t afford to ignore.
PYMNTS Intelligence research found that 80% of people who use AI tools have tried ChatGPT at least once, vastly more than Google Gemini at 48% or Microsoft Copilot at 30%. The research also shows that around 25% of consumers are now counted as “mainstream” or “power” AI users, meaning they use it often and for many different things.
Additional research found that ChatGPT’s share of consumer product research climbed from 2% to 30% over a two-year stretch.
“Taken together, those numbers point to the same underlying shift: ChatGPT has moved from a tool people used to ask questions into a place where buying decisions actually start, and OpenAI is betting its advertising business can grow as fast as that shift does,” that report said.