ChatGPT Ads Expands to 26 More Countries, Reaching 89 Markets and More Than 100,000 Advertisers

Ras Al Khaimah, United Arab Emirates, 23 October 2026.

OpenAI is bringing ChatGPT ads to 26 more countries, taking the total to 89 markets, and says more than 100,000 advertisers have run campaigns since ads launched just over eight months ago. The company announced the expansion in a post on 21 October 2026, which also put ChatGPT's weekly audience at more than 1.2 billion people.

The expansion adds 14 countries in Latin America, alongside markets in Africa, Europe and Asia. For search marketers, it widens the number of places where brands can buy placement inside an AI assistant that many people now use alongside, or instead of, a search engine.

What changed

• 26 new countries, 89 in total. OpenAI names Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Peru in Latin America, plus Nigeria, South Africa, Serbia, Ukraine, Cambodia, Bangladesh and Pakistan. The post says "including", so the named list is not the full 26.
• 14 of the new markets are in Latin America. Mexico and Brazil had launched earlier.
• More than 100,000 advertisers have run campaigns since ads launched.
• Self-serve or through partners. Advertisers can buy through technology partners or through OpenAI's self-serve Ads Manager.
• Free and Go plans only. Ads show to users on the Free and Go plans. Plus, Pro and Enterprise stay ad-free.

Metric	Figure	Source date
Weekly ChatGPT users	More than 1.2 billion	21 October 2026
Advertisers that have run campaigns	More than 100,000	21 October 2026
Countries added in this expansion	26	21 October 2026
Of which in Latin America	14	21 October 2026
Total countries with ChatGPT ads	89	21 October 2026
Time since ads launched	Just over eight months	21 October 2026

How ChatGPT ads have developed

OpenAI's ads business has moved quickly. On 5 May 2026 it announced new ways to buy ChatGPT ads: a beta self-serve Ads Manager where advertisers set budgets, bids and pacing, cost-per-click bidding alongside the cost-per-thousand model used in the pilot, and conversion tracking through a Conversions API and a pixel. That post named agency partners Dentsu, Omnicom, Publicis and WPP, and technology partners including Adobe and Criteo.

The 21 October post says later phases will add more ad formats, objectives, buying options and measurement features, without giving dates.

Ads and answers

OpenAI repeats its position that paid placements are separate from what ChatGPT says. The post states that "advertising does not influence the answers ChatGPT provides." It also says ads are clearly labelled and kept apart from responses, conversations are kept private from advertisers, and customer data is not sold.

That separation matters to SEO teams because it means two different routes to visibility inside ChatGPT: paid placements bought through Ads Manager, and organic mentions and citations inside answers, which OpenAI says ads do not affect.

Context for SEO teams

Referral traffic from ChatGPT is still small next to Google. A GA4 study of 100 sites we reported on 22 October found ChatGPT sent 0.62% as many sessions as Google organic. Tracking that traffic is also imperfect: earlier this month we reported that ChatGPT links lost their UTM tags after GPT-6, shifting visits into the direct channel in one sample.

A weekly audience of more than 1.2 billion people, and an advertiser base above 100,000, suggest the paid side of ChatGPT will draw budget and attention regardless of how much organic traffic it sends today.

What to do

1. Check whether your markets are now covered. If you sell into Latin America, Africa, Eastern Europe or South Asia, confirm with your paid team whether ChatGPT ads are now available there.
2. Keep organic and paid AI visibility separate in reporting. OpenAI says ads do not change answers, so measure brand mentions and citations in answers apart from paid results.
3. Fix attribution before spending. Make sure ChatGPT referrals are identifiable in analytics, and use the conversion tracking OpenAI offers if you run ads, so paid and organic ChatGPT traffic are not mixed into direct.
4. Audit the pages ChatGPT is likely to cite. Pricing, comparison and documentation pages should be accurate and crawlable, since they feed the organic answers that sit next to any ad.
5. Watch who sees ads. Only Free and Go users see ads. If your buyers are mostly on paid or Enterprise plans, ads will not reach them in ChatGPT.

Conclusion

ChatGPT ads now run in 89 countries, eight months after launch, and more than 100,000 advertisers have used them. OpenAI is expanding the paid layer of its assistant quickly while saying it stays separate from the answers.

For SEO teams, the practical change is that AI assistant visibility now has a clearly paid and a clearly organic side in many more markets, and both need their own measurement.

Questions and answers

How many countries have ChatGPT ads?

89, after OpenAI's 21 October 2026 expansion added 26 countries, 14 of them in Latin America.

How many advertisers use ChatGPT ads?

OpenAI says more than 100,000 advertisers have run campaigns since ads launched just over eight months before the 21 October 2026 announcement.

Which ChatGPT users see ads?

Users on the Free and Go plans. OpenAI says Plus, Pro and Enterprise remain ad-free.

Do ads affect ChatGPT's answers?

OpenAI says advertising does not influence the answers ChatGPT provides, and that ads are labelled and kept separate from responses.

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