Do 60,000 Businesses Now Advertise on ChatGPT, and What Does That Change for Buyers?

Where Does the 60,000 Number Come From?

It comes from a slide, read by an analyst, relayed by two trade publications. Dan Salmon, who covers advertising platforms for New Street Research, attended a presentation by OpenAI and the measurement company AppsFlyer during Advertising Week in New York. In a note to investors, quoted by tipsheet.ai on October 9, 2026, he wrote: “The 60K+ advertisers was revealed as part of an OpenAI and AppsFlyer’s slide presentation and suggests that OpenAI is well on its way to passing 100K advertisers by the end of the year, with momentum building to millions of advertisers – i.e., Google and Meta-level scale – one day” (tipsheet.ai).

MediaPost’s Joe Mandese, writing on October 12, adds the date: “Based on an event hosted by OpenAI and AppsFlyer on Oct. 7, Salmon reported that the number of advertisers now buying ads on ChatGPT is greater than 60,000. That’s up from more than 20,000 a little more than a month ago” (MediaPost).

Three cautions follow from that chain. We have not seen the slide, so we cannot say whether it showed a count of active advertisers, accounts ever created, or something else. The figure has not appeared, in anything we read, in an OpenAI post, help page or statement. And it is a floor: “60K+” says more than 60,000, not how many more. The fair way to cite it is as Salmon’s reading of an OpenAI and AppsFlyer presentation.

What Has OpenAI Itself Said?

OpenAI’s most recent published numbers are in an August 31, 2026 post titled “A milestone in expanding access to AI.” It says: “In less than 200 days after launch, ChatGPT Ads has reached $1 billion in annualized revenue run rate. The platform is now used by tens of thousands of advertisers and continues to expand globally” (OpenAI). CNBC reported the same milestone that day and noted that the ads appear for OpenAI’s Go subscribers and its free tier (CNBC).

The post describes a product that has widened quickly. ChatGPT Ads were available “in over 40 countries” on August 31, with self-service buying launching across India, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. OpenAI says Ads Manager, introduced in May, “opened the platform to small and medium-sized businesses, which now represent a material share of the business,” that it works with “more than 50 technology and measurement partners,” and that “CPC and outcome-optimized bidding now account for the majority of campaigns.” Those last points matter for the advertiser count. Our reading, not OpenAI’s: a self-serve platform with click bidding is built to sign up many small accounts, which would explain how a count could triple in five weeks.

A run rate is a projection: one recent period multiplied to a year. It is not booked annual revenue, and OpenAI does not say which period it used. The “tens of thousands” figure is also loose by design. Neither is a criticism of OpenAI; private companies are not required to publish audited advertiser counts. It does mean the most precise number in circulation is also the least official one.

How Fast Is the Advertiser Count Growing?

The chart shows the two counts in the coverage, more than 20,000 at the end of August and more than 60,000 in early October, which is the roughly threefold rise behind the headlines.

Beyond those two points the numbers are projections, and they disagree. Salmon expects OpenAI to pass 100,000 advertisers by the end of 2026 and wrote that it is “already likely in the total advertiser range of platforms like Pinterest, Snap and Reddit” (tipsheet.ai). Mandese, comparing the growth of Pinterest, Reddit and Snap, projects that ChatGPT “will surpass half a million advertisers within the next year,” which he calls his “AI-assisted, back-of-the-envelope analysis” (MediaPost). Those are an analyst’s and a columnist’s estimates. OpenAI has not given a forecast.

What Has Happened to Prices?

The clearest published price evidence is from the spring. Digiday reported on April 17, 2026 that “the rate advertisers pay to reach every thousand users has fallen from $60 at launch nine weeks ago to as low as $25 now,” and that “the minimum spend required to participate has fallen from $250,000 at launch to $50,000.” It quoted Ashley Fletcher, chief marketing officer of Adthena: “It feels like everything is coming down, preparing for a wider auction accessibility to fit [a] global rollout.” Digiday said OpenAI did not respond to its request for comment (Digiday).

Since then, the pricing model itself has changed. OpenAI’s advertiser help page says ChatGPT Ads “supports impression and valid-click billing,” that ads are selected by “a relevance-weighted, second-price auction,” and that “for CPC campaigns, we recommend starting with a maximum bid of $3–$5 USD per click” (OpenAI Help Center). A suggested starting bid is not a market price; in a second-price auction the winner usually pays less than its maximum, and competitive categories may need more. But it is the only price OpenAI publishes, and it is far below what a $250,000 commitment implied in February.

Other reports in circulation this week give per-click comparisons with Google, staff numbers and revenue targets. They come from a paywalled report by The Information that we could not open, and we have not repeated them.

Does More Advertising Change What ChatGPT Says?

On OpenAI’s published rules, no. Its help center answers the question directly: “No. Ads do not influence ChatGPT’s answers. Ads run on separate systems from our chat model, and advertisers have no ability to shape, rank, or alter ChatGPT’s responses. Ads are separate and clearly labeled” (OpenAI Help Center). The August 31 post repeats it: “Ads in ChatGPT are always clearly labeled and separate from ChatGPT’s answers. Advertising does not influence the answers ChatGPT provides.”

The same help page limits who sees ads at all. “Ads may appear for users on the Free and Go plans. Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Edu accounts will not have ads,” and OpenAI does not show ads to accounts it identifies as belonging to people under 18. For business-to-business companies that matters: a buyer researching vendors on a company ChatGPT Business or Enterprise seat sees no ads, only the answer.

Outsiders cannot audit the separation between the ad system and the model, and nothing we read claims to have done so. What can be said is that OpenAI has put the commitment in writing in several places, and that none of the reporting on the advertiser count suggests otherwise. Our earlier guide, Can You Pay to Appear in a ChatGPT Answer?, covers the ad formats, Sponsored Agents and the eligibility rules in detail; how answers name companies is in How Does ChatGPT Decide Which Companies to Recommend?

What This Means for Anyone Buying a Placement

Our recommendations, not platform rules. First, budget a ChatGPT ad as paid media and report it that way. A sponsored unit below an answer is advertising, labeled as such, and it should not appear in a coverage report or be described as “an AI recommendation.” The distinction is the same one in Earned Media vs Paid Media.

Second, expect competition for the same conversations to rise. If the advertiser count is anything like the reported figures, more companies are bidding on the same contexts, and a falling entry price does not mean a falling price for a busy category.

Third, ask anyone selling ChatGPT ads what they will measure, and how. OpenAI’s own help page lists impressions, clicks, spend, click-through rate, average CPC, average CPM and conversions in its Ads Manager reporting. Referral tracking from ChatGPT to a website remains uneven; see How to Track AI Assistant Referral Traffic in GA4 and Is ChatGPT Traffic Now Showing Up as Direct?

Fourth, keep the earned work going. Whatever happens to the ad market, the answer a user reads first is built from sources the model reads, and the buyers on paid ChatGPT plans never see an ad at all.

Methodology and Limitations

Four limits apply. First, the 60,000 figure is Salmon’s reading of a slide we have not seen, quoted by tipsheet.ai and summarized by MediaPost. Second, OpenAI’s help pages blocked automated reading on October 16, so we read the versions archived by the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine on October 4 and October 7, 2026, the latest available; OpenAI’s August 31 post was read from a Wayback copy made on October 7. Third, we could not open The Information’s report or locate Raji’s original “20K+” remark, so figures that depend on them are either attributed to tipsheet.ai or left out. Fourth, Digiday’s prices are from April and predate self-service bidding.

Conclusion

ChatGPT advertising has gone from a $60-CPM pilot with a six-figure minimum to a self-serve, click-bid auction with, by OpenAI’s own account, tens of thousands of advertisers and a $1 billion run rate. The 60,000 figure may well be right; it is just not yet OpenAI’s to stand behind. For a company deciding where to spend, the uncomfortable conclusion is that the ad slot is getting easier to buy at the same time as the answer above it stays out of reach of any budget.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources

This explainer is built from OpenAI's own August 31, 2026 post and two OpenAI help-center pages, CNBC's report of the same milestone, the two trade reports that carry the 60,000 figure, and Digiday's April report on prices, read on October 16, 2026. OpenAI's pages returned HTTP 403 to automated requests that day, so we read Wayback Machine copies dated October 4 and 7, 2026. We could not open The Information's paywalled report and do not repeat figures that rest on it. Recommendations are ours, not platform rules. We did not buy or test ChatGPT ads.

1. official OpenAI, A milestone in expanding access to AI. Supports the $1 billion run rate, "tens of thousands of advertisers," over 40 countries, SMB share, partner count, bidding mix and the statement that advertising does not influence answers. Dated August 31, 2026; read via Wayback Machine copy of October 7, 2026. Read October 16, 2026.
2. platform documentation OpenAI Help Center, Ads in ChatGPT. Supports the answer-independence quote and which plans see ads. Read via Wayback Machine copy of October 4, 2026. Read October 16, 2026.
3. platform documentation OpenAI Help Center, Ads in ChatGPT: The basics. Supports billing types, the second-price auction, the $3–$5 suggested CPC bid and the reporting metrics. Read via Wayback Machine copy of October 7, 2026. Read October 16, 2026.
4. trade press CNBC, OpenAI's ad business hits $1 billion annualized revenue run rate. Supports the August 31 announcement and the Free and Go audience. Dated August 31, 2026. Read October 16, 2026.
5. trade press tipsheet.ai, ChatGPT Ads passes 60k advertisers. Supports Salmon's quoted note, the "60K+" and "20K+" figures, the attribution to Vijay Raji and the 100,000 projection. Dated October 9, 2026. Read October 16, 2026.
6. trade press MediaPost, The AI Advertising Tipping Point. Supports the October 7 event date, "more than 20,000" and Mandese's half-million projection. Dated October 12, 2026. Read October 16, 2026.
7. trade press Digiday, 'Everything is coming down': ChatGPT ads are getting cheaper. Supports the April CPM and minimum-spend figures, the Fletcher quote and OpenAI's lack of response. Dated April 17, 2026. Read October 16, 2026.