OpenAI is turning up the ad dial. The company said Wednesday it is switching on ChatGPT ads in 26 more countries, taking the total to 89 and revealed that more than 100,000 advertisers have now run campaigns since testing began in the US earlier this year. The expansion lands as OpenAI races to prove it can make serious money from the hundreds of millions of people who use ChatGPT for free.

Eight months. That’s all it took to go from zero advertisers to six figures.

Where the ads are landing

The biggest chunk of the new rollout is Latin America. OpenAI is adding 14 countries there, including Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Peru, following earlier launches in Mexico and Brazil. The rest of the batch spreads across Africa, Europe, Central Asia and South and Southeast Asia: Nigeria, South Africa, Serbia, Ukraine, Cambodia, Bangladesh and Pakistan among them, according to the company’s Ads Manager availability page, which now lists 89 countries.

Advertisers in the new markets can buy inventory through OpenAI’s technology partners or set up campaigns themselves through the self-serve Ads Manager on OpenAI’s platform. Notably, OpenAI named only some of the 26 new countries in its announcement; the full list comes from the Ads Manager availability page itself.

China and Russia remain absent, where ChatGPT isn’t officially offered anyway. Europe joined the ad rollout in August with 31 countries, so this week’s batch fills in much of the rest of the map — from Kazakhstan to Uruguay.

The money math

The headline number tells the story of OpenAI’s year. In late August, roughly 20,000 advertisers had run ChatGPT campaigns, according to The Information. This week: over 100,000. In August, OpenAI also disclosed that the ads business had crossed a $1 billion annualized revenue run rate less than 200 days after launch.

Reuters framed the expansion plainly: OpenAI is beefing up its ad business to boost revenue ahead of a possible IPO. The Information put it more bluntly, reporting the push is part of OpenAI’s effort to “turn advertising into a bigger source of revenue to help cover its AI costs.”

That context matters. OpenAI is spending tens of billions on compute and data centers, and its chip and infrastructure commitments now stretch past $1 trillion on paper. A $1 billion ad run rate doesn’t cover that, but it changes the conversation with investors who have watched the company burn cash on every free ChatGPT prompt.

What the ChatGPT ads expansion means for free users

Ads appear only on ChatGPT’s Free and Go plans. Plus, Pro and Enterprise subscriptions stay ad-free. OpenAI pitches the trade as fair: advertising, it said in its announcement, “helps support free and low-cost access to ChatGPT for people around the world.”

The company also reiterated its privacy lines: conversations are kept private from advertisers, and it does not sell customer data. Those promises matter more than usual here, since the product being monetized is where people paste medical questions, work drafts and relationship dilemmas.

And there’s a wrinkle advertisers are already digesting. Trade outlet Marketing Newsroom reported that OpenAI emailed advertisers this week saying its “creative enhancements” — automatic AI rewrites of ad headlines, body text and landing pages — will be switched on by default for new and existing campaigns. Your ad copy may get an AI edit whether you asked for it or not.

OpenAI has been building toward this for months. In September it introduced AI-powered tools for advertisers and began testing business-sponsored agents with select US advertisers. The advertising business is growing up fast — from experiment to global ad network in under a year.

Why this matters

Google built a $200-billion-a-year ad machine by owning the moment someone types a search query. OpenAI is now openly bidding for the same moment. The one where someone asks ChatGPT what to cook for marathon week and gets shown a grocery delivery service. The company’s own example makes the ambition clear: it doesn’t want to just answer questions, it wants to sit at the point of purchase.

For users, the math is simple: the free tier now comes with ads in 89 countries, and that wall isn’t moving. For OpenAI’s IPO narrative, this week’s expansion gives bankers a growth chart to point at — 63 countries to 89 in a month, 20,000 advertisers to 100,000 in two. The harder question, the one no earnings deck can answer yet, is whether people trust an ad inside the AI they confide in. OpenAI is about to find out at global scale.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which countries will have ChatGPT ads now?

OpenAI expanded ChatGPT ads to 26 more countries on October 21, 2026, bringing the total to 89 worldwide — including Argentina, Colombia, Peru, Nigeria, South Africa, Ukraine, Bangladesh and Pakistan.

How many advertisers are running ChatGPT ads?

More than 100,000 advertisers have run campaigns on ChatGPT since OpenAI began testing ads in the US earlier this year — up from about 20,000 in late August, according to The Information.

Do paid ChatGPT subscribers see ads?

No. Ads appear only on the Free and Go plans. Plus, Pro and Enterprise subscriptions remain ad-free.

How much revenue does OpenAI make from ChatGPT ads?

OpenAI said in August that the ads business had reached an annualized revenue run rate of $1 billion, less than eight months after testing began.

Sources: Reuters, MadRobot, Geo TV, Marketing Newsroom, AI Weekly (citing The Information), TradingView.