ChatGPT ads hit the Web — let’s have a look

A few weeks ago, OpenAI confirmed that it was planning to introduce ads to ChatGPT to the free and cheapest subscription tiers, and now we’re already seeing them in action, at least on public beta version of the Android app and in the web ChatGPT app. OpenAI has been reasonably transparent about its ad-related plans, and it doesn’t try to sneak the freshly-added ads by the users. Instead, the users are greeted with a full-screen onboarding, and the ads themselves will be marked with a ‘Sponsored’ tag.

The onboarding screens tell you about what ads you are going to see and why, teach you about ad controls and, most importantly, reassure you that the chatbot’s responses themselves will remain unaffected by advertisers.

The ads you see will depend on your current conversation with the chatbot — however, OpenAI claims that the advertiser will not get access to your chats, memories, or any personal information, only to aggregate ad view and click counts. Other factors that will influence the ads you see include your past conversations and your history of interacting with previously seen ads, both positive (clicking on the ad) and negative (hiding the ad). Yes, you will be able to hide the ad from an overflow menu. The same menu will offer you more information about the ad, an option to report it, or even “ask ChatGPT” about it.

Screenshot by Tibor Blaho on X

If you request more information about the ad, a pop-up will display basic details, like who the ad is sponsored by and why you are seeing it, alongside with a button to purchase an ad-free subscription, of course.

Screenshot by Tibor Blaho on X

Finally, and potentially the most important part of it all, is the “Ads control” page. On it, users will be able to turn off ad personalization, but not entirely. The current chat will always retain at least some relevancy to the displayed ads, although it’s not clear to what degree. At the same time, you can completely toggle off personalization based on past chats and memory. Notably, it will also be possible to delete all ad-related data without affecting any of your chats.

Screenshot by Tibor Blaho on X

As much as we may not be thrilled about ads invading yet another digital space, we have to admit that the initial implementation, at least, could be far worse. Time will tell if this ad format is going to stay the same for the foreseeable future. Will OpenAI follow the path of many other companies, starting with reasonable ads but eventually sliding into more intrusive formats?

Either way, for now it looks like we’re dealing with precisely the type of ads we predicted in our previous article — outside chatbot’s reply window, clearly separated from the actual reply and labelled. Any ad blocker worth its salt (including AdGuard, of course) should be able to block such ads without any issues — that is, in the web version. Blocking ads inside apps on Android is much more tricky so we’ll reserve judgement until we can see those ads with our own eyes.