ChatGPT Ads Now in 89 Countries as Advertisers Top 100,000

OpenAI expanded ChatGPT Ads to 26 more countries on October 21, 2026, pushing the ad-supported product into 89 markets worldwide and up from roughly 60-plus countries just a month earlier. The company said more than 100,000 advertisers have run campaigns on the platform since testing began about eight months ago, and reiterated that ads will keep showing only to people on ChatGPT's Free and Go plans — Plus, Pro and Enterprise subscribers stay ad-free. The new markets include 14 additional Latin American countries, among them Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Peru, plus a second group spanning Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia that includes Nigeria, South Africa, Serbia, Ukraine, Cambodia, Bangladesh and Pakistan.

What changed on October 21

In a post on its newsroom titled "ChatGPT Ads expands to 26 new countries as over 100,000 advertisers have used the platform," OpenAI said it is "expanding ChatGPT Ads to 26 additional countries, extending availability to 89 countries worldwide." The company framed the move around scale: it says more than 1.2 billion people use ChatGPT every week to explore ideas, compare options and make decisions, and that advertising is one of the ways it funds free and low-cost access to the chatbot for that audience. The post describes the expansion as building directly on "recent expansions across Europe and Southeast Asia and Taiwan," rather than a standalone launch.

Nothing about the ad format itself changed in this announcement — it is purely a geographic rollout. Ads in ChatGPT appear as labeled, separate elements attached to relevant conversations, not as alterations to the model's own answers. OpenAI has said repeatedly, including in this post, that "advertising does not influence the answers ChatGPT provides" and that it does not sell conversation data to advertisers.

Which countries were added

OpenAI's own post names 11 of the 26 new markets directly and describes the rest in general regional terms. Following earlier launches in Mexico and Brazil, the company said it is "bringing ChatGPT Ads to 14 more Latin American countries, including Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and Peru." A second batch spans "more markets across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, including Nigeria, South Africa, Serbia, Ukraine, Cambodia, Bangladesh, and Pakistan." OpenAI did not publish the complete list of all 26 countries in the post itself, so the remaining roughly 15 markets are not independently confirmed at publication time.

How the rollout got here

October's expansion is the latest step in a build-out that has moved in stages since ChatGPT Ads began testing. OpenAI first opened ad testing to logged-in adults in the United States, then widened availability region by region over the following months — to 31 European countries in August, to Southeast Asia and Taiwan in September, and now to 26 more markets in October. By the time of the Southeast Asia expansion, OpenAI said the product was available "across more than 60 countries"; industry trackers had put the precise figure at 63 by late September, which is consistent with Wednesday's jump to 89.

Advertiser participation has grown alongside the country count. Industry reporting had pegged the number of active advertisers at around 20,000 in late August, which means OpenAI's 100,000-plus figure — described as cumulative advertisers who have run campaigns since launch, not a live, current count — reflects roughly five-fold growth in under two months.

Who actually sees the ads

OpenAI was explicit on eligibility: "Ads will appear only on the Free and Go plans. Plus, Pro, and Enterprise subscriptions will remain ad-free." That is unchanged from every prior ChatGPT Ads announcement this year — the free tier and the low-cost ChatGPT Go plan carry the ad load, while paying Plus, Pro and Enterprise subscribers do not see them regardless of which of the 89 countries they're in. OpenAI's post does not explicitly address the Business plan, so it is unclear from this announcement alone whether Business seats are grouped with the ad-free paid tiers or left unaddressed.

OpenAI also restated the trust guardrails it has used to frame ads since the test began. Under what it calls its ads principles, the company says it keeps conversations private from advertisers, does not sell customer data, labels ads clearly, and keeps advertising separate from ChatGPT's own answers so that "advertising does not influence the answers ChatGPT provides." Those principles have not changed with this release; what's changed is simply how many countries they now apply in.

How the ads actually show up

OpenAI's post leans on a single illustrative example to explain the format: someone training for their first marathon might ask ChatGPT for race-week meal ideas, then refine the options by dietary preference and cooking time. A relevant ad — say, for a grocery delivery service — could appear alongside that specific, in-the-moment conversation, introducing an option the person hadn't already considered. The company's pitch to advertisers is that this is a "moment of consideration," closer to search intent than passive scrolling, which is why it says ads can be useful to both the person asking and the business answering.

How advertisers can buy ChatGPT Ads

Businesses in the newly added countries have two paths in, per OpenAI: "Advertisers can access ChatGPT Ads in these countries through technology partners or self-service access through Ads Manager." Self-serve access runs through ads.openai.com, where OpenAI has previously detailed a beta Ads Manager with CPC bidding and measurement tooling aimed at letting businesses run and track campaigns without an intermediary. Earlier in the year, OpenAI pitched that self-serve option specifically as a way to let smaller advertisers set budgets, choose objectives and monitor results without negotiating directly with an OpenAI sales team.

The technology-partner route, by contrast, covers advertisers who prefer to buy through existing ad-tech platforms they already use for other channels, rather than manage campaigns directly inside OpenAI's own interface. That matters for larger brands and agencies that run unified campaigns across search, social and other surfaces and want ChatGPT inventory folded into the same workflow rather than managed separately. OpenAI's post does not spell out country-by-country eligibility rules, minimum spend requirements, or which specific technology partners are live in each of the 26 new markets, so businesses in those countries will likely need to check directly with Ads Manager or their existing ad-tech provider to confirm availability.

Why OpenAI is pushing ads now

The timing lines up with a broader financial push. OpenAI said in August that its advertising business had reached a $1 billion annualized revenue run rate, and Reuters' reporting on Wednesday's expansion linked the country push directly to a goal of boosting revenue — reporting that has tied OpenAI's ad buildout more broadly to preparations for a possible future public listing, with other outlets citing company executives floating a listing as early as 2027. OpenAI itself has not framed the country expansion around an IPO in its own post; that context comes from outside financial reporting, not from the company's announcement. For comparison, rival Anthropic has taken a different path on monetization, pointedly keeping Claude ad-free and highlighting that contrast in its own marketing. The two companies' diverging bets on advertising versus subscription-only revenue are likely to keep showing up as both approach the public markets — a dynamic laid out in more detail in Anthropic's own IPO filing, which disclosed its revenue and losses ahead of a prospective listing.

What it means for ChatGPT users

For the roughly 1.2 billion weekly users OpenAI cites, the practical change is simply geographic: people on Free or Go plans in any of the 26 newly added countries will start seeing labeled ads in ChatGPT if they haven't already, joining users in the 63-or-so countries where ads were already live. Nothing changes for Plus, Pro or Enterprise subscribers anywhere, and nothing changes about how ads are supposed to be separated from ChatGPT's answers — OpenAI's standing claim is that the two systems don't influence each other. Users who want to avoid ads entirely still have the same lever they've had since testing began: upgrade off the Free or Go tier.

What it means for advertisers

For marketers, the expansion mainly widens the addressable footprint rather than changing how campaigns are built. Local businesses in Argentina, Nigeria or Pakistan, for instance, now have the same two buying paths — self-serve Ads Manager or a technology partner — that advertisers in the US, UK or Brazil have had for months. OpenAI's framing continues to emphasize "local businesses, regional brands, and international companies" together, suggesting the self-serve option in particular is meant to lower the bar for smaller advertisers who wouldn't typically have the scale to work through an ad-tech intermediary.

The growth in advertiser numbers is also a data point worth treating carefully. OpenAI's 100,000-plus figure covers everyone who has run a campaign at any point since launch, not a current, active advertiser base — a distinction the company's post doesn't spell out but that matters for anyone trying to size the program. Whether ad performance and pricing in these newer markets matches more mature markets like the US or Europe is not something OpenAI's post addresses, and independent measurement data for the newly added countries is not yet publicly available. Brands evaluating whether to advertise will likely be watching OpenAI's promised "additional formats, objectives, buying options, and measurement capabilities" as the clearer signal of how seriously the company is investing in ad quality, rather than country count alone.

Frequently asked questions

How many countries now have ChatGPT Ads? 89, after OpenAI added 26 more on October 21, 2026.

Which ChatGPT plans show ads? Only Free and Go. Plus, Pro and Enterprise stay ad-free; OpenAI's post doesn't address Business.

How many advertisers have used the platform? OpenAI says more than 100,000 advertisers have run campaigns since testing began roughly eight months ago — a cumulative figure, not a current active count.

How do businesses buy ChatGPT ads? Through self-serve Ads Manager at ads.openai.com, or through technology partners.

What's next

OpenAI's post frames this expansion as one step rather than a finish line. "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 company said, adding that it is "continuing to explore new ways for businesses to interact with consumers in more native ways in ChatGPT." OpenAI published a companion engineering post the same day detailing how it built its ad-targeting stack, a signal that further format changes — not just new countries — are likely to be the next visible move. For now, OpenAI says businesses interested in advertising can start at ads.openai.com, and the company has given no indication of when, or whether, the remaining gap to near-global coverage will close.

Written byTheo Park

Theo Park runs the AI desk at Pandromeda. He follows model launches from the frontier labs and the open-weight community, tracks the assistants and developer tools built on them, and explains what each release changes on pricing, capability and safety. His reporting leans on primary sources: model cards, technical reports, API documentation and the companies' own announcements.

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