The move is significant because India is one of ChatGPT’s largest markets. OpenAI previously said the country had more than 100 million weekly active ChatGPT users, with a large portion using the free or lower-cost Go plans.

For OpenAI, this is about turning ChatGPT’s enormous free user base into a new source of revenue.

More than 50 brands are expected to launch campaigns in India initially, with advertising giants WPP and Omnicom among OpenAI’s first agency partners. OpenAI is also opening its self-serve Ads Manager in India, allowing businesses to create campaigns themselves from September, with daily budgets starting at around ₹725 ($7.60).

But OpenAI is trying to avoid turning ChatGPT into another traditional ad platform.

The company says ads will be clearly labeled and separated from ChatGPT’s answers, meaning advertisers won't be able to pay to influence what the AI says. OpenAI has also said its advertising system is designed to keep sponsored content separate from the model's organic responses.

Why it matters

This could be one of the biggest shifts in the AI business model yet.

For years, the dominant question was whether AI companies could justify the enormous cost of running models through subscriptions. OpenAI is now showing that advertising could become another major pillar of AI economics.

And India makes strategic sense. The country gives OpenAI access to a massive, highly engaged user base while also giving advertisers a new way to reach people at the exact moment they're researching products, comparing options, or making decisions.

That makes ChatGPT potentially very different from Google or Meta.

Instead of showing an ad because someone searched for a keyword or fits a demographic profile, AI advertising can appear inside a conversation where the user's intent is already explicit.

The upside

For users, ads could help OpenAI keep ChatGPT accessible to people who don't want—or can't afford—to pay for premium AI.

For businesses, the opportunity may be even bigger. Advertising inside an AI assistant could eventually mean reaching customers while they're actively asking questions such as what to buy, where to travel, which software to use, or which service best fits their needs.

For OpenAI, it creates a potentially enormous revenue stream without requiring every user to become a subscriber.

The downside

The obvious concern is trust.

People use ChatGPT because they expect answers to be useful and relatively independent. Once advertising enters the experience, users will naturally wonder whether a recommendation is genuinely the best option—or simply the one an advertiser paid to promote.

OpenAI's separation between ads and answers is therefore critical.

If the company can maintain that boundary, advertising could become a powerful way to subsidize free AI. If users begin to believe that commercial interests are influencing answers, however, it could undermine one of ChatGPT's biggest advantages: trust.

The bigger picture

India is only the latest step in OpenAI's advertising expansion. ChatGPT Ads have already rolled out in markets including the UK, Mexico, Brazil, Japan, and South Korea, following the initial U.S. testing phase.

The bigger story isn't simply that ChatGPT now has ads.

It's that AI assistants are becoming a new advertising surface.

Google built the internet's search economy around ads appearing next to information. Meta built one around ads appearing inside social feeds.

OpenAI is betting that the next advertising economy could happen inside the conversation itself.