ChatGPT users on the mobile app saw roughly twice as many ads per hour this July as they did in April, according to Business Insider. The jump coincides with a sharp expansion in the pool of advertisers buying those slots.
US data from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower estimates OpenAI has nearly tripled its advertiser count on ChatGPT, from about 300 in April to more than 820 in July. At least 160 advertisers joined in July alone.
The advertiser mix has shifted too. Tech companies including Speechify, Jotform and Natural Intelligence dominated the top ranks in April. By July they had fallen out of Sensor Tower’s top 10, replaced by Booking Holdings, Intuit, Home Depot and L.L.Bean.
Scheels, a sports clothing retailer, was the only company to sit in the top 10 in both months.
The shift extends beyond advertiser count. Retail still accounts for the largest share of ChatGPT ad spending, but its dominance is slipping as financial services, travel and tourism, and jobs and education gain ground.
Financial services has grown the fastest, rising from 2% of ad spend in April to 12% in July.
Sensor Tower identified BestMoney.com as one of ChatGPT’s top advertisers in July, saying the broader mix suggests OpenAI is diversifying its advertiser base — a potentially positive sign for monetization.
The numbers remain a fraction of OpenAI’s ambitions. The company reported $100 million in annual recurring ad revenue in May — a rounding error next to Google’s $81.6 billion and Meta’s $59.3 billion in ad revenue in their most recent quarters.
OpenAI serves ads to users on its free tier and its $8-a-month Go plan, which together account for the vast majority of a user base Sensor Tower estimated at 1 billion monthly app users in May.
OpenAI ads chief Dave Dugan told Business Insider in June that the company initially kept ad placements deliberately limited to protect the user experience. Four months in, he said, the team has grown more confident about scaling up. For now, ads appear beneath ChatGPT’s answers, while OpenAI avoids placing them alongside queries about personal health or politics.
For publishers and media buyers, the bigger story is not today’s ad revenue but where the next wave of attention is forming. A chatbot with a billion users putting ads beneath its answers creates a new pool of inventory competing with search and social for the same budgets.
OpenAI’s self-serve ad platform, launched in May, remains rudimentary compared with the mature systems run by Google and Meta. That makes the early surge in big-brand spending look more like testing than a long-term commitment.
For newsrooms already watching referral traffic decline as readers turn to chatbots instead of clicking links, the stakes are higher. The way OpenAI builds out its ad business could shape where publishers reach audiences — and how they get paid — as search behavior shifts.
OpenAI’s next steps include expanding into new markets and adding targeting tools, both designed to pull more advertising dollars into an app most people still use for free. The bigger question is whether advertisers stick around once the novelty wears off. July’s numbers suggest growing interest, but not yet lasting commitment.
