OpenAI is rolling out advertising in ChatGPT, but the dozens of publishers who signed content licensing deals with the company won’t see a cent of the ad revenue.
Key Takeaways
- OpenAI is rolling out ChatGPT ads but won’t share revenue with licensed publishers.
- Free and $8/mo Go users see pay-per-view ads; paid tiers stay ad-free.
- Stark contrast with Perplexity, which has shared ad revenue with publishers since 2024.
The company announced last week that ads will begin appearing for U.S. users on free accounts and the new $8/month ChatGPT Go tier. Paid Pro, Business and Enterprise subscriptions remain ad-free.
The Information reported that OpenAI has already pitched the placements to dozens of advertisers. The model is pay-per-view rather than pay-per-click, with ads appearing below ChatGPT’s responses — not within them.
The contrast with Perplexity is striking. The AI search startup launched its Publishers’ Program in 2024, offering revenue sharing when a publisher’s content is referenced in an ad-supported interaction. Perplexity later expanded this with Comet Plus, which pays publishers for traffic from its AI browser.
OpenAI has made no similar commitment. Publishers including The Atlantic, Vox Media, Axel Springer and others signed licensing deals that give OpenAI access to their content for model training and real-time retrieval. Those deals cover content access — not a share of downstream advertising revenue.
“Ads do not influence the answers ChatGPT gives you,” OpenAI wrote in its announcement. “We keep your conversations with ChatGPT private from advertisers, and we never sell your data.”
The move represents a reversal from CEO Sam Altman’s earlier stance. “Ads plus AI is sort of uniquely unsettling to me,” he said at a Harvard Business School talk in May 2024. “I kind of think of ads as a last resort for us.”
With over 800 million weekly active users, ChatGPT’s free tier represents significant monetization potential. For publishers watching their traffic decline as users get answers without clicking through, the lack of revenue sharing adds insult to injury.
