Amazon announced it’s partnering with OpenAI to let its advertisers run ads in ChatGPT, starting with select brands in the U.S. It marks a vote of confidence from the world’s largest online retailer in OpenAI’s burgeoning ad business, which recently reached a $1 billion annualized revenue run rate. Amazon has heavily restricted access to its sprawling webstore from artificial intelligence platforms like ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude and Google’s Gemini, while investing in its own AI shopping tools. But in recent months, Amazon began quietly buying ads on ChatGPT, and it became the top retail company advertising on the platform between April and August.

Amazon said that conversational ad formats like those that appear in AI chatbots are the “fastest growing engagement opportunity” for brands to reach new and existing customers. OpenAI has said ads are served below the end of a ChatGPT response and are “clearly labeled” as sponsored. For example, if a shopper is looking for marathon training tips in ChatGPT, an ad for running shoes sold on Amazon could be shown in results.

“With Access to ChatGPT Ads, advertisers can now extend their campaigns further into where their customers are actively spending time in conversational chat platforms,” Chris Conetta, director of omnichannel supply at Amazon’s demand-side advertising platform, said in a statement.

Source