Ahmed Shaami
OpenAI announced on 16 September 2026 that it is testing Sponsored Agents in ChatGPT, an ad format where clicking an ad opens a clearly labelled conversation with the advertiser’s own AI agent instead of sending the user to a website. The company also shipped ChatGPT Ads integrations with HubSpot and Shopify, and added natural language campaign management through an Ads Manager plugin. Sponsored Agents are being tested with selected advertisers in the United States.
How the format works
In OpenAI’s own announcement, the example given is a shopper who sees an ad for a dining table and still has questions: whether it fits the room, how many people it seats, how to care for the finish. Rather than clicking through to a product page, the user can open a conversation with a business-sponsored agent and ask those questions directly, then follow a link to the business site when ready.
OpenAI is explicit that the sponsored conversation is separated in two ways. It is distinct from ChatGPT’s independent answers, and it sits apart from the original conversation the user started. Reporting on the pilot named Wayfair in furniture and Angi in home services as early testers, both categories where a buyer typically has to describe a problem before a recommendation is even possible.
Marketing tooling shipped alongside it
The less discussed half of the announcement is the plumbing. Advertisers can now create, update and analyse campaigns using plain language prompts inside ChatGPT through the Ads Manager plugin, turning a website or a brief into a campaign draft. Ads Manager itself now suggests copy and imagery based on the landing page and campaign objective, with the advertiser reviewing before anything goes live. There is also an opt-in setting that adapts existing headlines and descriptions to the context of a conversation and automatically translates ad copy into the user’s preferred language.
On the integration side, HubSpot is OpenAI’s first CRM partner and Shopify its first ecommerce partner. Businesses using HubSpot can connect a ChatGPT Ads account and manage campaigns and leads there. US-based Shopify merchants can install a ChatGPT Ads app from the Shopify App Store, with products already wired through Shopify Catalog. OpenAI said the Shopify app becomes available in other ChatGPT Ads markets starting 23 September.
The click changes shape
For anyone who sells marketing services or runs a small business online, the automatic translation line deserves a second read. An advertiser writing in English can have copy rendered into the language a user prefers, which alters who can realistically be reached without hiring local copywriters. That cuts both ways for freelancers: it removes some translation work while making cross-border advertising cheaper for the small clients who hire them.
The bigger structural change is what an ad click now produces. For twenty years the goal of an ad was a session on a website you control, where your analytics, your funnel and your retargeting pixel live. A Sponsored Agent conversation happens inside ChatGPT. The advertiser gets a qualified, high-intent exchange, but the discovery and comparison step happens on someone else’s surface, and the website visit becomes an outcome of the conversation rather than its starting point.
This is the same pattern visible elsewhere in the assistant market. Meta has been pushing agents into WhatsApp Business setup, placing the interaction inside a messaging app rather than on a merchant’s own site. Different platform, same relocation of where a customer first meets a brand.
The open question for small advertisers
What nobody can answer yet is whether this format is affordable for anyone below enterprise scale. A Sponsored Agent needs a brand to have something worth conversing about: a real catalogue, real service coverage, real answers to follow-up questions. Wayfair and Angi have all of that. A three-person agency in Lahore or a boutique retailer in Dubai may find the format either a genuine equaliser, because a good agent can answer as thoroughly as a big brand’s, or an expensive club they cannot join. The pilot is US-only and limited to selected advertisers, so the pricing, targeting controls and reporting that small businesses would actually need are not public. Those details, when they arrive, will decide whether this is an opportunity or another layer of ad spend concentrated at the top.
Sources: OpenAI, Reimagining advertising with AI, ContentGrip, Shopifreaks.
