OpenAI now shows ads inside ChatGPT conversations in Pakistan. The company rolled out advertising to 26 new countries on October 21, pushing its total reach to 89 markets worldwide. As a result, every Pakistani using ChatGPT’s free tier will now encounter sponsored messages between responses.
The move taps into a user base of 1.2 billion weekly active users. However, not everyone will see ads. OpenAI reserved them strictly for Free and Go plan users, while Plus, Pro, and Enterprise subscribers will stay ad-free. The company also made clear that ads will never shape how ChatGPT answers a question.
As per the company:
Since we launched ads just over eight months ago, over 100,000 advertisers have run campaigns on ChatGPT. Today, we’re expanding ChatGPT Ads to 26 additional countries, extending availability to 89 countries worldwide. This launch builds on our recent expansions across Europe and Southeast Asia and Taiwan.
Pakistan joins a wave that includes 14 Latin American countries like Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and Peru. It also covers Nigeria, South Africa, Serbia, Ukraine, Cambodia, and Bangladesh.
What makes this expansion notable is the speed behind it. OpenAI launched its first ads just eight months ago in February. By March, the ad business was earning roughly $100 million per year. Then by August, that number jumped tenfold to $1 billion. In total, more than 100,000 advertisers have now bought campaigns on the platform. OpenAI wants that revenue to hit $2.5 billion before the year ends.
Early results help explain the rush. For instance, one online retailer reported earning 3x what it spent on ChatGPT ads within just 28 days. Meanwhile, a tech company found that over 80% of its ChatGPT traffic came from entirely new customers. These numbers drove advertiser counts from roughly 20,000 in late August to over 100,000 by October.
Meanwhile, rival Anthropic has taken a completely different path. The company pledged to keep its chatbot Claude ad-free permanently. Anthropic even ran a Super Bowl campaign earlier this year mocking OpenAI’s decision to sell ads inside an AI assistant.
Still, the market appears to be siding with OpenAI for now. ChatGPT’s share of consumer product searches rose from 2% to 30% over the past two years. That shift has turned the chatbot into an advertising channel that brands simply cannot ignore. OpenAI is also building this ad machine ahead of a reported stock market listing planned for 2027, with the company currently valued at $852 billion.
Advertisers looking to get in can access ChatGPT ads through major agency partners or directly through OpenAI’s self-service Ads Manager. The platform offers both impression-based and click-based pricing, with OpenAI recommending a starting bid of $3 to $5 per click. Several of the world’s largest advertising agencies already run active campaigns.
For Pakistani businesses specifically, this expansion creates a direct path to reach over a billion weekly users through a single platform. Furthermore, OpenAI plans to keep expanding the ad toolkit. The company introduced ads inside image generation in early October. In addition, it started testing “Sponsored Agents” in September, where tapping an ad launches a branded AI conversation instead of opening a webpage.
