OpenAI today extended advertising in ChatGPT to 26 more countries, taking the number of markets where its ads are sold to 89, and said that more than 100,000 advertisers have run campaigns on the platform since ads launched just over eight months ago. The announcement, published on the OpenAI website under the title "ChatGPT Ads expands to 26 new countries as over 100,000 advertisers have used the platform," adds 14 Latin American countries and a further group across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. It names only 11 of the 26.

In Short

OpenAI shows ads inside ChatGPT, and today it started selling those ads in 26 more countries, so the ads are now sold in 89 countries in total. Businesses in places like Argentina, Nigeria and Pakistan can now pay to have their products appear to people using the free and cheapest paid versions of ChatGPT. OpenAI also says more than 100,000 advertisers have tried the system since it started, but that number counts everyone who ever ran a campaign, not how many advertise today or how much they spend.

What OpenAI published

The post is dated October 21, 2026, carries OpenAI's "Product" tag and is credited simply to "OpenAI." It runs to six short sections and contains a single third-party quote, from L'Oreal. There are no tables, no country list beyond the examples in the text, and no figures on spend, prices or results.

Its opening paragraph restates the audience claim OpenAI has used throughout the autumn. "More than 1.2 billion people use ChatGPT each week to explore ideas, compare options and make decisions," according to OpenAI. That figure describes all ChatGPT users. Ads, however, reach only part of that base. "Ads will appear only on the Free and Go plans. Plus, Pro, and Enterprise subscriptions will remain ad-free," the post states. The Business plan is not named in that sentence, though the "only" wording on Free and Go places it outside the ad surface as well.

The headline number follows. "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," according to OpenAI. The company presents the move as a continuation: "This launch builds on our recent expansions across Europe and Southeast Asia and Taiwan." Link annotations in the page point those two phrases to OpenAI's earlier posts on the European rollout, dated August 18, 2026, and the Southeast Asia and Taiwan rollout, dated September 23, 2026.

OpenAI also restates the rationale it gave when it first announced ads. "Advertising helps support free and low-cost access to ChatGPT for people around the world," the post says, before adding a line from the company's mission statement about artificial general intelligence benefiting "all of humanity."

Which countries were added

The post gives the 26 new markets in two groups and names examples from each rather than the full list.

Latin America

"Following our launches in Mexico and Brazil, we're bringing ChatGPT Ads to 14 more Latin American countries, including Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and Peru," according to OpenAI. That leaves 10 of the 14 Latin American additions unnamed in the post. Mexico and Brazil, the reference points OpenAI uses, went live together in mid-August. PPC Land reported that ChatGPT Ads went live in Mexico and Brazil as OpenAI's first Spanish- and Portuguese-language markets, bringing the publicly counted total to nine at the time.

Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia

The remaining 12 markets are described in one sentence. OpenAI says it is "also launching in more markets across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, including Nigeria, South Africa, Serbia, Ukraine, Cambodia, Bangladesh, and Pakistan." Seven of those 12 are named; five are not.

Taken together, OpenAI names 11 of the 26 countries it added today: Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Nigeria, South Africa, Serbia, Ukraine, Cambodia, Bangladesh and Pakistan. The other 15 are not identified anywhere in the post, and none of the 26 comes with its own start date. The text says "today" for the expansion as a whole, which suggests a single activation rather than a phased rollout, but the page does not state that every market went live at once.

How 89 adds up

The arithmetic is consistent with OpenAI's own earlier figures. PPC Land reported that when ChatGPT ads arrived in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and Taiwan on September 23, OpenAI described availability as "more than 60 countries," while its Ads Manager help page listed 63. Adding today's 26 to 63 gives 89. PPC Land's own count of markets with a public activation date stood at 48 at that point, so roughly 15 countries on the help page had no announced start date before today, mostly in the Middle East and North Africa. Today's post does not resolve that gap. It mentions the Middle East as a region but names no Middle Eastern country.

The path to 89 has been compressed into roughly two months. Nine markets were live on August 17. Sponsored placements began across 31 European markets on August 24, and India went live on August 29, giving OpenAI 32 new markets in five days. The Southeast Asian group followed on September 23. Today's addition is the largest single batch outside Europe.

How advertisers buy in the new markets

The post devotes one sentence to access. "Advertisers can access ChatGPT Ads in these countries through technology partners or self-service access through Ads Manager," according to OpenAI. That matters because self-serve has not always arrived with a new market. India launched in August without self-serve access, with buying routed through OpenAI's Ads Solutions team and agency and technology partners, and OpenAI said only that Ads Manager was "coming soon." The Southeast Asian markets, by contrast, had all three routes from day one, with self-service limited to advertisers whose legal entity is based in a listed country.

Today's post does not mention the Ads Solutions team or agency partners for the 26 new markets, does not name any technology partner, and does not say whether the legal-entity restriction applies. It gives no billing currencies. That is a practical gap: a minimum campaign spend table surfaced in August listed daily floors in ten currencies, from 25 US dollars to 725 Indian rupees, and the Southeast Asian launch added no new currencies to it. Whether advertisers in Argentina, Nigeria or Pakistan are billed in local currency or in US dollars is not stated.

The post is equally silent on ad formats, targeting options and languages. The tools available in existing markets have changed quickly. When OpenAI opened its Ads Manager to all US businesses on May 5, it added cost-per-click bidding next to the original CPM model, which had launched at 60 US dollars per thousand impressions, along with pixel-based tracking and a Conversions API. Campaigns are built from ad groups that carry "context hints" describing relevant conversation topics, rather than keyword lists. More recently, ChatGPT Ads gained the ability to restrict campaigns to the iOS app, the Android app or the web. None of this is addressed for the new markets.

Language is an open question that the post does not raise. OpenAI described Mexico and Brazil as its first Spanish- and Portuguese-language markets. The new additions bring languages such as Bengali, Urdu, Khmer, Ukrainian and Serbian into the mix, alongside English-speaking markets like Nigeria and South Africa. The post does not say whether ads can be written in each local language or whether context hints work across them.

What the 100,000 figure measures

The number in the headline is the most quotable element of the announcement, and the post defines it in only one way: advertisers that "have run campaigns on ChatGPT" since launch "just over eight months ago." US ads launched on February 9, 2026, which places the eight-month mark in early October.

That wording describes a cumulative total. It counts every advertiser that has run at least one campaign at any point since February, including any that ran a single test and stopped. The post does not say how many advertisers are active now, how many ran campaigns in any given week or month, whether advertisers buying through technology partners are counted individually or as one account per partner, or whether a minimum spend or delivery threshold applies before an advertiser is counted. It gives no breakdown by country, size, category or buying route.

Earlier figures show how far the number has moved, though none was measured the same way. When the pilot passed 100 million US dollars in annualised revenue on March 26, PPC Land reported that more than 600 advertisers were involved. By late September, OpenAI was describing "tens of thousands" of businesses advertising, without a definition. Third-party trackers have produced weekly snapshots: Adthena counted 7,306 unique advertisers in the week of July 9 and 12,075 in the week of August 31, a rise of about 65%. Sensor Tower counted about 1,200 unique US advertisers in August alone, from panel data it describes as directional.

Those numbers are not comparable with each other or with OpenAI's figure. Adthena and Sensor Tower observe ads from outside the platform during defined periods. OpenAI's count is internal and accumulates over eight months. What can be said is that a cumulative total of 100,000 is consistent with weekly active counts in the low tens of thousands, given turnover and the addition of 80 markets since mid-August. What cannot be said from the post is how many of those 100,000 are spending now, or how much.

Revenue and results: not in the post

OpenAI publishes no revenue figure in today's announcement. The most recent number on record came from outside the company's own posts. PPC Land reported that ChatGPT ads passed a 1 billion US dollar annualised run rate, first reported by Digiday on August 31 and derived from roughly 83 million US dollars in monthly revenue. A run rate is a projection from a single month. Sensor Tower's data published at the same time showed the category mix shifting, with financial services rising from 2% to 13% of tracked US spend between April and August, while shopping and retail fell from 37% to 21%.

Nor does the post include any performance data. The only advertiser voice is Asmita Dubey, chief digital and marketing officer at L'Oreal Group. "At L'Oreal our culture is to 'seize what is starting.' Today, as billions of consumers use AI models to discover and explore beauty, our mission remains centered on delivering meaningful value and building deeper connections," Dubey said, according to the post. "Testing early with OpenAI enables us to pioneer helpful experiences and journeys, from discovery, to evaluation, to agentic commerce, ensuring L'Oreal remains the most trusted, expert answer wherever beauty conversations take place."

The quote describes intent rather than outcomes. It does not say in which markets L'Oreal has advertised, what formats it used, or whether the tests produced sales. The reference to agentic commerce points at a direction OpenAI has been testing in the US rather than at anything available in the new markets. Outcome data has instead come from third parties. A Similarweb and Graphite report in late September found that worldwide weekly click-through rates on ChatGPT ads rose 112% from late March, with Brazil recording the highest all-time rate at 1.91% against 0.73% in the US, and Mexico the lowest share of ad-eligible users reached, at 27.8%. Those figures came from vendors that sell related products and covered only about a month of Latin American data.

The example OpenAI uses

Instead of results, the post offers a scenario. "Someone training for their first marathon might start by exploring meal ideas for race week, then narrow their options based on their dietary preferences and how much time they have to cook. An ad relevant to that conversation could introduce them to a grocery delivery service they hadn't considered," according to OpenAI.

The example illustrates how OpenAI wants advertisers to think about placement: matched to the state of a conversation rather than to a typed keyword. "For local businesses, regional brands, and international companies, ChatGPT Ads gives businesses a way to introduce their products during these moments of consideration, when people are still evaluating their options and deciding what's right for them," the post states. The page opens with a similar line aimed at the same range of buyers: "From local businesses to global brands, more advertisers can now reach people as they explore, compare and decide what to buy in ChatGPT."

Principles restated, with some omissions

A short section repeats commitments OpenAI made when it first described its ad plans. "Guided by OpenAI's ads principles, we keep conversations private from advertisers and do not sell customer data. Ads in ChatGPT are clearly labeled and separate from ChatGPT's answers, and advertising does not influence the answers ChatGPT provides," according to OpenAI. The phrase "ads principles" links to the company's January post on its approach to advertising.

That January post, which PPC Land covered when OpenAI first said it would test ads for logged-in adult Free and Go users in the US, also said ads would not appear for users under 18 or users OpenAI predicts to be minors, and would not appear near sensitive subjects such as health, mental health or politics. Today's post does not restate the age exclusion or the topic restrictions for the new markets. Political advertising rules differ across the 26 jurisdictions, and the post contains nothing on political ads, regulated categories or country-specific rules.

Independent verification of the privacy claims has limits that PPC Land has documented. On October 5, Integral Ad Science said a select group of ChatGPT advertisers would receive its brand safety reporting in a trial, while OpenAI's own post the same day described suitability pilots with DoubleVerify and IAS run in a test setting that does not expose private user conversations. The post does not say whether those pilots extend outside the US.

What comes next, according to OpenAI

The closing section lists four areas of work without dates. "With ChatGPT Ads now available in 89 countries, our next phase of growth will include the development of additional formats, objectives, buying options, and measurement capabilities. We are also continuing to explore new ways for businesses to interact with consumers in more native ways in ChatGPT," according to OpenAI.

Some of that work is already visible in US tests. On September 16, OpenAI said advertisers could run ChatGPT ads from HubSpot and Shopify, and described a US test of Sponsored Agents, in which a user who clicks an ad can open a separate, labelled conversation with an advertiser's AI agent. On October 5, PPC Land reported that OpenAI would test ads during ChatGPT image generation in the US, alongside a list of 18 named measurement vendors. Today's post does not say when, or whether, those tests will reach any of the 89 markets.

The post ends by pointing businesses to ads.openai.com.

What the post leaves out

Set against the questions advertisers in the new markets are likely to have, the gaps are substantial. The post does not give:

  • the full list of 26 countries, of which 15 are unnamed
  • per-country activation dates, or confirmation that all 26 went live today
  • billing currencies, minimum spend or pricing for the new markets
  • supported ad languages, formats or targeting options in each market
  • whether the Ads Solutions team or agency partners sell in the new markets, or which technology partners are live there
  • any eligibility rule for advertisers, such as where a legal entity must be registered for self-service
  • spend, revenue or performance figures, globally or by market
  • a definition of "run campaigns" behind the 100,000 figure, or an active-advertiser count
  • advertiser categories, restricted categories or political advertising rules by country
  • the age and sensitive-topic exclusions OpenAI described in January

Why this matters for the marketing community

For advertisers already buying ChatGPT inventory, the expansion widens the set of markets that can be reached from one account. For agencies and brands in the 26 countries, it is the first opportunity to buy placements inside a chat product that OpenAI says reaches 1.2 billion people a week, although the ad-eligible audience in each market is smaller and unpublished.

The speed of the rollout stands out. In mid-August, ChatGPT ads were sold in nine countries. Ten weeks later, the figure is 89. That pace has come with uneven documentation: activation dates for some markets were never announced, currency tables have lagged launches, and self-serve access has arrived with some groups and not others. Today's post continues that pattern by naming fewer than half of the markets it adds.

The 100,000 figure is a useful marker of how many businesses have tried ChatGPT ads, but it says little about how many stayed or what they spent. PPC Land has tracked the narrower measures that exist, from Adthena's weekly counts to Sensor Tower's monthly US totals, and none of them approaches the cumulative number OpenAI reports. Until OpenAI publishes an active-advertiser count or spend data by market, the expansion's commercial weight in Latin America, Africa and South Asia will be visible only through third-party observation.

Timeline

Summary

Who: OpenAI, which sells ads in ChatGPT, and advertisers in 26 additional countries, including Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Nigeria, South Africa, Serbia, Ukraine, Cambodia, Bangladesh and Pakistan. L'Oreal Group's chief digital and marketing officer, Asmita Dubey, is the only advertiser quoted.

What: OpenAI extended ChatGPT Ads to 26 more countries, bringing availability to 89, with access through technology partners or self-service through Ads Manager. It said more than 100,000 advertisers have run campaigns since ads launched, a cumulative figure with no active count, spend or definition attached. Ads remain limited to the Free and Go plans.

When: Today, October 21, 2026, just over eight months after the US ad pilot began on February 9, 2026.

Where: Fourteen Latin American countries and twelve across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. OpenAI names 11 of the 26; the other 15 are not identified.

Why: OpenAI says advertising supports free and low-cost access to ChatGPT and gives businesses a way to reach people while they compare options. The expansion follows a rapid rollout from nine markets in mid-August, and OpenAI says its next phase will add formats, objectives, buying options and measurement capabilities, without giving dates.