OpenAI on September 16, 2026 began testing Sponsored Agents, an ad unit that opens a separate, labelled conversation with a business-sponsored agent once a ChatGPT user clicks, and wired ChatGPT Ads into HubSpot and Shopify as its first CRM and ecommerce partners. The same post rolled out prompt-driven campaign management inside ChatGPT, AI-suggested ad copy and imagery, and an opt-in setting that rewrites headlines to fit a conversation and translates them into the reader's language.

In Short

OpenAI is testing ChatGPT ads that you can click to open a separate chat with a company's own AI helper, and it has plugged ChatGPT Ads into HubSpot and Shopify so businesses can build and track those ads from software they already use. It matters because ChatGPT advertising went from nothing in February to a $1 billion annual run rate by the end of August, and these tools put the channel within reach of small businesses that never had an agency. From now on a ChatGPT ad can be drafted from a website link or a prompt, translated automatically into the reader's language and, in the US test, followed by a conversation that the advertiser sponsors.

A second conversation, behind the ad

The format at the centre of the post is short in description and long in implication. Once a relevant ad appears, a user can choose to open a conversation with an agent sponsored by the advertiser, ask follow-up questions, explain what matters to them and, when ready, follow a link to the business's website. OpenAI's example is domestic: a shopper who sees a dining table in an ad and wants to know whether it fits the room, how many people it seats and how to care for the finish. "Sponsored Agents give users the option to go deeper," the post states.

Two boundaries are drawn explicitly. The conversation is clearly labelled, and it is walled off from the rest of ChatGPT. "The conversation with a Sponsored Agent is distinct from ChatGPT's independent answers and separate from the original conversation that the user started in ChatGPT," according to OpenAI. The scope is narrow for now: "Sponsored Agents are now being tested with select advertisers in the United States."

That architecture answers a question the platform set itself in January. When OpenAI confirmed advertising on January 16, 2026, it promised ads that were clearly labelled and kept apart from organic answers, and it committed to keeping conversations private from advertisers. A sponsored agent is, by definition, a conversation with an advertiser's system. Routing it into a separate thread that the user opens by clicking preserves the letter of the separation principle. What the post does not say is what, if anything, the advertiser receives from the exchange, which model runs the agent, who writes its instructions, or how the unit is priced. An email OpenAI sent to advertisers the same day, published by Search Engine Roundtable, was more tentative than the post, describing a conversation that users may be able to start rather than one they can.

Why does one test with a handful of advertisers matter? Because it changes what an ad is on this surface. Since the pilot opened on February 9, 2026, a ChatGPT ad has been a card at the foot of an answer, or since August a carousel of them: advertiser name, favicon, a headline of roughly 16 characters, a description of roughly 32, an image and a landing page, as OpenAI's documentation set out when self-serve buying opened on May 5. A card that opens into a dialogue with the advertiser's own agent is new to ChatGPT, and it sits closer to a messaging ad than to a search ad. Amazon Ads, which opened a pilot on September 10 extending Amazon DSP campaigns into ChatGPT, had its director of omnichannel supply, Chris Conetta, describe conversational ads as the fastest-growing engagement opportunity for brands. Six days later, the owner of the surface built the conversation into the ad itself.

Campaigns by prompt

The second part of the post concerns how the buying work gets done. "Many of the tasks involved in building and managing campaigns, from translating a brief into an ad to analyzing performance, can take significant time," OpenAI writes. Advertisers can now use natural-language prompts to create, update and analyse campaigns directly in ChatGPT through an Ads Manager plugin. A website or a brief becomes a campaign, performance is explained in plain terms, and the system returns recommendations on what to do next.

The plugin is not new to everyone. OpenAI described it to advertisers in the beta programme in a product update circulated in the week beginning August 31, and PPC Land reported on September 3 that the tool previews recommended changes and asks for confirmation before applying them, with setup running through the Plugins directory followed by an account connection. That email named ChatGPT and Codex as hosts. The September 16 post names ChatGPT alone, together with ChatGPT Work, the agent OpenAI released on July 9 when it folded the Codex desktop app and the Atlas browser into a single application built around plugins for Slack, Microsoft Teams, Google Drive, email, calendars and CRM systems.

The confirmation gate is the detail that places the product inside the agentic AI tooling that rival platforms shipped earlier by a different route. Meta opened its ad system to Claude and ChatGPT with write access from the first day on April 29, 2026, and X shipped an ads server exposing 23 tools, ten of them writes, on August 24. Those releases published a protocol endpoint that any compliant agent can call. OpenAI's plugin lives inside OpenAI's own surfaces, and the post does not say whether a third-party agent can reach the same functions. For an agency that wants one agent operating several ad platforms, that difference is operational rather than philosophical.

Suggested copy and imagery

Inside Ads Manager itself, a drafting assistant now proposes copy and images derived from the landing page and the campaign objective. "Advertisers remain in control: they can review and edit suggestions before choosing whether to add them to a campaign," the post states. The generator has little room to work with inside the fixed card.

Here the post and the advertiser email diverge. The post describes the assistance as rolling out. The email, as published by Search Engine Roundtable, described the same feature as currently in testing, with broader availability expected in the coming weeks. Both documents carry the date September 16, 2026. An advertiser who opens Ads Manager and finds no suggestions is not necessarily excluded; the feature may simply not have reached the account yet.

Copy that adapts, and translates itself

The third tool is a setting rather than an assistant. Advertisers can opt into text customisation which, once enabled, adapts existing headlines and descriptions to better fit the context of a conversation and automatically translates the copy into the user's preferred language. The email adds that advertisers keep control over whether the setting is on.

The timing follows the map. ChatGPT ads reached 31 European markets on August 24 and India on August 29, taking the publicly counted total to 41, days after Brazil and Mexico went live on August 17. A US advertiser holding a single English creative now has inventory in dozens of languages it never wrote for. In Europe, OpenAI told users on August 15that ad selection starts with the current chat topic, general location and device type only; rewriting copy to match the conversation draws on the first of those signals, the one already used to pick the ad. The mechanism has a distant cousin in search, where responsive search ads combine headlines and descriptions at serving time, though OpenAI's version rewrites text rather than reordering it.

HubSpot: the CRM becomes the buying desk

OpenAI's rationale for the partnerships takes one sentence: "Adopting a new advertising channel shouldn't require businesses to rebuild the way they work." Businesses managing customers in HubSpot can connect a ChatGPT Ads account, create ads, track performance and follow up on leads without leaving HubSpot, with the work informed by what HubSpot already holds on those customers, according to OpenAI.

HubSpot published its own release over Business Wire on the morning of the same day. According to HubSpot, it is the first CRM to integrate with ChatGPT Ads, and the arrangement extends a relationship in which HubSpot was, in 2025, the first CRM with a connector to ChatGPT. Weekly active users of that connector have grown 250 percent, HubSpot says, without disclosing the base. The updated connector runs email campaigns, creates landing pages for ads, analyses closed-won deals and works on AI-search visibility from inside ChatGPT. Brian Landsman, OpenAI's vice-president of global partnerships, is quoted in HubSpot's release using almost the same sentence as the OpenAI post about not making businesses rebuild the way they work.

Money is attached. HubSpot and OpenAI are offering what they call an AI Growth Bundle: HubSpot Starter and HubSpot credits at up to 65 percent off for one year, a buy-one-get-one-free offer on ChatGPT Business seats for a year, and a $750 match on ChatGPT Ads spend for new accounts opened by September 30, according to HubSpot. The ad match is an acquisition subsidy with a two-week deadline, and the base offer is HubSpot's entry tier rather than its Professional or Enterprise products.

The integration itself predates the release. HubSpot solutions partners documented a beta of a ChatGPT network inside HubSpot's ads tool in mid-July 2026, describing a connection made with an API key generated in the OpenAI Ads dashboard, automatic UTM tagging that ties ad clicks to contact records, and workflow enrolment for contacts who engage with an ad. What changed on September 16 is the status and the marketing, not the plumbing.

HubSpot has been building toward this position for more than a year. It was the first CRM platform with a ChatGPT deep research connector in June 2025 and shipped the first CRM connector for Anthropic's Claude on July 29, 2025. On May 4, 2026, its chief product and technology officer, Duncan Lennox, published a plan for full API parity and an open MCPserver so that any agent could run the CRM. In April the company had added an answer engine optimisation tool at $50 per month, tracking brand visibility across ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity after reporting a 27 percent year-over-year fall in organic traffic across its customers. According to HubSpot, customers of that product now have paid and organic AI search in one place.

Shopify: a free app that has been live since September 3

The second partner is aimed at merchants rather than sales teams. US-based Shopify merchants can use a new ChatGPT Ads app in the Shopify App Store to create and manage ChatGPT campaigns. "Products are already integrated through Shopify Catalog, so merchants can start running these ads and tracking performance right away," the post states in the version captured for this article. The app will be available internationally in markets where ChatGPT Ads run, starting September 23.

The text of the post moved after publication. The captured version carried the Shopify Catalog sentence. By September 17, the live page described the app as a way to integrate a merchant's product catalogue and measurement tools in order to create campaigns and track performance, with the same September 23 date, and the Shopify Catalog wording was gone. The substance is unchanged; the named integration path is no longer in the current text. The advertiser email, for its part, gave no date, saying only that international availability was planned for later in the month.

The Shopify App Store listing, reviewed on September 17, records OpenAI as the developer, a free price and a release date of September 3, 2026, thirteen days before OpenAI's post. According to the listing, the app connects an existing ChatGPT Ads account or creates a new one from Shopify, syncs product inventory automatically between the store and ChatGPT, builds ads from the product catalogue, runs campaigns using a Shopify pixel and conversion events, and reports performance without leaving Shopify. It is filed under Ads, works with Checkout and Shopify Admin, and supports English only. Its feature tags cover targeting by audience segment, custom audience, device, location, platform and product category, along with bid optimisation, pixel management and reporting on spend, click-through rate, conversion tracking and cost per acquisition.

The permissions section is where the mechanics show. According to the listing, the app reads customer names and email addresses, IP addresses, browser and operating system details, browsing behaviour and a client ID cookie; it reads the store owner's contact details, product listings and collections; and it can edit marketing events, web pixels and server pixels. A reviewer who asked on September 11 whether the app used server-to-server tracking received a reply from OpenAI the following day stating that the app automatically installs a Shopify server pixel, which the company equates with a server-to-server Conversions API integration.

Three reviews had been posted by September 17, producing a 4.0 rating: two at five stars and one at a single star. A US cable retailer wrote on September 11 that the app did not work. The earliest review, from a German merchant on September 8, drew a reply from OpenAI on September 12 saying the app would reach Germany soon. Germany is among the 31 European markets where ads went live on August 24, which suggests the September 23 date covers it, though the post does not list countries.

The catalogue route is OpenAI's second attempt at Shopify's merchants. Instant Checkout, opened on September 29, 2025with Stripe, let ChatGPT users buy from Etsy sellers and Shopify merchants inside the chat. OpenAI shut it down in March 2026 after Walmart disclosed that conversion rates for products sold inside the chatbot were three times lower than for purchases that clicked out to its own site, and product feed management moved into Ads Manager in June, supporting up to one million SKUs per advertiser. The Shopify app connects the catalogue to that feed-based ad machinery, including the multi-product carousel that Sensor Tower estimated accounted for roughly 23 percent of US desktop ChatGPT ads between August 15 and August 30. Catalogue-to-ad has replaced catalogue-to-checkout.

The email adds what the post left out

The advertiser email published by Search Engine Roundtable carries four product changes the post does not mention, and each one matters to a buyer.

The largest is billing. Conversion optimisation with impression billing is now generally available, according to OpenAI. The campaign type optimises for conversions from both clicks and views while charging on impressions, and the company describes it as its recommended model for performance. That reverses, within a month, the posture PPC Land documented on August 19, when view-through conversions arrived with a fixed one-day window and were kept out of bidding, billing and cost-per-acquisition arithmetic. On September 3 the model was described as coming. It has arrived, and OpenAI recommends it.

Attribution windows are now configurable. According to OpenAI, columns in Ads Manager can be set to a 7-, 14- or 30-day click window and a 0- or 1-day view window, and the choice applies to every conversion column displayed. Until this change the view window was fixed at one day and could not be moved.

Platform targeting has been split five ways. Android app, Android web, desktop web, iOS app and iOS web can each be targeted separately in Ads Manager and through the Advertiser API, and performance insights can be segmented along the same lines. In August, PPC Land found a three-way control with reporting confined to two buckets; five targets with matching reporting closes that gap.

The fourth item is diagnostic. An Event Quality Score, found under Tools and then Conversions in Ads Manager, grades eligible Pixel and Conversions API data sources from 1 to 10 on setup quality, assesses user data coverage and returns recommendations for improving conversion events. The scale mirrors the event match quality score Meta shows in its Events Manager, and it arrives after a summer in which OpenAI added hashed names, regions and postal codes to the fields both measurement paths accept.

What it means for marketers

The scale of the channel frames the post. The pilot that began on February 9 passed $100 million in annualised revenue within six weeks, and Digiday reported on August 31 that the business had reached a $1 billion annualised run rate in under 200 days, a figure derived from roughly $83 million of monthly revenue. Similarweb reported on August 17 that 26 percent of ChatGPT responses shown to Free and Go users carried a sponsored placement. Every figure in that sequence is self-reported by OpenAI or estimated by a vendor from a panel; none has been independently verified.

The two new partners differ in kind from the technology partners already on the roster. Criteo, StackAdapt, Kargo, Adobe, Pacvue and, since September 10 for Europe, Adform route existing media budgets into ChatGPT. HubSpot and Shopify hold the long tail: businesses with a customer database or a product catalogue and no media team. HubSpot describes an ecosystem of more than 2,000 App Marketplace integrations; Shopify had more than one million merchants eligible for Instant Checkout when that product opened in September 2025. Google's Data Manager has offered connections to both HubSpot and Shopify, but in the opposite direction, carrying first-party data into Google's ad products. OpenAI has put the campaign builder inside the partner's interface instead. Whether small-business spend that sits in Google and Meta now moves as easily as a HubSpot campaign checkbox implies is the question the $750 match is designed to test.

Sponsored Agents raise a measurement problem the platform has not yet described. A conventional ChatGPT ad produces an impression and, sometimes, a click; the platform's entire measurement stack, from the Pixel and Conversions API of May to the impression-billed optimisation of this week, is built on those two events. A conversation produces neither in a form that fits a reporting column. Is the outcome the click that opens the agent, the number of turns, a link followed, or a sale on the advertiser's site? The post is silent, as it is on price. It is also silent on what the advertiser learns from the transcript. OpenAI's US privacy policy, updated on April 30, 2026, already discloses that user information is shared with marketing partners for third-party targeting; a sponsored conversation is a paid product in which a user knowingly talks to an advertiser's system inside ChatGPT, and the terms of that exchange will decide how the format is received.

Europe adds a constraint. The European Commission designated ChatGPT a very large online search engine on August 31, 2026, after OpenAI declared 159.1 million users, with the additional obligations falling due four months after notification. Personalised advertising was withheld when ads reached Europe, and the signals in play are the chat topic, general location and device type. A sponsored agent that converses with a user, and a copy setting that rewrites ads to match the conversation, both operate on the conversation itself, one of only three signals in play there, which puts their treatment under the Digital Services Act in line to become a test case for conversational advertising as a category.

For agencies, the direction of travel is plain. Campaign builds from a prompt, creative drafted from a landing page, copy that translates itself and buying desks embedded in the CRM and the storefront each remove a task that agencies have charged for. The confirmation gate that PPC Land documented on September 3 keeps a human in the loop for now. Nothing in the September 16 post commits OpenAI to keeping it there.

Timeline

Summary

Who: OpenAI, publisher of the September 16, 2026 post and operator of ChatGPT Ads; HubSpot, its first CRM partner, which issued a parallel release naming Brian Landsman of OpenAI and Duncan Lennox of HubSpot; Shopify, its first ecommerce partner, whose App Store hosts the free ChatGPT Ads app; and the select US advertisers testing Sponsored Agents, alongside the advertisers in the Ads Manager beta who received the accompanying email.

What: A test of Sponsored Agents, an ad unit that opens a clearly labelled, separate conversation with a business-sponsored agent after a click; natural-language campaign creation, updating and analysis through an Ads Manager plugin in ChatGPT; AI-suggested copy and imagery drawn from the landing page and objective; opt-in text customisation that adapts copy to the conversation and translates it; a HubSpot integration for creating ads, tracking performance and following up on leads; and a Shopify App Store app that syncs catalogues, installs a pixel and runs campaigns from the merchant admin. The advertiser email added general availability of impression-billed conversion optimisation, configurable attribution windows, five-way platform targeting and an Event Quality Score.

When: The post and HubSpot's release were published on September 16, 2026. The Shopify app's listing dates its release to September 3, 2026, and international availability is due on September 23. HubSpot's $750 ad spend match runs for new accounts opened by September 30.

Where: Sponsored Agents are limited to the United States. The HubSpot integration is available to HubSpot customers connecting a ChatGPT Ads account. The Shopify app is open to US merchants first, then to merchants in the markets where ChatGPT Ads run, which OpenAI has described as more than 40 countries.

Why: According to OpenAI, people increasingly turn to AI to discover products, compare options and make decisions, and the company is building an advertising platform with AI at its centre, covering both how people engage with businesses inside ChatGPT and how businesses create and manage ads. The integrations extend a channel that reached a $1 billion annualised run rate in under 200 days to businesses that operate from a CRM or a storefront rather than an agency.