From the USA to Europe within one year

In January 2026, OpenAI launched its first advertising pilot in ChatGPT. The platform, with approximately 900 million users, began displaying sponsored links directly within the conversational interface. Advertisers initially paid for every thousand impressions (CPM model), with prices hovering around 60 dollars. However, within ten weeks, this price dropped in some cases to as low as 25 dollars, signaling growing brand interest and increasing competition for placement.

According to information from Digiday, the company switched to a **CPC model** (cost-per-click) on April 21, 2026, where advertisers pay up to 5 dollars per click. This step is crucial for the advertising industry — while the CPM model primarily targets brands building awareness, CPC attracts so-called performance marketing budgets, which constitute the majority of global digital advertising spending.

And now comes the key news: according to the same source, OpenAI has **updated its conversion pixel** — a technical tool that tracks whether a user completes a purchase, registration, or other desired action after clicking on an ad. The code update adds a **consent management system**, a mechanism for obtaining explicit user consent before tracking begins. This is precisely what the European GDPR regulation requires and certainly does not apply to the USA, where the option to opt out of tracking is sufficient.

Why is OpenAI in such a hurry?

The answer is simple: money. According to its own estimates, OpenAI will report a **loss of 14 billion dollars** this year. The advertising business is therefore not just another source of income, but essentially a necessity if the company is to maintain its ambitious pace of developing models like GPT-5.5.

And it already looks like the investment is paying off. Within six weeks of the pilot launch in the USA, annual ad revenue reached **100 million dollars**, reported Reuters on March 26, 2026. Estimates from The Information even suggest that ads in the OpenAI ecosystem could generate **102 billion dollars annually** by 2030.

“OpenAI needs to quickly gain advertisers' trust, which is why launching an ads manager is an important step,” commented analyst Debra Aho Williamson from Sonata Insights for Digiday. “Facebook started offering a self-serve advertising platform in 2007, shortly after it began selling ads. OpenAI is moving similarly fast.”

How does it work technically?

For a layman, the world of advertising pixels and conversion models can be confusing. Yet, the explanation is relatively simple:

When a user clicks on an ad in ChatGPT and subsequently completes an order on the advertiser's page, a small piece of code (a **pixel**) records this action and sends it back to the OpenAI system. This allows the advertiser to know that their campaign worked and to optimize it. In the Ads Manager, which OpenAI quietly launched on April 10, 2026, various types of events can be tracked: registrations, order creations, page views, subscriptions, and trial initiations.

Interestingly, OpenAI is directly building a **server-to-server infrastructure**. While Google and Meta had to gradually address the issue of blocked cookies in Safari and Firefox browsers, OpenAI skipped this step. Data thus travels directly between servers, which increases both measurement reliability and privacy protection.

What does this mean for the Czech Republic and Europe?

For Czech users, it is crucial that the European version of the advertising system must respect **GDPR** and the **ePrivacy directive**. This means that OpenAI cannot begin tracking user behavior without their explicit consent — unlike the practice in the USA. The conversion pixel update includes precisely this consent management, which is essential for the European market.

“OpenAI is building its advertising system with European regulation in mind, and it has to do so,” Alex Tait, founder of Enthropy Consulting, told Digiday. “Governments in the era of artificial intelligence are increasingly focused on the societal impact of platforms.”

For Czech companies and marketing agencies, this opens up new opportunities but also challenges. ChatGPT offers a **highly engaged audience** — users often seek specific recommendations, whether it's buying a car, planning a vacation, or choosing electronics. This is more attractive to advertisers than passively browsing social media. On the other hand, the platform still lacks the robust third-party ecosystem for attribution, media mix modeling, and incrementality testing that Meta and Google have built over years.

Furthermore, OpenAI is expanding its team — according to Digiday, it is looking for senior staff for its advertising departments in **London and Tokyo**. This signals that the European market is being taken seriously. For Czech advertisers, this means they should start familiarizing themselves with the new platform, even though an official launch in the Czech Republic is not yet on the agenda.

Shadows of an advertising paradise

Although the development looks promising, there are also cautionary voices. Robert Webster, founder of the consulting firm TAU, warned: “If I ask ChatGPT for a great laptop and the answer is from whoever offered the most money, the product breaks. The line between an answer and an advertisement is key. Google has been defending this line for 20 years and still only succeeds halfway.”

Another challenge is the reliability of measurement itself. In a conversational environment where users interact with AI in several steps, the path from ad impression to conversion can be more complex than with classic search or social media. If a user sees an ad in ChatGPT but only makes a purchase three days later via organic search, a classic pixel may not capture it correctly.

Despite these question marks, it seems that OpenAI will not stop ads in ChatGPT. For Czech users, this means only one thing: their favorite AI assistant will likely soon transform into a sophisticated marketing channel. The question remains whether most will notice — and whether it will work in their favor, or in favor of the highest bidder.