The news: OpenAI partnered with adtech firm Smartly to help brands tweak their advertising in “real time,” with the aim of eventually launching interactive, chat-based ad formats, Business Insider reports.

Smartly CEO Laura Desmond told the outlet that OpenAI could eventually adopt a similar format to one the ad tech firm provides for some clients on Meta platforms. In that format, clicking on an ad opens a separate window where users can chat with a shopping agent to tailor product recommendations—a model that Smartly says drives five times more sales than Meta’s basic ads.

ChatGPT’s ad stack: Smartly is the second notable ad tech partner OpenAI has announced in recent weeks as the AI giant rapidly fleshes out an ad business. ChatGPT has so far offered in-chat ads informed by simple contextual signals; the Smartly partnership will introduce another format.

Opening a new chatbot conversation in a separate window could help ChatGPT avoid the pitfall of cluttering its conversations with ad space, maintaining user trust.

Zooming out: OpenAI’s ads pilot has exceeded $100 million in annualized revenues—a far cry from the tens of billions it will need to generate to right the company’s balance sheet.

OpenAI generated approximately $13 billion in revenues in 2025, per CNBC, but internal documents seen by The Information show it expects a $14 billion loss in 2026. Further straining its wallet are plans to spend as much as $200 billion through the rest of the decade on training and running AI models. Other sources of revenues, like a controversial contract with the US Department of Defense and a $122 billion funding round announced Tuesday, will help offset those costs.

Implications for marketers: Though it is not yet a well-established commerce channel, there are promising signs for the potential of chatbot-based ads. Criteo said that traffic from LLM platforms converts at 1.5 times the rate of other referral sources when it partnered with OpenAI in February. We forecast that US ecommerce sales through AI platforms will exceed $20 billion this year and more than $144 billion by 2029.

If OpenAI can tap into that rapid ecommerce growth, it could eventually develop a multibillion-dollar ad business that will meaningfully contribute to its revenues. But the Smartly partnership also highlights the channel’s nascence; advertisers may have to wait years for performance metrics to assess campaigns properly, and the behavior is not yet widespread.