OpenAI switched on ChatGPT ads in Europe today, Monday 24 August, serving them across 31 European markets and taking the product to 40 markets worldwide. The ads appear only on the Free and Go plans, they are not personalised at launch, and there is no self-serve way to buy them: European advertisers place ChatGPT ads through OpenAI’s Ads Solutions team and six agency groups, not through Ads Manager.
31 Markets, Free and Go Plans Only
Coverage of the launch names a dozen of the 31 markets: Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Spain, Italy, Poland, the Netherlands, Ireland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark, with Benelux and Scandinavia also cited as groups. Treat that as a sample rather than a full roster, and note that Switzerland is on it, so the 31 are not the EEA. ChatGPT Ads reached this point after a US pilot, then Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Mexico, Brazil, Japan and South Korea.
Ads run only on the Free and Go plans; Plus, Pro and Enterprise stay ad-free. Go costs €7 a month and Plus €23, according to figures reported by DPA; Pro runs €229. DPA also reports that free users make up more than 80% of ChatGPT’s 1 billion-plus monthly users.
What the Notice Left Open a Week Ago
elsop’s post from 16 August, covering the notice OpenAI sent EEA and Swiss users the day before, listed three things OpenAI had not published: an exact EEA launch date, when personalisation would start there, and how EEA advertisers could buy the inventory. That post did not report a European launch or predict today’s date; it described a notice with a soft timeframe and an Ads Manager page that, at the time, listed no EEA market. Today answers the first of those three questions and the third one in the negative: the launch arrived without a self-serve buying layer, and the first European campaigns are agency-brokered by design.
Can European Advertisers Buy ChatGPT Ads?
Yes, but not by opening a self-serve Ads Manager account. Buying runs through OpenAI’s own Ads Solutions team and six named agency groups: Publicis, Omnicom, WPP, Havas, Dentsu and MediaPlus. Self-serve access through Ads Manager is described only as “to follow later,” with no European date attached, and Digiday reports that cost-per-click bidding now accounts for most ad spend.
What Advertisers Get, and What They Don’t
Advertisers get no access to a user’s chat history. OpenAI says information from conversations is not shared with advertisers and that it does not sell customer data. Ads stay “clearly labeled and separate from ChatGPT’s answers,” per OpenAI, and the company says advertising does not influence the answers ChatGPT gives.
The only measurement an advertiser owns is what happens after the click, on its own landing page. That makes the tagging scheme something to settle before the agency starts buying, and a builder for campaign URLs is where that scheme gets fixed.
Why Opting Out Doesn’t Turn the Ads Off
At launch, ad selection draws on the topic of the ongoing conversation, approximate location, device type, time of day and language, not on interaction history or inferred interests. Personalised ads need a separate opt-in in the account’s advertising controls. OpenAI published a new EU privacy policy on 14 August. Opting in or out changes which ads a European user sees, not whether they see ads at all: someone who never opts in still gets ads, built from the live conversation instead of a stored profile.
The consent-first design is reported as built for GDPR, which requires explicit consent for personalised targeting unless a legitimate interest can be shown; the consent framing comes from Dave Dugan, OpenAI’s VP of Ads. “There’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all European audience, and that’s precisely what makes the region so dynamic,” Dugan said. Dugan also puts roughly 20% of ChatGPT queries at “direct commercial intent,” OpenAI’s own read of its own traffic, not an independently measured figure.
Self-serve access and the start of personalised ads are the two parts of the European rollout still without a date. Until that changes, buying a European campaign means going through an agency or OpenAI’s own sales desk.
