OpenAI announced on September 23, 2026 that ChatGPT Ads is rolling out to Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, and Taiwan, extending the ad platform to more than 60 countries. The seven-market rollout follows earlier Asia-Pacific launches in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, and India.
As in every existing market, ads will appear only to users on ChatGPT's Free and Go tiers; Plus, Pro, and Enterprise subscriptions remain ad-free. Businesses in the new markets can buy through OpenAI's self-serve Ads Manager, through OpenAI's Ads Solutions team, or through named agency partners including dentsu, Havas Media, Omnicom Media, Publicis Groupe, and WPP.
OpenAI tied the expansion to the ad business's growth, noting it had reached "$1 billion in annualized revenue run rate in less than 200 days after launch" and that "tens of thousands of advertisers are now running ads in ChatGPT." Dave Dugan, OpenAI's Vice President and Head of Global Ads Solutions, said the company is "at the beginning of a new chapter for advertising, with AI creating new ways." Shopee's Peggy Zhu, Executive Director of Brand and Growth Marketing, said the companies are "expanding access to AI-powered tools that help buyers discover what they need" as part of a partnership that began with ChatGPT Ads in Brazil.
The Asia expansion is the latest step in a rollout OpenAI has documented publicly since it began: a US-only test launched February 9, 2026 for logged-in adult users; expansion to Canada, Australia, and New Zealand followed in March; the UK, Mexico, Brazil, Japan, and South Korea launched in August; self-serve buying opened in May; and now seven more Asian markets in September, according to OpenAI's own running changelog. Throughout, OpenAI has said ads "do not influence the answers ChatGPT gives you" and that advertisers do not see users' chats or chat history.
What it means for brands
ChatGPT's advertising business has gone from a single-market test in February to a platform spanning over 60 countries in about seven months, with a self-serve buying option now available to businesses of any size in each new market from day one rather than added later. For marketers weighing where to place AEO and AI-search budget, that pace signals a paid channel that is scaling faster than most competing answer engines' ad products, and one that is now genuinely accessible outside a handful of English-speaking markets.
The Free/Go-only targeting is a real constraint worth building into media plans: ads reach the tier of ChatGPT users who haven't paid for Plus or Pro, which skews toward a different audience than a brand might reach through organic citations, which appear for every tier. A brand's paid ChatGPT reach and its organic ChatGPT visibility are not hitting the same population of users, and measurement should treat them separately rather than as one "ChatGPT visibility" number.
The Shopee partnership, explicitly framed around AI-powered product discovery in Southeast Asia, is worth watching as a preview of deeper commerce integration rather than a one-off. OpenAI's own post describes this as "another step" in an ongoing collaboration, following a similar tie-up in Brazil — suggesting OpenAI is building out region-specific commerce partnerships alongside the core ads product rather than a single global shopping feature.
For brands already investing in earning organic citations inside ChatGPT answers, this expansion confirms that paid and organic presence are becoming two parallel, and increasingly both viable, tracks inside the same product — not a sign that one will replace the other. OpenAI has been explicit that ads are visually separated from, and don't influence, ChatGPT's answers, so a strong organic-citation strategy doesn't get crowded out by a competitor's ad buy in the way a paid search result can push down an organic listing.
What to watch
Watch for further geographic expansion, particularly into the EU, where OpenAI has not yet detailed a timeline and where regulatory scrutiny of AI products has generally moved slower rollouts. Watch also for new ad formats: OpenAI has said it is still in "the first chapter" of what ChatGPT Ads will become and has previously signaled interest in formats like sponsored in-chat agents that let a business's own assistant participate directly in a conversation, rather than simply displaying a labeled ad unit.
Independent measurement of what these ads actually cost and return is still thin; third-party trackers have reported wide swings in cost-per-click across verticals, and OpenAI has not published its own benchmarks. As more markets and advertisers come online, watch for whether OpenAI or independent researchers publish standardized performance data that would let brands compare ChatGPT Ads against Google, Meta, or Microsoft Advertising on equal footing.
