OpenAI starts testing Sponsored Agents, putting branded chat behind ChatGPT ads

SentiSense · Published Sep 16, 2026, 11:56 AM ET · Updated Sep 28, 2026, 2:45 AM ET

OpenAI said on September 16 that it is testing Sponsored Agents with select advertisers in the United States, letting a user who clicks an ad in ChatGPT open a clearly labeled conversation with a business-sponsored agent, walled off from ChatGPT's own answers. Alongside it, OpenAI named HubSpot its first CRM partner and Shopify its first ecommerce partner for managing ChatGPT ad campaigns inside those tools. The Shopify app is US-only from September 16 and reaches other markets on September 23. No pricing or revenue share was disclosed.

OpenAI is testing a conversational ad format called Sponsored Agents, it said in a September 16 post titled Reimagining advertising with AI. The company's own framing is a test rather than a launch: it is running the format with select advertisers in the United States. A user who clicks an ad inside ChatGPT can open what OpenAI calls a clearly labeled conversation with a business-sponsored agent, described as distinct from ChatGPT's independent answers and separate from the conversation the user started.

Inside that branded thread the user can state what matters to them, ask follow-up questions and click through to the business's site. The design choice that matters commercially is the wall: the sponsored exchange is fenced off from ChatGPT's organic responses, which preserves the assistant's answers as unsponsored while creating a second surface that is entirely paid. PPC Land ties the labeling to transparency commitments OpenAI made in January.

OpenAI paired the test with distribution. It named HubSpot its first CRM partner and Shopify its first ecommerce partner, bringing ChatGPT Ads into tools advertisers already use: a HubSpot user can connect a ChatGPT Ads account and create ads, monitor performance and follow up on leads without leaving HubSpot, while Shopify merchants get a free app that syncs the product catalog. These are campaign-management integrations rather than new ad inventory. The Shopify app is US-only from September 16 and opens to other markets on September 23.

The open questions are the commercial ones OpenAI did not answer. No pricing, no revenue share and no performance data were disclosed, and the test's scope is a single country and a hand-picked advertiser list, so nothing here yet sizes the opportunity for SHOP merchants or HUBS. What would make this material is an expansion beyond the test cohort and any signal on how users respond to paid conversation inside a product that has been ad-free since launch.