Level 1 — Absolute Beginner
ChatGPT is a computer program. You write to it and it writes back.
Now ChatGPT will show adverts. An advert is a message from a shop.
The new adverts can talk. You can ask them questions about the shop.
The company OpenAI made this. It started the test on 16 September.
- computer
- A machine that stores information and does work for you.
- program
- A set of instructions that tells a computer what to do.
- advert
- A message that tries to get you to buy something.
- shop
- A place where you buy things.
- message
- Words that one person sends to another.
- question
- Something you ask when you want to know more.
- company
- A business that makes or sells things.
- test
- A try to see if something works.
Level 2 — Elementary
On 16 September, OpenAI announced a new kind of advertising inside ChatGPT. It is called Sponsored Agents, and the company is testing it with a small number of businesses first.
Normal internet adverts are simple. You see a picture or some text, and if you are interested you click a link that takes you to another website. Sponsored Agents work differently. When an advert appears, you can choose to start a conversation with it. The conversation is clearly labelled so you know it comes from a business.
Inside that conversation you can say what matters to you, ask follow-up questions, and only visit the company website when you are ready. Wayfair, a furniture company, is one of the partners in the test. OpenAI also added tools that let advertisers build campaigns using ordinary language, plus connections to HubSpot and Shopify.
Advertising has become important money for OpenAI. Its advertising business reached a rate of one billion dollars a year in fewer than 200 days.
- advertising
- The business of telling people about products so they will buy them.
- sponsored
- Paid for by a company that wants attention for its product.
- agent
- A computer program that can act and answer on behalf of someone.
- conversation
- A talk between two or more people.
- labelled
- Marked clearly so people know what something is.
- campaign
- A planned set of adverts with one goal.
- partner
- A company that works together with another company.
- billion
- The number one thousand million.
Level 3 — Intermediate
OpenAI formalised its move into advertising on 16 September with the announcement of Sponsored Agents, a format that replaces the click with a conversation. When a relevant advert appears in ChatGPT, users may choose to enter a clearly labelled exchange with a business-sponsored agent, state what matters to them, ask follow-up questions, and click through to the company's own site only when they are ready to proceed.
The design is a departure from three decades of internet advertising convention. Display advertising has always depended on the external link: the advert exists to move the user somewhere else, and the value of that movement is measured in clicks. A sponsored agent keeps the interaction inside ChatGPT, which changes both what the advertiser learns and where the user spends attention.
The announcement came bundled with supporting infrastructure. OpenAI released natural-language tools that let marketers build campaigns and creative by describing what they want, and it opened integrations with HubSpot and Shopify, two platforms that sit close to where sales actually happen. Wayfair is among the named pilot partners.
The commercial context explains the urgency. OpenAI's advertising division reached a one billion dollar annualised revenue run rate in under 200 days, a pace that turns advertising from an experiment into a core business line, and one that will attract equally rapid scrutiny over labelling, user trust and how clearly a paid conversation can be distinguished from an unpaid one.
- formalise
- To make something official or give it a fixed form.
- convention
- A way of doing things that most people have accepted.
- display advertising
- Adverts shown as images or text on a web page.
- integration
- A connection that lets two software systems work together.
- pilot
- A small first version of a project used to test whether it works.
- annualised
- Calculated as if the current rate continued for a full year.
- scrutiny
- Careful and critical examination.
- distinguish
- To recognise the difference between two things.
Level 4 — Advanced
Every advertising medium is ultimately defined by the unit it sells. Print sold the page, television sold the interruption, and the web sold the click, a metric so dominant that it reshaped the architecture of the internet around the act of leaving one place for another. OpenAI's announcement on 16 September that it is testing Sponsored Agents proposes a fourth unit: the conversation itself.
The mechanics are straightforward and the implications are not. Where a relevant advert surfaces in ChatGPT, the user may elect to open a clearly labelled dialogue with an agent funded by the advertiser, articulate their requirements, interrogate the offer, and depart for the company's website only at a moment of their own choosing. Nothing is forced and nothing is concealed, at least by design. What changes is the locus of the encounter: the qualifying conversation that once happened on a brand's own property, or not at all, now happens inside the assistant.
OpenAI has surrounded the format with the apparatus of a real advertising business rather than a demonstration. Marketers receive natural-language campaign and creative tooling, lowering the technical floor for participation, while integrations with HubSpot and Shopify connect the system to customer records and transactions, the two places where advertising stops being impression and starts being revenue. Wayfair sits among the pilot partners. That the division has already reached a one billion dollar annualised run rate inside 200 days indicates demand was not the constraint.
The unresolved question is one of epistemics rather than engineering. A conversational assistant earns its usefulness from the user's belief that its answers are shaped by their interests alone. A sponsored conversation is by definition shaped by someone else's, and labelling, however scrupulous, asks the user to hold two models of the same interface in mind at once. Whether that distinction survives contact with ordinary use, and whether regulators accept it, will matter considerably more to the format's future than any advertiser's return on spend.
- metric
- A standard of measurement used to judge performance.
- implication
- A likely consequence that is not directly stated.
- articulate
- To express something clearly in words.
- interrogate
- To question something closely and carefully.
- locus
- The place where something happens or is centred.
- apparatus
- The set of tools and systems used to carry out an activity.
- epistemics
- Matters concerning knowledge and how we know what we know.
- scrupulous
- Extremely careful and thorough about doing things correctly.
Talk about this article with KatePractice this story's vocabulary in a real spoken conversation with your AI tutor