OpenAI explores ad-first ChatGPT answers to monetize 900M users

If accurate, this is the clearest sign yet that OpenAI intends to lean on an ad-driven model at ChatGPT’s scale. With an alleged 900 million weekly users, even low-friction ad formats could generate search-like economics, but the risk is that you turn a trusted reasoning tool into something users treat like an SEO-riddled web page. For a system people already struggle to fact-check, putting paid content ahead of organic answers—especially in sensitive domains like health—could erode the very trust that made ChatGPT mainstream.([dataconomy.com](https://dataconomy.com/2026/01/02/openai-explores-prioritizing-sponsored-ads-in-chatgpt-responses/))

From a competitive standpoint, monetization pressure is unavoidable: Meta, Google, and Microsoft are all trying to prove that AI assistants can be stand-alone profit centers, not just cloud-loss leaders. If OpenAI normalizes sponsored responses inside conversational interfaces, rivals are likely to follow, and we’ll quickly discover whether users tolerate ‘ad-first’ agents. In the race to AGI, this doesn’t move capability frontiers, but it shapes who controls the distribution channel. Whoever owns the default agent that people ask about products, travel, or healthcare will have extraordinary pricing power and data advantage, even if underlying models converge.