OpenAI to start showing ads on ChatGPT’s free and Go tiers in India
TechCrunch Ivan Mehta
OpenAI will put ads inside ChatGPT for free and Go users in India. India has become a huge test bed, and OpenAI is now turning that traffic into a sales channel.
Based on reporting by TechCrunch, Ivan Mehta — read the original for the full story.
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OpenAI is bringing ads to ChatGPT in India, starting with users on the Free and Go tiers. The company said the rollout begins after its earlier terms update signaled that ads were coming to the assistant at all.
India is not a small experiment for OpenAI. In February, the company said ChatGPT had more than 100 million weekly active users there, and many of them were using the free product or the lower-priced Go plan. That makes the country a tempting place to test whether ads can sit inside a chatbot without driving people away.
The first wave will be limited to 50 brands, with WPP and Omnicom helping on the agency side. OpenAI also said it will launch an ad manager next month. Marketers will be able to run campaigns there as long as they clear a daily minimum budget of ₹725, or $7.60.
This is also part of a broader push to make the business less dependent on hope and more on cash. OpenAI has already shown ads to U.S. users since February and expanded the program to Europe earlier this month. In India, it has spent months building reach: a sub-$5 ChatGPT Go plan in August 2025, a limited promo that made that tier free for a year, heavy advertising around the Women’s Premier League and Indian Premier League, and a recent hire of Uber’s India head to lead expansion. With a possible IPO said to be on the horizon, the ad push looks less like a side project and more like a revenue plan.
OpenAI keeps calling this “relevant, high-context” advertising, which is corporate for “please don’t make users hate us.” That’s the real test here. India is where the company is betting it can prove the chat interface can carry ads without turning into another noisy feed, and that’s a much bigger question than whether 50 brands can buy space.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
This is the inevitable move for a company that wants free users to pay in attention first and money later. OpenAI can dress it up as context-aware ads, but the pattern is old: grow fast, then squeeze the audience. The only interesting part is whether ChatGPT’s format stays useful after the sales people move in.
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