OpenAI ramps up its e-commerce focus with the latest ad update

OpenAI sent out another ChatGPT Ads product update this week. Two of its five items are for online shops: you can now create product feed campaigns in bulk from a spreadsheet, and you can see where each product is in review and why a product was rejected. The rest are reporting through the API, separate account, brand and legal names, and new markets in Southeast Asia and Taiwan.

Looking at it together with the earlier September updates, it seems to me that OpenAI is focusing quite a lot on its e-commerce advertisers.

On 4 September, product feed campaigns got a multi-product carousel ad and their own reporting, and ChatGPT’s shopping results started showing only brands that send a product feed. On 16 September came a Shopify app, with products already connected through Shopify’s catalog, so a merchant can start without building a feed. OpenAI said it would open in its other ad markets from 23 September. And this week’s reporting update uses purchases as its example: you can report on purchases while the campaign optimizes for a different event.

My guess is that it is simply the easiest case for OpenAI. An online shop has a product catalog, prices and a purchase that can be measured, so it is easier to show that an ad in a conversation led to a sale.

For a Finnish online shop, this is in my opinion the moment to at least test it. The tooling is being built for you first, and as far as we can see there are still few advertisers here.

For B2B and service companies, the picture is different, at least for now. Our own test in September (one account, small sample) got clicks at around €1.4, but the enquiries did not come at that budget, and what we learned is that the landing page mattered much more than the ad. Some categories, like financial, health and legal services, can’t advertise on ChatGPT outside the US at all. How far OpenAI takes the B2B side remains to be seen.

If you sell products online and want to know whether ChatGPT ads are worth it for you, book a call with your Growth Strategist. If you already run them, our ChatGPT Ads audit is free.

Otso Karvinen

Co-founder & Growth Strategist

I help marketing and sales teams do more in a month than their competitors do in a quarter. With 15+ years in marketing and sales, I now help build agentic AI systems that let small teams deliver faster and better results. I’m easy to work with and happy to have a no-strings conversation about where you are and how I and our team at Parvi can help.

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