On September 10, 2026, Amazon Ads announced a pilot to bring Amazon ads to ChatGPT. Delta Vacations is one of the first brands testing it. Select advertisers buy ChatGPT ads through Amazon DSP, adding a familiar buying route for brands already using Amazon Ads. Whether the ads drive sales for e-commerce marketers is still unproven.
Key Takeaways
- Advertisers choose CPC or CPM buying, but OpenAI alone decides where ads appear.
- Early agency tests showed weak click-through, zero sales and click counts that differed from Google Analytics.
- Access runs through Amazon DSP, and Sponsored Products-only sellers have no confirmed entry yet.
- Product feed ads build creative from your catalog, so clean titles and attributes matter.
- Test with a small fixed budget, UTM tags and a break-even number set before spending.
What The Amazon And ChatGPT Ads Partnership Changes
Until now, advertisers bought ChatGPT ads straight from OpenAI or through smaller ad-tech partners such as Criteo and Kargo, PYMNTS reported. The same report puts Amazon's advertising revenue above $70 billion over the past twelve months, so this partner plays at a different scale.
The mechanics matter. Amazon sets up and manages the campaigns, while OpenAI's system makes every delivery decision, CNBC reported, citing an Amazon spokesperson. You pick a cost-per-click or cost-per-thousand-impressions model, according to Stackline. You don't pick where your ad lands.
The audience is big. In February, OpenAI put ChatGPT at 900 million weekly active users, and its ad business recently hit a $1 billion annualized revenue run rate, per CNBC. Ad load is climbing too. In data covered by MediaPost, ads per user per hour on the US mobile app rose an average of 26% month over month from April through August 2026.
Outside the US, the ad business is already moving. OpenAI says tens of thousands of advertisers use the service, and in August it announced ChatGPT ads for 31 European markets, The Next Web reported.
Early Results For Advertising In ChatGPT Are Mixed
OpenAI ChatGPT ads are only months old, and the numbers are thin. MediaPost spoke with Peter Jaffray of Choice OMG, a Canadian agency. He spent $415 on three campaigns and got about 60 clicks at roughly $7 each. His click-through rate landed near 0.6%, against the 2% he typically gets from search ads. Nobody bought.
One agency test is not a verdict. It ran in June, and OpenAI has kept adding tools, including a LiveRamp measurement partnership.
Still, the result points to a real question. Someone asking ChatGPT to compare blenders is researching. An ad beneath the answer sits closer to display than to a Sponsored Products placement on a shopping page. Jaffray described his own campaign the same way: more display channel than engaged channel.
Others report a similar pattern. Nicholas Verity, CEO of the B2B lead generation agency Cleverly, saw decent click-through rates and zero conversions, with rates below what the same campaign earned on Google and Meta. He paused the test (Media Post). He still expects OpenAI to grow into a massive ad channel, given its search intent and volume. Daniel Johnson of We Scale Startups offered the blunt version: treat any spend there as research budget until the platform's reporting earns trust (Media Post).
What ChatGPT Amazon Ads Mean If You Sell On Amazon
Read the announcement closely. Access runs through Amazon DSP, the programmatic buying platform, and the pilot covers select US brands only. Nothing in the coverage we reviewed says whether sellers who run only Sponsored Products campaigns will get in. Bring four questions to your Amazon rep:
- Do Sponsored Products advertisers qualify
- Where does a shopper land after a click
- Which performance data do you receive, and how often
- How do product feed ads pull from your catalog
The format news is more useful. Amazon is also offering product feed ads, which generate creative straight from a product catalog. Clean catalog data gives you a head start. Messy titles and attributes will give you messy ads.
Reach has limits. Ads run on the free tier and the cheaper Go tier, per trade reporting, so anyone on a higher paid plan never sees your ad. The same reporting notes the setup appeals to non-endemic advertisers, meaning brands without products on Amazon. More bidders tend to push prices up over time.
Before you add a channel, tighten the one you have. Wasted spend on irrelevant search terms is easier to fix than an unproven test, and good Amazon PPC management starts there.
How To Test Advertising In ChatGPT Without Wasting Budget
Build the test for a channel with thin data and shaky reporting.
- Set a small, fixed budget and call it research. The goal is to learn what a click and a sale cost here, not to hit a revenue target.
- Tag every link with UTM parameters and compare the platform report against your own analytics. Trust the second one when they disagree.
- Does the click turn into a sale? It's the only question worth scoring. Clicks are cheap to buy and easy to celebrate.
- Start with one product whose catalog data is clean and whose Amazon listing already converts.
- Write down your break-even number before you spend a dollar. If you don't know what good looks like in advance, every result will look fine after the fact.
When results arrive, set ChatGPT's cost per sale next to your Sponsored Products ACoS. If ChatGPT costs more per sale, ask whether it also reaches shoppers your Amazon campaigns never touch. If the answer is no, you have your decision.
Treat ChatGPT Ads As A Test Line, Not A Strategy
The Amazon ChatGPT ads pilot of 2026 makes ChatGPT ads easier to buy and easier to justify to a finance team. It doesn't make them proven. Ask your rep about pilot access, set a budget you'd shrug off losing, and decide now what result earns a bigger bet.
Then check back. The pilot is weeks old, and the reporting is still settling, so a result from this quarter tells you about this quarter.
Amazon PPC Management Support For E-Commerce Brands
Brands weighing a new ad channel usually need a clear read on their existing Amazon spend first. BrandKyte is an e-commerce growth agency managing Amazon PPC across Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display, including keyword research, negative keyword management and ACoS and TACoS reporting.
The team is led by former Amazon experts and seven-figure operators, and it also supports Walmart, Shopify and TikTok growth.
If you want a second opinion on your current Amazon spend first, BrandKyte offers a free audit.
FAQs
1. What are Amazon Ads in ChatGPT?
A pilot letting select US advertisers buy ChatGPT Ads inventory through Amazon DSP. The ads appear as clearly labeled sponsored units beneath ChatGPT responses.
2. How can Amazon Ads in ChatGPT benefit e-commerce marketers?
You get one buying environment for Amazon and ChatGPT, plus a managed service from Amazon's team. Delta Vacations says it plans to use Amazon's consumer data to decide how and when its ads appear. Amazon says its ad products draw on trillions of proprietary browsing, shopping and streaming signals, and work without ad identifiers. The announcement doesn't say how much of the data shapes ChatGPT placements, so ask what it means for your targeting in practice.
3. What types of ads can be created using Amazon Ads in ChatGPT?
Text and image ads beneath organic responses, plus product feed ads built from your existing catalog. Both sell on a CPC or CPM basis. The announcement doesn't list creative specs or review steps, so get those in writing before you brief a designer.
4. How can marketers measure the effectiveness of their ads within ChatGPT?
Pilot participants get aggregated data on impressions, clicks, cost per result, CPM and CPC. Verify it. Verity paused his campaign after OpenAI reported 57 clicks while Google Analytics showed fewer than 20 visits, per MediaPost. UTM tags let you run the same check.
5. Will advertisers have control over their campaigns in ChatGPT?
Some. Amazon's team sets up and manages the campaigns, and you choose the buying model. OpenAI keeps every delivery decision, including placement.