Announced September 16, 2026, Sponsored Agents let a shopper tap a relevant ad and open a clearly labeled chat with a business-sponsored AI agent — a US test alongside new AI ad-creation tools and HubSpot and Shopify integrations.
2026-09-17 · by Moe Ameen
On September 16, 2026, OpenAI announced a set of AI-powered advertising features for ChatGPT, headlined by a test of "Sponsored Agents" — a format where a user who taps a relevant ad can open a clearly labeled conversation with a business-sponsored AI agent. OpenAI describes the feature as being tested with a small group of select advertisers in the United States.
The agent conversation is deliberately walled off: OpenAI says it is distinct from ChatGPT's own independent answers and separate from the user's original ChatGPT conversation. Inside it, a person can spell out what matters to them, ask follow-up questions, and click through to the business's website when they're ready to act. OpenAI's illustrative example is a shopper asking a furniture brand's agent about a dining table's dimensions, how many people it seats, and how to care for it.
OpenAI shipped the format alongside broader ad tooling. Advertisers can now manage campaigns with natural-language prompts in the Ads Manager, get AI-suggested copy and imagery drawn from their landing pages, and opt into AI-powered text customization that adapts existing headlines and descriptions to a conversation's context and translates ad copy into a user's preferred language. It also named its first CRM partner, HubSpot, and its first ecommerce partner, Shopify — whose free ChatGPT Ads app launched for US merchants and was set to expand internationally from September 23, 2026. Reporting around the announcement put ChatGPT Ads at roughly a $1 billion annualized revenue run rate.
Two things to keep straight. This is an early test, not a general launch — availability is limited to select US advertisers and may change. And a Sponsored Agent is a different unit from the existing labeled sponsored card that already appears at the bottom of some ChatGPT answers. Confirm current formats, markets, and terms on OpenAI's own advertising pages before planning around any single detail.
You can't buy a Sponsored Agent yet unless you're in OpenAI's US test — but you can act on what it signals today, which is that ChatGPT is becoming a conversational storefront that answers from whatever content a brand has published about itself. The move that pays off in both the paid and organic version of that world is the same: put a broad, current, on-brand body of content everywhere the model reads. That is what [Kompozy](/) is built to produce. Point it at one source — a product, a launch, a set of customer questions — and under a single [Persona Brief](/glossary/persona-brief) that locks your voice and banned words, it generates the corroborating set: [Blog Articles](/glossary/output-buckets) structured as direct answers to the questions a shopper actually asks, brand-exact [Carousel Posts](/glossary/hyperframes) and Infographic Photos that lay out specs and comparisons, Quote Graphics, Text Posts, avatar-narrated [Persona Shorts](/glossary/persona-shorts), and an Email Newsletter — so the facts a future agent (or ChatGPT's own answer) would draw on exist in a dozen legible, consistent places.
Then [Autopilot](/glossary/autopilot) schedules and fans that set across the eight social platforms plus blog and email behind a per-post review gate, so the footprint stays current instead of crawlable-but-stale — and the review gate rejects invented numbers before they ship, which is what keeps a citation trustworthy. Kompozy won't bid in OpenAI's Ads Manager or wire up your Shopify catalog; that stays yours. What it removes is the reason most brands would field a weak agent conversation and lose the organic mention next to it: not enough specific, on-brand, up-to-date content for the model to answer from. For the paid side once you can buy in, see [ChatGPT Ads](/ai-tools/chatgpt-ads); for the strategy, [ChatGPT ads and GEO content](/guides/chatgpt-ads-and-geo-content-strategy).
They are a new ChatGPT ad format OpenAI began testing on September 16, 2026. A user who taps a relevant ad can open a clearly labeled conversation with a business-sponsored AI agent, ask follow-up questions, and click through to the business's website. The conversation is kept separate from ChatGPT's own independent answers and from the user's original chat.
Not yet. As of the September 16, 2026 announcement, OpenAI described Sponsored Agents as being tested with a small group of select advertisers in the United States. Availability may expand, so confirm current access and markets on OpenAI's advertising pages.
The existing ChatGPT Ads unit is a labeled sponsored card — headline, image, link — shown at the bottom of a relevant answer. A Sponsored Agent is a conversational format: instead of a static card, the user opens a back-and-forth chat with a business's AI agent. They are related but distinct products under OpenAI's advertising push.
New AI ad-creation tools — natural-language campaign management in the Ads Manager, AI-suggested copy and imagery from your landing pages, and opt-in text customization that adapts headlines and descriptions to a conversation and translates ad copy — plus HubSpot as its first CRM partner and Shopify as its first ecommerce partner, with a free ChatGPT Ads app for merchants.