OpenAI expands ChatGPT Ads to six Southeast Asian countries and Taiwan
OpenAI expanded ChatGPT Ads to Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and Taiwan — bringing it to more than 60 countries. OpenAI said ads are shown only to users on the Free and Go plans, Plus, Pro and Enterprise have no ads, and conversation content is not disclosed to advertisers. Shopee is a partner in the Southeast Asian expansion, and campaigns run through agencies including dentsu, Havas Media, Omnicom Media, Publicis Groupe and WPP, as well as Ads Manager self-service. According to the company's announcement in late August 2026, ChatGPT Ads reached a $1 billion annualized revenue scale within 200 days of launch
Why it matters
The structure of propping up the free tier with ads grew in a single month from 40 countries in August to more than 60. It means the model of recovering inference costs through ads rather than subscription fees is past the experimental stage, and how the boundary between conversation data and advertising is kept becomes the next regulatory issue
Source — Primary sources first; secondary reports are labelled “Press”
Officialopenai.comhttps://openai.com/index/chatgpt-ads-expands-southeast-asia-taiwan/Added in Week 40, 2026 · See that week