OpenAI is moving into advertising. ChatGPT, which now fields over a billion conversations per day, is testing sponsored placements — product recommendations that appear within AI responses when users ask shopping-related questions.

For e-commerce sellers, this is potentially the most significant new distribution channel since Amazon launched sponsored products. The difference: ChatGPT users are asking explicit questions, often with purchase intent already high. "What's the best quality stand mixer for under £200?" is a different kind of search query than almost anything Google handles — it's specific, comparative, and decisional.

The early indications are that ChatGPT's ad model will involve product recommendations surfaced within conversational responses, clearly labelled as sponsored. The advantage for advertisers is context: a recommendation that appears as part of a relevant answer carries more credibility than a banner ad on a tangentially related page.

For sellers, this changes the question from "how do I rank in search results" to "how do I get recommended in conversational AI responses." These are different challenges with different solutions. Search ranking favours content volume and backlinks. AI recommendation favours product quality signals, review consistency, pricing clarity, and structured product data that AI can easily parse.

The infrastructure you need for ChatGPT ads is largely the same infrastructure you need for good e-commerce fundamentals: clean product listings with complete specifications, genuine reviews with specific language, clear pricing with no hidden costs, structured data that allows automated systems to extract product details accurately.

Watch OpenAI's announcements about advertising partnerships. The platform is moving quickly and the early advertisers will have an advantage in learning what works before the channel becomes competitive.

The shift from search to AI-assisted shopping decisions is real and accelerating. The sellers preparing for it now, rather than responding to it after the fact, will be better positioned when the channel becomes fully operational.