Update, Sept. 10: OpenAI has since updated its ad policies (v1.6) to say it may decline ads that conflict with its “advertising principles, business interests, or competitive position.”
OpenAI has told some advertising partners it will no longer accept ChatGPT ads for standalone image- and audio-generation products that compete with its own features, The Information reported Wednesday. Ads for video-generation tools are still allowed.
Adobe is among the advertisers affected. It was one of the first companies in OpenAI’s ad pilot when it launched in February, alongside Albertsons, Target and Williams-Sonoma, and it used the program to promote Acrobat Studio and its Firefly image generator, PYMNTS reported. Adobe described its role as a pilot partner in a February blog post.
Doug Wyatt, Adobe’s senior director for Americas media, addressed the change in a LinkedIn post. “ChatGPT is narrowing both the paid and organic discovery pathways for tools in categories it now competes in directly,” Wyatt wrote. “Image and voice/audio are closed off. Video’s still open…for now.”
Paid and organic discovery
The restriction lines up with OpenAI’s own launches. The company released ChatGPT Images 2.5 this week and introduced ChatGPT Live, a set of voice models, in July. According to Search Engine Land, the change was communicated directly to ad partners rather than announced publicly.
It also goes beyond paid placements. ChatGPT has stopped returning outbound citations and external links for some queries about photo editors and image generators, Yahoo Finance reported, so third-party developers lose organic discovery as well as the ad channel.
Alan Chapell, president of the law and consulting firm Chapell & Associates, told The Information that platforms typically don’t cut off advertising partners until those partners reach a certain scale. “I didn’t think that was going to come to loggerheads until a year or two down the road,” he said, per PYMNTS.
Why ads matter to OpenAI
When OpenAI laid out its approach to advertising, it said ads would be clearly labeled and would not influence ChatGPT’s answers. More than 1 billion people use ChatGPT monthly and most don’t pay for a subscription. OpenAI had reported a $1 billion annualized advertising run rate against a stated target of $2.4 billion, according to Yahoo Finance.
Blocking direct competitors from advertising isn’t unusual for large digital platforms, Search Engine Land noted. For Adobe, the broader relationship continues: Acrobat Studio can still be promoted, and video-generation campaigns remain open on ChatGPT.
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