ChatGPT Ads are live in Indonesia. 100,000+ advertisers have used them worldwide
OpenAI now sells ads in 89 countries. Its system picks ads from the whole conversation, and shows none when nothing fits.
On October 21, OpenAI said more than 100,000 advertisers have now run campaigns in ChatGPT, eight months after ads launched. It also added 26 more countries, bringing ChatGPT Ads to 89 in total.
Indonesia was already on the list. ChatGPT Ads began rolling out here on September 23, alongside Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and Taiwan. For Indonesian brands, this is a live channel today.
How brands get in
OpenAI sells the ads through its own Ads Solutions team and through agency and technology partners. Eligible businesses can also buy them directly in a self-service Ads Manager.
Shopee is one of the early partners. When ads reached Southeast Asia, Shopee's executive director for brand and growth marketing said the company was extending its work with OpenAI from Brazil to the region.
Ads appear only for people on ChatGPT's Free and Go plans. Plus, Pro and Enterprise users see none.
How the ads are chosen
On the same day, OpenAI published an engineering post on how the system works. It differs from search advertising in ways that change how you plan.
A search ad answers one query. A ChatGPT conversation develops over several turns, so the right moment for an ad may only appear later, once the person has narrowed down what they want. OpenAI's ad system follows the conversation as it develops, rather than reacting to the first message.
A separate language model, which OpenAI calls the orchestrator, reads the conversation and calls a set of tools: retrieval to find candidate ads, relevance estimation, event prediction, eligibility and budget checks, then an auction for the final pick and price. It runs as its own service, apart from the model that writes ChatGPT's answer. OpenAI says it keeps conversations private from advertisers, labels every ad, and does not let advertising influence ChatGPT's answers.
OpenAI describes returning no ad at all as an ordinary, successful outcome. An ad shows only when the system judges it useful to both the user and the advertiser.
What this changes for marketers in Indonesia
The unit you are buying is a moment in a conversation, not a keyword. The orchestrator turns a conversation into a summary and matches ads by meaning. Product names, use cases and the problem your product solves, written clearly, will do more than a long keyword list.
The bar is relevance, not bid size alone. Because the system can choose to show nothing, a weak or generic ad may simply not run. Creative that answers a specific need in a specific situation has a better chance.
Paid and organic now share one conversation. The answer is written separately from the ad, and it may name your competitors.
What to do now
Test with a small budget on one product line where people compare options before buying, such as electronics, beauty or travel. Ask your agency what targeting and measurement options exist today. OpenAI says new formats and measurement tools come next. And before you spend, ask ChatGPT the questions your customers ask, and read what it says about you and your competitors without any ads at all.
OpenAI reports that ChatGPT has more than 1.2 billion weekly users and that the ads business reached $1 billion in annualized revenue in under 200 days. That scale is why a small, structured test is worth running now.