ChatGPT's ads now talk back. Angi is first in line for your leads

OpenAI announced on Wednesday that it is testing a new ChatGPT ad format called Sponsored Agents. Search Engine Roundtable's @rustybrick posted the notice advertisers received, writing "Here is the email OpenAI sent advertisers about these ChatGPT Ads updates," and his write-up covers the whole package: the agent test, new AI creative tools, and integrations with HubSpot and Shopify.

Today a ChatGPT ad sits under the answer and links to a website. In the test, clicking the ad opens a separate, labeled conversation with an agent the advertiser sponsors. You describe what you need, ask follow-up questions, and click through to the business when you are ready. OpenAI's example is a dining table ad: ask whether it fits your room. OpenAI says the sponsored chat stays distinct from ChatGPT's own answer and separate from the conversation you started. The test is limited to select advertisers in the United States, and ads still only appear on the Free and Go plans.

Who is already in

Wayfair confirmed it is in the pilot at limited scale, with guardrails around product accuracy, transparency, and handoffs to customer service.

Angi announced its own pilot the same morning. An Angi-branded agent may appear in ChatGPT conversations about home projects. The homeowner describes the job, and when the work calls for a professional, the agent moves them into Angi's service request flow, where co-founder Angie Hicks says they end up "connecting with a skilled local pro." Angi launched an app inside ChatGPT earlier this year, but a user had to go find that one. The sponsored agent shows up in the conversation on its own.

The rest of the announcement

The plumbing under the agent test is what reaches small businesses. Advertisers can now build and adjust campaigns by writing prompts in ChatGPT Work, and Ads Manager will draft copy and images from a landing page. HubSpot became OpenAI's first CRM partner, so a business can connect a ChatGPT Ads account, run ads, and follow up on leads without leaving HubSpot. Shopify became the first ecommerce partner, with a ChatGPT Ads app for US merchants and other markets following on September 23.

The advertiser email Schwartz posted also covers conversion optimization with impression-based billing and flexible attribution windows. PYMNTS reports ChatGPT Ads passed a $1 billion annualized run rate at the end of August, with tens of thousands of advertisers.

The fine print

OpenAI's Ad Tools Terms define a Sponsored Agent as an advertiser-sponsored conversation with "an AI-generated representative" of the business. If OpenAI builds or configures the agent for you, you are "deemed the builder" and remain responsible for its content, configuration, actions, and output as if you had made it yourself. If the bot quotes a price or promises a Tuesday appointment, that promise is yours.

The Hacker News thread on the announcement ran to 169 comments. The objections: who wants this, whether the sponsored bot will nudge people toward the pricier option, and whether someone who switches apps and comes back will remember they are typing into an ad.

My read

Ads with a chatbot attached is the small part. The bigger change is that a click no longer sends the customer to your website. It starts a qualification conversation, and the business running that conversation gets the lead.

Picture how Angi's version plays out. A homeowner in Geneva asks ChatGPT about a water heater that is leaking. The sponsored agent asks about the age of the unit, the timeline, and the budget, then routes the request to the contractors in Angi's network. That was already Angi's business. It now happens at the moment the question gets asked, before the homeowner has searched for a plumber and before your phone rings.

The names in the pilot are Wayfair and Angi, and nothing in the announcement suggests a single plumbing shop gets its own agent soon. The aggregators will hold this ground first.

What this means for a local business

You can still get ready for the day the format opens up, because the ad is the easy part. The agent behind it is the work.

• The agent has to know your business: service area, real pricing, what you do not do, and when a person should take over. A bot that says yes to everything is worse than no bot.
• Your intake has to keep up. If a sponsored agent sends you a homeowner with a full project description and your office answers two days later, the next contractor on the list gets the job.
• The same agent works everywhere. The one that answers questions on your website, texts back a missed call, and writes the request into your CRM is the one you would plug into a sponsored placement.

New Face Design's free process audit starts with that intake. We map how a request reaches your business today, from the first question to the booked job, and show you which steps software can handle on its own. Start here.