AI and ML
OpenAI mockup of advertising in ChatGPT
ChatGPT Ads, I wish I knew how to quit you
OpenAI appears to be serving ads after buyers have halted their campaigns, and charging them for the privilege.OpenAI began testing ad sales in ChatGPT in the US back in February and has been gradually expanding the service in other regions, including the United Kingdom, Mexico, Brazil, Japan, and South Korea as of Tuesday.
Given that a substantial minority of ChatGPT user base pays for the service (50 million out of 900 million weekly users as of February 2026), advertising revenue appears to be an important part of OpenAI's plan to defray the cost of providing its service and to convince investors that it has a path to profitability ahead of a future initial public offering.
Online ad-marts from the likes of Google and Facebook give advertisers control over when and where their ads will appear, but don't always stick to instructions. The AI biz's ad service appears to have similar ad timing and billing accuracy issues.
Ed Bolton, managing director of UK-based Excel4Business, told The Register that his company encountered "an odd billing practice" when it started experimenting with ChatGPT Ads in the US and Canada.
"We were running campaigns in the US and Canada … and noticed ads were being delivered through the night/morning on d campaigns," he explained.
When Bolton pointed this out in a support message thread, an OpenAI customer service representative initially acknowledged the failure.
"We have now confirmed that your campaigns continued serving after they were d," said an OpenAI support specialist in an email provided to The Register. "This was not a reporting delay. The campaign was marked as d, but the separate ad-level status used by the serving system did not refresh promptly, so an ad that was still active at the ad level continued to run. Our Ads Engineering team has escalated this defect and is working on an additional production fix."
The support reply goes on to state: "Our review has confirmed £60.72 in invalid charges from the original occurrence and approximately £6.47 from the August 4–5 recurrence. We are extending that reconciliation to the additional activity you reported on August 6. We are preparing the confirmed invalid charges for billing review, but I cannot confirm the final refund or credit amount until the latest activity has been reconciled and that review is complete."
Bolton responded that the acknowledged problem – ads being served after he disabled the campaign – had been occurring for a longer period of time and requested a more complete reconciliation of ad billing.
Several days later, OpenAI's support rep reversed the prior determination and declined to offer any refund or credit because the company's Advertising Terms state that ChatGPT Ads may be delivered even after a customer cancels a campaign and the advertiser still has to pay for those unwanted ads.
"Section 11.1 of our Advertising Terms provides that ads may continue running for up to one business day after a campaign is canceled or changed, and advertisers remain responsible for ads delivered during that period," the support message explains. "Pausing a campaign constitutes a campaign change and does not guarantee that delivery or associated charges stop immediately."
A spokesperson for OpenAI confirmed that's the case, explaining that it can take a business day to cancel or change a campaign and that this doesn't represent an intentional effort to run ads after an advertiser has disabled a campaign.
Based on the times cited in the support message thread, the most delayed ChatGPT ad ran about 94 minutes after Excel4Business d a campaign. An OpenAI company spokesperson didn't immediately follow up on a request to provide the average amount of time ads get served following the or cancellation of a campaign.
OpenAI isn't the only ad provider that allows itself a business day to turn off its ad spigot for a particular customer. Other advertising services impose similar terms.
"So the terms … seem to be a standard which is used in digital advertising, which some legal team wrote at some point, saying that we've got a 24-hour grace period if you stop a campaign," Bolton said - before adding that he has run Google AdWords campaigns for 17 or 18 years and has never had that issue.
If ad buyers were not able to stop an AdWords campaign quickly, you could easily spend half a million dollars, he said. Nonetheless, some Google advertising customers have complained about post- ad serving.
Why it might take so long to stop serving ads at a time when applications and servers can be spun up and torn down in seconds isn't immediately clear. One can order and receive physical goods from Amazon.com in less than one business day. It may be that there's no financial incentive or regulatory pressure to tackle the problem, and a significant financial incentive to ignore it.
"My understanding is that such a clause is included in terms and conditions so as to cover issues with latency, and not to allow them to run ads for 24 hours longer than instructed," said Bolton. "Regardless, they cannot retroactively apply a clause from terms and conditions after making a written settlement offer." ®