OpenAI is continuing to expand ChatGPT’s role in eCommerce and product discovery. According to a recent Digiday report, OpenAI has introduced a new “product feed” campaign type that allows merchants to generate shopping ads directly from their product catalogs instead of creating campaigns product by product.
The actual ad format remains the same for users. Sponsored products still appear below the AI-generated response and are clearly labeled as ads.
What changed is the infrastructure behind it.
Here’s how the new setup works:
- Merchants connect their product catalog
- They choose which products are eligible for advertising
- ChatGPT automatically generates ads using product titles, images, pricing, and attributes from the feed
For brands managing thousands or even millions of SKUs, this is a major improvement.
Until now, retailers could upload product feeds to ChatGPT mainly so OpenAI could surface accurate product information, pricing, and availability inside organic shopping answers. However, there was no direct connection between those feeds and paid advertising.
Brands that wanted to advertise inside ChatGPT had to manually build campaigns one product at a time.
Now the same structured catalog powering organic discovery can also power paid ads automatically.
The setup will feel very familiar to sellers already running Google Shopping or Performance Max campaigns. In many cases, retailers can largely reuse the same product feeds they already send to Google, significantly lowering the barrier to entry.
According to Digiday, OpenAI is currently working with adtech partners like Criteo and testing the feature with selected advertisers. Reports also suggest the system can support up to one million SKUs per advertiser.
No public launch date has been announced yet.
What’s particularly interesting is the broader direction OpenAI appears to be taking with commerce.
A few weeks ago, the company shut down its Instant Checkout feature, which initially made some people think OpenAI was stepping back from eCommerce. But this latest update suggests something different.
Instead of becoming a marketplace itself, OpenAI seems to be positioning ChatGPT as a product discovery and advertising platform.
And honestly, this direction makes much more sense.
Over the past few months, OpenAI has quietly been building the core infrastructure needed to compete for eCommerce advertising budgets:
- CPC advertising alongside CPM pricing
- Conversion tracking pixels
- Shopping Research tools for comparing products across the web
- Partnerships with advertising and attribution platforms
- Improved shopping-focused AI answers
- Performance advertising capabilities similar to established ad platforms
This is starting to look less like experimental monetization and more like a long-term commerce strategy.
The biggest difference compared to platforms like Google, Amazon, or Meta is that ChatGPT operates primarily around conversational intent.
Users are not simply searching keywords or browsing product listings. They are asking questions, comparing options, researching products, and seeking recommendations in natural language.
That creates a very different shopping experience and potentially a very valuable advertising opportunity if OpenAI can scale it properly.
For eCommerce brands, agencies, and marketplaces, ChatGPT shopping ads are definitely becoming something worth paying attention to.
