OpenAI is rolling out ads in 2026 and a memory feature that stores your past conversations, including sensitive details, for ad targeting. The company projects $25 billion in ad revenue by 2029 and has hired many ex-Meta employees. Eric Siu breaks down what this means for your privacy and why advertisers are paying attention now.
This guy, Marketing Max. So he's like, I'm about to spend an ungodly amount of money on ads inside of ChatGPT. Holy cow. So ChatGPT is about to introduce ads, right? Not only that, they're about to go public for maybe a trillion dollars, right? ChatGPT is about to introduce ads. You spent months telling it about your divorce, your new job search, your kids' health problems, where you vacation, what you're afraid of. OpenAI just hired 630 Meta employees, 20% of their entire company, to figure out how to turn those memories into ads. Projected revenue, $25 billion by 2029. Here's how it works. ChatGPT's new memory feature doesn't just remember what you tell it to save. It references all your past conversations automatically. Every chat, every detail, every vulnerable moment. Even if you delete them? Even if you delete them, yes. Where you live, your pets' names, your family members, your dietary restrictions, your career struggles, your health anxieties. So when ads roll out in 2026, that memory becomes targeting data. Ask about running shoes, it already knows you hate gyms but love hiking because you mentioned it 3 months ago. Ask for recipe ideas, it knows your kid has a peanut allergy from panicked conversations last summer, right? So why we care: OpenAI wants to monetize free users via ChatGPT ads by 2026, according to reports. So this is why the YouTuber tells me that, oh, you can't make money on a $20 subscription. That was missing the point entirely. They have 800 million users. 800 million active is a So look, I'm excited to spend money on the ads here, and whenever a new channel comes out, that's when you want to go hard because it's cheap. If you want more insights like this on AI marketing and business, follow to learn more.
