In The Matrix, Morpheus said: “I’ve seen an agent punch through a concrete wall.”
What if they sold you wallpaper for that wall instead? 😀
OpenAI appears to be testing a new type of ChatGPT ad that sends users into a conversation with a brand’s AI agent instead of directing them to a website.
As first reported by Search Engine Roundtable, technology analyst and founder Juozas Kaziukėnas said in a LinkedIn post that he spotted a new “Agent” campaign type inside OpenAI’s Ads Manager for select advertisers. The interface says: “Agent campaigns send people to a Business Agent conversation.”
Why This Matters:
Well, it matters a lot, actually.
This would be a massive departure from how digital advertising has worked. Instead of clicking an ad and landing on an advertiser’s website or landing page, users could stay inside ChatGPT and interact directly with an AI agent that represents the business or brand. That’s… awesome. (We’re biased, clearly.)
According to Kaziukėnas, OpenAI scrapes the advertiser’s website to build a business profile with relevant company and customer information. Advertisers can then configure a Business Agent with their own instructions and connect it to product feeds and other data sources. The agent can also capture leads through custom forms.
The final step is where things get interesting: Instead of entering a website URL as the destination for the campaign, the advertiser points the ad to its Business Agent. In other words, the AI agent effectively becomes the landing page.
Experts React:
Kaziukėnas said the advertiser-side functionality is already available in Ads Manager for select advertisers, but he hasn’t actually seen one of the new ads served to a ChatGPT user yet.
“I’m not 100% on the user experience, but it is interesting to see chatbot-native advertising,” he wrote.
Our Take:
OpenAI has been speedrunning the buildout of ChatGPT Ads infrastructure. Agent campaigns suggest it’s also thinking about what advertising should ACTUALLY look like in a conversational AI interface, rather than simply recreating search or social ads inside ChatGPT.
The bigger idea could be moving more of the post-click experience into ChatGPT itself. An advertiser’s agent could potentially answer questions, surface product information, and do more that I think people who trust these AI chat experiences would be OK with. (The advertiser has to get clear insight into these interactions, however.)
Whether people actually want to talk to an advertiser-controlled AI agent is another question. But as a native ad format for an AI platform, there’s a logic to turning the traditional landing page into a conversation.
