OpenAI has shared how its ChatGPT advertising system interprets conversations, selects relevant ads, and keeps ad serving separate from organic answers.

The technical breakdown explains how a dedicated language model coordinates ad selection as a user’s needs develop across messages. It also describes why an ad can win an auction and still never appear.

OpenAI says ChatGPT Ads reached $1 billion in annualized revenue run rate less than 200 days after launch. More than 100,000 advertisers have run ads since launch, although the post does not include performance benchmarks for those advertisers.

Ads Run Separately From Answer Generation

OpenAI says the system choosing ads runs separately from the one writing ChatGPT’s answers. Each uses its own models and code.

Both can use the conversation, but they do different jobs. As ChatGPT writes a response, the ads system checks whether there’s a relevant ad to show below it.…