ChatGPT Is Now a Sales Channel — Here's What to Do About It

For a long time, when someone wanted to buy something, they started by searching Google. That is changing. On September 16, OpenAI launched Sponsored Agents — a new kind of ad inside ChatGPT that lets brands have a real conversation with a potential customer. A user asks about running shoes. An ad appears. Instead of clicking to a website, they can now start a real conversation with the brand's own AI. The agent answers questions, gives advice, and guides the user to a purchase.

This is different from a regular ad. A normal ad shows an image and a headline. A Sponsored Agent can actually answer what you ask — sizes, prices, comparisons, return policies, whatever. Think of it like a knowledgeable shop assistant available at any hour. The first businesses using it include Best Buy, Lowe's, Newegg, and VistaPrint. Shopify and HubSpot plug straight in, so merchants can start running these conversations without building anything custom.

This is not a small experiment. By August 2026, ChatGPT's advertising business had reached $1 billion in annualized revenue — in under a year. Hundreds of millions of people use ChatGPT every month. Many of them ask questions that lead to buying decisions: which laptop to buy, which supplement to try, which service to hire. Those questions are now an ad channel.

The practical takeaway is simple. Customers are starting their product research inside AI chat tools. If you sell something, you need to think about how your brand shows up in those AI conversations. What questions do your customers ask before they buy? Could your brand answer those questions helpfully, in a chat? That is where the next wave of customer discovery is happening, and the businesses that get there first will have an edge.