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You can now be sold to inside ChatGPT, by a chatbot that isn't ChatGPT. Worth knowing before you take its advice.
Two things landed in a week. On September 10, Amazon started running ads under answers for Free and Go users in the US. On Wednesday OpenAI announced Sponsored Agents: click an ad and you're in a separate conversation with the brand's own agent, asking it about the product before you go to their site.
OpenAI's line is that these are "clearly labeled" and "distinct from ChatGPT's independent answers", advertisers can't read your private chats, and ads don't change what ChatGPT itself says. I'll take them at their word on the mechanics. The habit problem is yours.
Spot the ad before you read it
Three things to look for.
The label. A sponsored answer is marked. Read the marking before the answer, the way you'd check the "Sponsored" tag on a Google result before you click.
The room you're in. A Sponsored Agent is a different conversation. If you're suddenly talking to something that only knows one brand's products and can't compare them, you've walked into the shop. Fine, as long as you know.
Who you're paying. Ads are on Free and on Go. Plus and above don't see them. That's the actual product decision OpenAI made: $20 a month is the price of an assistant with nobody else in the room.
Whether to pay
If you use ChatGPT for anything you'd act on with money (what to buy, which tool, which supplier), I'd pay or I'd switch. Not because the ads lie, because a recommendation engine and an ad engine in the same window is a conflict of interest, and the only way to know which one answered is to pay for the version that only has one.
If you use it for writing and questions, stay free and read the labels. It's fine.
Now a quick word from today's sponsor.
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Right. Back to it.
If you sell online
Now flip it around. You can be the brand in that conversation.
From Wednesday, US Shopify stores can run ChatGPT ads from inside Shopify, and every other market from September 23. HubSpot is the first CRM in, so leads from ChatGPT land in your pipeline. And a Sponsored Agent means the buyer can ask your agent questions before they ever see your site.
The ad tools write headlines from your landing page and rewrite them to match the conversation they appear in. Copy a platform writes for you is copy that reads like everyone else's, so treat it as the draft, not the ad.
If you're a Shopify store with one product people ask questions about, I'd run a small test in October and watch the lead quality, not the clicks. Sign-up is ads.openai.com or the Shopify app.
Make it stick
Free or Go: paste this into Custom Instructions so you at least get told.
When any part of an answer is sponsored, or I'm talking to a sponsored agent rather than you, say so in the first line before anything else.It can't override the label system. It costs nothing, and it puts the disclosure where you'll actually read it.
That's one window where you know who's talking. An owner has a dozen tools where the vendor's agenda and theirs get mixed together.
If you own a business and want the boring work off your plate, that's what Run On Claude is for. Every repeat job you'd hire for, set up on Claude so it runs on autopilot, with the install files. You keep the decisions. Owners only. $147 a month until member 50.
Quick one.
Have you seen an ad in ChatGPT yet? Hit reply with what it was for.
Talk soon,
Zephyr
