OpenAI Pilots Sponsored Agents in ChatGPT With Wayfair, Angi

On September 16, OpenAI turned its first paid slot inside ChatGPT into something you can talk to. The company began piloting "Sponsored Agents," where a clearly labeled advertiser-run agent takes over after a user taps an ad, answers follow-ups in the same chat, and hands off to the business's site when the shopper is ready. Wayfair and Angi are among the first participants.

"Our AI-first strategy is simple: make it easier for homeowners to connect with and hire the right pro for their project," said Angie Hicks, co-founder of Angi, whose branded agent surfaces in ChatGPT conversations about home services and routes homeowners into Angi's service-request flow. Wayfair is participating "at limited scale," according to the OpenAI announcement, which also names Newegg, Best Buy, Lowe's and VistaPrint as early advertisers on ChatGPT. Users, OpenAI says, can "spell out what matters to them, pose follow-up questions, and click through to the business's website when they are ready to move forward."

Alongside the agent pilot, OpenAI opened two funnels for advertisers to actually run the campaigns. HubSpot is its first CRM partner: customers can connect a ChatGPT Ads account, build ads, track performance and chase leads inside HubSpot. A ChatGPT Ads app in the Shopify App Store lets US-based merchants push their Shopify Catalog straight into campaigns, with Shopify named as OpenAI's first ecommerce partner.

The pilot is limited, and OpenAI has not disclosed how frequently a sponsored agent will surface in a given conversation, or how the model decides which one to trigger.