Criteo becomes first adtech partner in ChatGPT ads test

Criteo has announced that it is the first ad tech company to participate in OpenAI’s advertising pilot inside ChatGPT. According to the company, the integration enables brands to make ad buys through Criteo’s commerce media platform and reach ad placements within ChatGPT’s conversational interface. 

The rollout is expected to begin in the coming weeks, and the integration is currently limited to the U.S. market.

This move follows OpenAI’s announcement that it would begin testing ads in the Free and Go tiers of ChatGPT. The pilot has progressed quickly. Early participants include Target, Ford, Mrs. Meyer's, and Adobe, alongside agency partners such as Dentsu, Omnicom, and WPP.

OpenAI reportedly set a minimum advertiser commitment of $200,000 for participation in the pilot, with a $60 CPM rate, which places the inventory at a premium compared with many traditional social platforms.

How the integration works for advertisers

The integration connects Criteo’s digital ad platform directly to ChatGPT’s advertising surfaces. Through the partnership, advertisers using Criteo’s digital advertising infrastructure can access ad placements inside ChatGPT’s conversational chatbot. They will soon be able to purchase ChatGPT ads through the Criteo platform.

Criteo said its platform will begin connecting advertisers to ChatGPT inventory as part of the ongoing pilot. The system uses Criteo’s commerce intelligence and AI-driven decision-making technology, which the company says supports cross-channel campaign outcomes across performance media and retail environments.

“This integration with OpenAI represents an exciting step forward in advancing advertising in an emerging AI experience,” said Michael Komasinski, CEO of Criteo.

The ad tech platform claims that it activates more than $4 billion in annual media spend and works with 17,000 advertisers globally. It also reports access to data linked to more than $1 trillion in annual commerce sales.

The company also shared aggregated insights from its U.S. clients, indicating that users referred from LLM platforms such as ChatGPT convert at approximately one and a half times the rate of other referral channels, based on February data. The company presented this as evidence that conversational traffic can carry commercial intent.

Context for advertisers and marketers

Criteo has historically focused on performance display advertising and shopper-based retargeting. Over recent years, the company has repositioned itself as a commerce intelligence platform centered on AI-driven decision-making across retail media and performance channels.

The OpenAI integration aligns with that shift. The company has previously signaled its interest in large language model environments. According to Digiday, in late 2025, it described experiments involving structured commerce signals delivered into LLM systems through its Model Context Protocol server. Those efforts were designed to allow AI agents to access product and retailer-level data during recommendation workflows.

More recently, Criteo introduced its Agentic Commerce Recommendation Service. The company reported internal January 2026 testing showing up to 60% improvement in recommendation relevancy compared with approaches relying only on product descriptions. 

The ChatGPT advertising pilot connects directly to this broader infrastructure strategy. Instead of relying solely on traditional ad surfaces, advertisers can now reach users within a conversational interface where product discovery often begins with intent-based queries.