Criteo is now OpenAI's first ad tech partner, giving brands a programmatic path to buy their way into ChatGPT's responses and kicking off the race to monetize generative AI at scale. The deal connects Criteo's massive network directly into the ad pilot OpenAI began testing on February 9 in its Free and Go tiers in the US.

• Opening the floodgates: The integration will connect Criteo’s network of 17,000 advertisers, representing over $4 billion in annual media spend, directly into the chatbot. In a statement, Criteo CEO Michael Komasinski framed the effort as a way to support "discovery and consideration," stressing that the ad experiences should be additive and built on user trust.

• Price of admission: The partnership needs to justify a high cost of entry—OpenAI is asking for a minimum $200,000 commitment from brands, according to a report from Adweek. To make the case, Criteo is pointing to its own data indicating that traffic from LLM platforms has a conversion rate 1.5 times higher than other referral channels.

• The giants line up: The ad industry's biggest players aren't waiting to see how the experiment plays out. The pilot already includes clients from advertising giants like WPP, Omnicom, and Dentsu, signaling broad interest in reaching ChatGPT's massive user base.

While user reception remains a major question mark, the move officially opens a new, high-stakes frontier for digital advertising within AI-powered conversation. Criteo is framing the move as part of a broader strategy it calls "agentic commerce." The push into advertising follows a previous delay where OpenAI reportedly paused ad development to focus on competition from Google. For its part, OpenAI says it is focused on thoughtfully evaluating how brands can participate while driving value for users.