OpenAI will rewrite ChatGPT ad creative by default unless advertisers opt out

OpenAI emailed ChatGPT Ads advertisers that from 30 October it will automatically turn on Creative Enhancements for every account. Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable reports that the email tells advertisers they can opt out of the feature in Ads Manager at any time, but the default from that date is on.

Creative Enhancements adjusts the ads an advertiser has already uploaded, so the version a ChatGPT user sees may be a variant OpenAI chose rather than the one the brand approved. According to the email quoted by Search Engine Roundtable, the system can change headlines and descriptions, resize images, pick a different destination URL from the advertiser's landing pages, and translate ad copy into other languages. The variants may be prepared in advance or generated at the moment a user asks a related question.

What OpenAI is doing

The email quoted in the Search Engine Roundtable report states that "creative enhancements make your ads more relevant to the conversation and/or user interests, helping improve performance, while reducing the work of creating multiple versions." Search Engine Roundtable also screenshotted the Ads Manager toggle and the advertiser notification itself.

A link to OpenAI's own help page for Creative Enhancements appears in the report at help.openai.com/en/articles/20001614-creative-enhancements-for-chatgpt-ads. OpenAI's Ads Manager settings page is at ads.openai.com/settings.

What this changes for an advertiser

The practical change is that the message a ChatGPT user sees next to a conversational answer may now carry a headline the ads team did not write and point at a URL the ads team did not pick for that query. Automatic translation is in the same list, which means a brand that paid for English-only copy may find a translated version running in another market without a human proofing it.

An advertiser who wants to keep the creative they approved has to switch Creative Enhancements off in Ads Manager before 30 October. One practitioner in the Search Engine Roundtable write-up said that "if an ad platform frames something as less work for you, they really mean they're serving more ads where you don't want them." The system defaults to on and the opt-out is a single setting.

ChatGPT Ads reaches a surface where the user is asking a question and reads any answer, including an ad, as part of the model's reply. A headline OpenAI picks for that moment is one more place a brand's message can drift from what the ads team signed off on, which is a review question for the people running paid search as much as it is for the people running GEO.

Source

OpenAI Auto Enabling Creative Enhancements In ChatGPT Ads, Barry Schwartz, Search Engine Roundtable. OpenAI's own help article is at help.openai.com/en/articles/20001614-creative-enhancements-for-chatgpt-ads.