ChatGPT’s New Ad Controls Revealed
▼ Summary
– A newly discovered settings panel reveals the detailed framework for how ads will function within ChatGPT, including personalization and privacy controls.
– The interface emphasizes that advertisers will not have access to users’ chats, history, memories, personal details, or IP addresses.
– Users will have controls to view ad history, manage inferred interests, and hide or report ads, with data deletable separately from general account information.
– Ad personalization can be toggled on or off, using either saved history and interests or only the current conversation for context when disabled.
– The system suggests ads will rely on contextual signals and opt-in personalization, prioritizing privacy and user choice over deep tracking.
A newly discovered settings panel within ChatGPT provides the most detailed preview to date of how advertising will function on the platform, revealing a system built around user privacy and granular control. The interface, uncovered by entrepreneur Juozas Kaziukėnas, repeatedly assures users that advertisers will not have access to private conversations, chat history, personal memories, specific user details, or IP addresses. This early look outlines how OpenAI intends to integrate ads while maintaining strict data boundaries.
The settings reveal a structured advertising framework with dedicated user controls. A History tab maintains a log of every advertisement a user views while interacting with ChatGPT. Separately, an Interests tab stores preferences that the system infers based on how a user interacts with ads and the feedback they provide. Each individual advertisement includes options to either hide it or report it for being inappropriate. Importantly, users can delete their ad history and inferred interests independently, without affecting their general ChatGPT data or conversation logs.
Personalization remains entirely optional. Users can toggle ad personalization on or off through a simple switch. When enabled, ChatGPT utilizes saved ad history and interest signals to tailor the advertisements a user sees. If a user disables this feature, ads will still appear but will rely solely on the context of the current conversation for relevance, not on past behavior. The interface also indicates an option to personalize ads using content from past conversations and the platform’s memory feature, though it explicitly states that chat content is never shared with advertisers. For accounts where the memory function is disabled, this particular personalization option will not be active.
This preview is significant because it shows how ChatGPT plans to balance effective ad targeting with robust privacy protections. The controls suggest advertising will depend heavily on contextual signals from active chats and strictly opt-in personalization, rather than on extensive cross-platform user tracking. This means creative relevance and real-time conversational intent will likely become more critical for ad performance than traditional demographic or behavioral profiling. For brands and marketers, this serves as an early signal to begin crafting messaging and strategies suited for a conversational advertising environment where user choice is paramount.
The overall design indicates OpenAI is developing an ad system that incorporates familiar control panels from major digital advertising platforms, but with a pronounced emphasis on privacy and user agency. While ChatGPT ads are not yet publicly available, the underlying framework is clearly taking shape. It points toward a future where ads within conversational AI come with transparent, user-managed settings for both personalization and data privacy.
(Source: Search Engine Land)
