OpenAI has added Google Shopping-style product carousels to ChatGPT ads

Remember when Google Shopping changed everything for online retail? It's happening again, and this time it's inside ChatGPT.

This week OpenAI started rolling out product carousels in ChatGPT ads. Multiple products, side by side, in a shoppable format at the bottom of a conversation. If that sounds familiar, it should. It works almost exactly like Google's Shopping feed, and it's landing just in time for Q4.

We've been tracking ChatGPT ads closely since they went live in the UK, and this is the biggest step yet towards a proper e-commerce ad product.

What's new in ChatGPT shopping ads

Until now, a ChatGPT ad meant one advertiser, one product. A headline, a short description, an image and a link. That was the whole format for five months.

The carousel breaks that mould. Digiday verified the new format via screenshots: several products from a retailer's catalogue shown together in a single placement, pulled straight from the product feed rather than built as individual ad units.

It builds on the product feed campaigns OpenAI launched three months back, which let retailers bulk-create ads from their catalogues instead of one at a time. First the feeds, now the carousel. You can see the plan.

One detail matters more than the rest. OpenAI's systems decide whether you get a single ad or a carousel, and which products appear. Not you. Right now each carousel shows one retailer's products, but the mechanics are already built for more. Digiday reckons competing retailers side by side is the obvious next step. Just like Shopping, in other words.

Why the timing is no accident

Q4 is coming. OpenAI reportedly has a $2.5 billion ad revenue target for 2026, and the holiday quarter is where the money is. Adthena's CMO put it well: advertisers planning 2027 budgets will be asking how much they need in this engine, and OpenAI wants product discovery working inside ChatGPT before those conversations happen.

Ship the shoppable format now, catch the Christmas budgets. It's the same playbook every ad platform has run for twenty years. OpenAI is just running it faster than anyone we've seen.

How to advertise on ChatGPT: what UK retailers should do now

Here's the practical bit. Because OpenAI's system picks the products, your feed does the selling before a shopper ever sees an ad. Sound familiar? It's the Google Shopping lesson all over again: the best feed wins.

Get your product feed in shape. Clean titles, accurate pricing and availability, rich attributes, good imagery. The same feed hygiene that pays off in Google Shopping and Meta Advantage+ now pays off in a third channel at once.

Connect via the Agentic Commerce Protocol. ACP is how merchants share product data and promotions with OpenAI. If your platform supports it, get connected before the Q4 rush, not during it.

Set up measurement first. Conversion-optimised campaigns need the pixel or Conversions API flowing before you spend. Retrofitting measurement in November is nobody's idea of fun.

Test while it's cheap. CPMs on ChatGPT ads have already fallen from around $60 to $25 as the auction matures. Once carousels prove themselves in Q4, this inventory will not stay cheap.

Imagine you sell running shoes and someone asks ChatGPT for the best trainers for a first marathon. That's the moment your carousel appears. That's a better shopping intent signal than most keywords ever were.

The bigger picture

Ads in AI answers stopped being a novelty this year. Microsoft has them in Copilot. Google is rebuilding search around AI Mode. Kroger even launched an AI shopping assistant with ads on day one. The carousel is simply ChatGPT catching up with how people actually shop.

And the thread running through all of it: structured, accurate product data is becoming the single most valuable asset in e-commerce marketing. Your feed now powers your Google ads, your Meta ads, your ChatGPT ads and your visibility in organic AI answers. One asset, four channels. Look after it. 👊🏻

Want help getting your feeds and campaigns ready before Q4? Talk to the team >>

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Sources:

• OpenAI brings product carousels to ChatGPT ads (Digiday, 6 August 2026)
• OpenAI makes it easier to run shopping ads in ChatGPT (Digiday)
• Brands can now customise how their ads appear in ChatGPT (Digiday)
• Testing ads in ChatGPT (OpenAI)