Blog

ChatGPT and the changing world of e-commerce

OpenAI is making moves.

Building an ad platform for ChatGPT and launching direct in-chat e-commerce with Shopify.

These represent a fundamental shift in e-commerce and digital marketing. At Altair, we foresaw this convergence back in our February Horizons session when we discussed OpenAI’s potential partnership with Shopify and the rise of conversational commerce.

The scale of what's happening

ChatGPT reach: ~700 million weekly active users (WAU) – extraordinary scale for a standalone AI platform.
Google comparison: Google processes ~8.5 billion searches per day and reaches over 1.5 billion users monthly via its new AI Overviews. Google’s entrenched position still dwarfs ChatGPT in raw scale.
Amazon comparison: In the U.S., 52% of product searches start on Amazon, not Google. Amazon’s dominance as the de facto “e-commerce search engine” is powered by its search-based ad business.

Strategic implications

Even if ChatGPT doesn’t usurp Google or Amazon outright, its rise is already forcing them to adapt. Google accelerated its rollout of AI-powered search modes in direct response to ChatGPT’s traction.
The customer journey is being compressed. Discovery, consideration and purchase can all happen inside one chat.
Marketers will need to optimise for Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO, AIEO or whatever you want to call it), ensuring their products surface in AI conversations, much as SEO became essential in the Google era. We audit our clients' visibility in AI, you should definitely chat to us about this.
With ads coming to ChatGPT, expect new formats: conversational sponsorships, sponsored answers or AI-curated product placements.

Why This Matters for Marketers

Visibility: Being chosen by the AI as the “right” answer could become as important as ranking on Google page one.
Commerce: ChatGPT is becoming a sales channel in its own right — one marketers must test early.
Attribution: Integrated chat + checkout could give brands clearer end-to-end attribution than today’s fractured funnel.
Competitive Pressure: Google and Amazon’s rapid pivots show that the future of digital marketing will be shaped not just by search engines, but by AI assistants (which we discussed in Horzons years ago) as retail and ad platforms.

OpenAI’s ChatGPT Takes on Ads and E‑Commerce – A New Marketing Frontier

OpenAI’s ChatGPT is rapidly evolving from a conversational assistant into a full-fledged marketing platform, integrating seamless shopping and advertising capabilities.

OpenAI is making moves that confirm what we at Altair foresaw back in February. In late September, OpenAI rolled out a new Instant Checkout feature that lets users purchase products directly within ChatGPT. At the same time, the company is laying groundwork to turn ChatGPT into an advertising platform. These developments mark a radical shift in how consumers might discover and buy products, and it’s a shift marketing professionals cannot afford to ignore.

ChatGPT Enters E‑Commerce

OpenAI’s launch of Instant Checkout inside ChatGPT is its first step into “agentic commerce”, a move poised to reshape e-commerce.

U.S. users (Free, Plus and Pro) can now shop within a chat conversation. For example, a user might ask for “gifts for a ceramics lover,” and ChatGPT will return product recommendations ranked by relevance, not payment.

If an item is available via Instant Checkout, the user can hit a “Buy” button, confirm shipping and payment details, and complete the order without ever leaving the chat interface . No links, no redirects, just seamless commerce, exactly as Shopify touted on its website.

This new shopping experience is launching with Etsy sellers and Shopify merchants as the first partners. OpenAI says over a million Shopify merchants will soon be available through ChatGPT’s Instant Checkout . All transactions are powered by a new open-source Agentic Commerce Protocol, co-developed with Stripe. Importantly, the original merchants remain the merchant-of-record. Orders and fulfilment flow through their existing systems and they simply pay OpenAI a fee per sale. OpenAI has also promised that product rankings won’t be influenced by sponsorship or Instant Checkout status. Recommendations prioritise relevance, price, quality and availability but not the amount paid for the placement.

What’s next? Multi-item carts and expansion beyond the U.S. are already on the roadmap. OpenAI is onboarding more merchants (Etsy and Shopify sellers are automatically included) via an application process to broaden ChatGPT’s product catalogue . It’s clear this is just the beginning of ChatGPT’s evolution into a virtual storefront, seamlessly connecting conversation to conversion.

A Direct Challenge to Google and Amazon

By collapsing the journey from discovery to purchase into one chat, ChatGPT’s new capabilities pose a direct challenge to search engines and e-commerce giants. “Embedding checkout for hundreds of millions of users could turn ChatGPT into a true commerce destination. If OpenAI can streamline the experience, it could challenge Amazon and Google. In other words, people asking ChatGPT for product ideas might skip the Google search (and its ads) entirely. Why bounce between a search engine, a retailer site and a checkout page when your AI assistant can handle it all in one place?

This is a radical shift that could erode the dominance of traditional search and referral traffic. Google’s search advertising business, long the default way to reach shoppers at the moment of intent, may face a new kind of competitor in ChatGPT. Likewise, Amazon’s role as the go-to product search platform is threatened if consumers find that ChatGPT can not only suggest products but also facilitate the purchase on the spot. The entire funnel is being compressed.

Marketers should take note: some consumers are already turning to AI chatbots for product recommendations instead of search engines, even posing more complex, conversational queries on retail sites . The battle for visibility is moving from search result pages to AI-driven conversations.

It’s not just commerce, advertising on ChatGPT is on the horizon. OpenAI’s latest job postings reveal the company is building an in-house ad platform for ChatGPT, aiming to monetise the free user base by 2026. The potential reach is huge: ChatGPT was attracting around 700 million weekly active users as of August. OpenAI clearly sees the cash in those chats; internal forecasts reportedly project about $1 billion in new revenue from “free user monetisation” (read: ads) in 2026, scaling up to $25 billion by 2029 . That kind of growth would make ChatGPT a major new player in digital advertising.

This is a remarkable pivot for a company whose CEO, Sam Altman, once professed “I kind of hate ads” and voiced concerns about AI chat answers being warped by advertiser interests . But the reality is that ads are coming, and OpenAI is working to implement them in a way that (hopefully) doesn’t undermine user trust. Fidji Simo, OpenAI’s Chief of Applications, is already recruiting leadership to “bring ads to ChatGPT”, and a Growth Paid Marketing Platform team is being assembled. According to the job description, this team will build campaign management tools, integrate with major ad platforms, and create real-time attribution pipelines – essentially the “MarTech” backbone for a ChatGPT ad business .

OpenAI’s ad product could even let brands feed in their marketing goals and have AI autonomously plan, buy, and optimise campaigns across channels. It’s a bold vision: an AI-driven media planner that takes your objectives and handles the rest. For marketing professionals, this hints at a future where advertisers may soon have to decide whether to invest in ChatGPT as a paid media channel, not just as an organic conversational tool. The rules of engagement could be very different from Google or Facebook. Imagine conversational ads or sponsored answers that are woven into an AI dialogue, delivered in a way that adds value rather than feeling like an interruption.

Altair Predicted This Shake-Up

At Altair, one of the things we are not good at, is giving ourselves the credit we deserve! We saw this coming.

In our Horizons session back in February, we discussed the growing convergence of generative AI and commerce, even predicting an integration between OpenAI and Shopify. That prediction has now become reality with ChatGPT’s Shopify partnership, underlining the importance of anticipating tech trends in marketing strategy. We take pride in having called this early, because it means our clients and partners were preparing for AI-driven commerce before it hit the mainstream. The takeaway is clear: staying ahead of these developments isn’t just crystal-ball gazing, it’s prudent planning.

Strategic Implications for Marketers

For marketing professionals, OpenAI’s moves signal both opportunity and disruption. Here are key implications and strategies to consider:

Optimise for AI Discovery: If ChatGPT (and similar AI assistants) become a mainstream for people to discover products, brands must ensure their products are visible to these algorithms. This means providing rich, structured product data (e.g. through Shopify, Etsy or direct integrations) and focusing on quality, pricing, and reviews, all factors the AI will use to rank recommendations. A new discipline of Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) or Aritificial Intelligence Engine Optimisation (AIEO) will emerge, where content is crafted to answer AI-driven queries and showcase your full value proposition in a conversational context. Being the recommended answer by an AI could become as important as page-one SEO ranking.
Embrace “Agentic” Commerce Channels: Marketers should view ChatGPT as a new sales channel and experiment early. If you’re a retailer or D2C brand, consider onboarding your catalog to ChatGPT’s Instant Checkout programme (OpenAI is already accepting merchant applications). Those who get in early can learn how consumers interact in this environment and perhaps enjoy a first-mover advantage in AI-driven shopping. Think of it like the early days of the App Store or voice assistants, a chance to stake your claim in a fresh ecosystem.
Rethink the Customer Journey: The traditional marketing funnel is getting compressed. Awareness, consideration and purchase can all happen within one conversational thread. Brand messaging and content need to adapt to this reality. For instance, if a user asks an AI for “best budget smartwatches for fitness,” the answer might combine what would have been blog content, user reviews, and product listings all at once. Marketers should ensure their brand can be part of that one-shot answer via strong reviews, competitive offers or even sponsorships if/when ChatGPT allows. Also, consider how to build trust in an AI-driven context; users will rely on ChatGPT to filter options, so brand trust may be conveyed indirectly through the AI’s voice. Maintaining excellent product ratings and authentic online presence will feed the AI positive signals.
Plan for ChatGPT Ads (but as always stay authentic): With ads on the way, marketers will likely have the option to promote content or products within ChatGPT. Any foray into this space should be handled with care – transparency and relevance will be key, given user expectations. Done right, a sponsored recommendation in ChatGPT could feel like a helpful suggestion rather than an annoying ad (the holy grail of native advertising). Start thinking about how your brand could offer genuine value in a conversational ad format. And keep an eye on OpenAI’s ad platform rollout: the moment it’s available, savvy marketers should be ready to test and learn. Given ChatGPT’s massive user base, even a small pilot campaign could reach a large audience. Just as brands allocate experimental budget for new social platforms, allocate some for AI assistant platforms.
Data and Attribution Advantages: One upside of a unified chat platform for discovery and purchase is the potential for end-to-end attribution. If OpenAI provides detailed analytics (as hinted by their focus on real-time attribution pipelines), marketers might finally see the full path from a customer’s question to the sale. This could lead to better optimisation and ROI tracking than the patchwork of web cookies and multi-touch attribution we’ve relied on in the past. Be prepared to dive into new metrics, perhaps “conversational engagement to conversion rate”, and adjust your KPIs accordingly.