Paid media and AI search ads enter engagement platforms
Ad platforms, including ChatGPT Ads, become a channel that engagement and data platforms connect to and manage directly.
The pattern so far
From July 2026 paid media stopped being a separate stack for the engagement team. HubSpot integrated ChatGPT Ads, ActiveCampaign and Adobe added Google and Meta Ads connections, ChatGPT Ads reached 31 European countries in August and a billion-dollar run rate by the end of the month, and in September HubSpot became the first CRM to build, launch and attribute ChatGPT campaigns natively.
Trajectory
Month by month
- Accelerating Reconstructed
ChatGPT Ads passed a billion-dollar annualised run rate with a self-service Ads Manager, HubSpot became the first CRM to build, budget, launch and attribute ChatGPT campaigns inside the platform, and OpenAI began testing Sponsored Agents with select US advertisers.
- Confirmed Reconstructed
ChatGPT Ads went live in 31 European countries, Italy included, with a Pixel and a Conversions API, and Tealium added server-side connectors for connected TV and podcast advertising. The two ChatGPT Ads entries in the MarTech and AI Watches count as one source.
- Emerging Reconstructed
HubSpot shipped a native ChatGPT Ads integration, ActiveCampaign connected its data to Google Ads, and Adobe Experience Platform added Google Ads and Meta Ads as sources.