On 24 June 2026, at the Cannes Lions festival, OpenAI's chief revenue officer Denise Dresser announced that the dismissal rate of ads in ChatGPT had fallen by 50% since the February launch. OpenAI chooses the indicator, measures it and publishes it, without giving the absolute starting rate.
The facts
- Advertising in ChatGPT launched on 9 February 2026 in the United States, limited to free accounts and the $8 Go plan, excluding Plus, Pro, Business and Enterprise subscribers (Prism News).
- The pilot extended on 7 May 2026 to the United Kingdom, Mexico, Brazil, Japan and South Korea, then a self-service campaign manager and cost-per-click bidding were added in June.
- The 50% drop in the dismissal rate was announced on 22 and 24 June by Denise Dresser, a self-reported, unaudited figure (Search Engine Land).
Why is a 50% drop not enough to judge conversational advertising?
A falling dismissal rate says nothing about the starting volume. Going from 80% to 40% or from 4% to 2% produces the same 50% gap, for opposite commercial realities, and OpenAI publishes neither absolute figure. In campaign management, an indicator chosen by the sales house that sells the inventory deserves the same scepticism as a figure announced by Google or Meta about their own formats: useful for placing a trend, insufficient for allocating an advertising budget.
Geography adds a useful nuance for a French-speaking audience. None of the five countries in the 7 May extension, the United Kingdom, Mexico, Brazil, Japan and South Korea, belongs to the European Union. Since 2 June, OpenAI's European advertising policy has relied on explicit consent rather than legitimate interest, a GDPR requirement that the United States does not impose on advertisers (Digiday). France, Germany and Ireland are expected to be the next steps judging by current recruitment, with no confirmed date (Lengow). Luxembourg would follow a wider European rollout rather than a specific announcement.
AIxH's view
As a digital advertising agency in Luxembourg, AIxH manages Google, Meta, LinkedIn and Microsoft Ads budgets without ever taking a proprietary indicator at face value, whether it comes from OpenAI, Google or Meta. A new advertising channel is judged on absolute figures rather than on the variation the sales house chooses to publish. If you are considering ChatGPT as a future media channel, the question worth asking is which two figures OpenAI is not disclosing, rather than whether dismissals have fallen by 50%.