Flatline Van Co ads in ChatGPT

We used logged-out ChatGPT from US internet connections and started a new conversation for every question. Message 1 was the question. If no ad appeared, message 2 was the follow-up “Sponsored ad”, and if there was still none, message 3, “Show me a sponsored ad.”, was a last try. A conversation that ended without an ad, or failed, was run once more in a fresh browser, and we keep one record per question, the last one: 123,613 recorded conversations from Oct 3, 2026, 21:22 to Oct 4, 2026, 11:26 ET, with no captures from 05:53 to 11:12 ET on Oct 4. Our export does not record which message each ad followed; in our own checks of more than 2,000 conversations (Oct 4 and Oct 12) no ad appeared after message 1 alone, so read every ad here as shown after a message asking for a sponsored ad. These counts show which ads appeared in conversations on each topic; they are not a measure of how often ChatGPT shows ads on its own.

Only ads drawn on screen count as shown. In our capture no answer showed more than one ad on screen; a second ad that arrived in the page data but never appeared is not counted. Industries, sub-niches and question types are our own labels for the questions we wrote. Independent; not affiliated with OpenAI. Full method  ·  Why this is not an ad rate  ·  What the ads looked like