ChatGPT has begun displaying an ad during image generation, Search Engine Roundtable reported on November 10, 2026. Barry Schwartz said he replicated it: asking for an image triggers a card headed “Here’s an ad while we create your image,” and the card vanishes once the image finishes.
Juozas Kaziukėnas first flagged the sighting on X and said he started seeing the ads that day. He said his chat was unrelated to canine or pet-food topics, which hints that the unit was not matched to the chat topic. That is one user’s observation, not a confirmed targeting rule. OpenAI announced the format roughly a month earlier, and the report cites no official statement on the rollout.
The placement matters because it sells attention during a dead wait rather than beside an answer. Paid units now appear in more than one part of the product. Advertisers testing ChatGPT Ads should check whether image-generation moments show up in their reporting before they budget around them.
Search Engine Roundtable, Barry Schwartz, November 10, 2026.
