ChatGPT Ads Can Target You by Email or Phone Number

Advertisers can aim ads at people inside ChatGPT using an email address or a phone number, according to OpenAI's own help pages. An advertiser uploads a list of contacts, OpenAI checks which of them have ChatGPT accounts, and those people become eligible to see the ad. 404 Media ran two test ads of its own and says anyone can do this with about five minutes of setup.

How it works

OpenAI's custom audiences tool accepts email addresses, phone numbers, scrambled (hashed) versions of either, or Google Advertising IDs from Android phones. A scrambled value cannot be read as typed, but it still matches the same value on another list. OpenAI says a list must reach at least 25,000 matched users before it can be used to target people, and that uploaded files are deleted, usually within 24 hours. Advertisers do not see which individuals matched.

What OpenAI says

OpenAI says it does not share conversations with advertisers and never sells user data to them. Ads appear on the Free and Go plans. Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Edu accounts do not see them, and accounts identified as under 18 are excluded. Ads are not eligible to appear near sensitive topics, including personal health, mental health and politics. Ad testing began in the United States on Feb. 9, 2026.

The company also says ads consider the context and intent of your current conversation. With personalization on, the system may use signals from your wider ChatGPT use, such as past chats and memory.

404 Media says ChatGPT's ad targeting is also based on the prompts users type, which is close to OpenAI's own description of using the context of your current conversation. OpenAI also lets advertisers add context hints, extra information about an ad that helps it reach people using ChatGPT for certain things. 404 Media puts ChatGPT's audience at one billion monthly active users, a figure WECU News did not find on OpenAI's pages. Zach Edwards of the ad research company DecryptAds told 404 Media that OpenAI is "boiling the frog and hoping their users won't notice the privacy implications from their new ads."

What you can control

In ChatGPT's settings, under Ad Controls, you can turn off ad personalization. OpenAI says that even then, you will still see ads based on your current chat. The custom audiences page describes no way for a user to opt out of contact-list targeting, and WECU News did not find an OpenAI statement on whether turning off personalization stops it.

What is not known

WECU News read the newsletter version of 404 Media's story, which ends after the description of its test ads. The rest of the article is behind a paid subscription. The technical details above come from OpenAI's pages. It is not known how many people have been reached by contact-list ads, or whether the personalization setting keeps a person out of those audiences.

Sources:

OpenAI Help: Set up Custom Audiences for your Campaign. Primary document, read in full.

OpenAI Help: Ads in ChatGPT. Primary document, read in full.

OpenAI: Our approach to advertising and expanding access to ChatGPT (Jan. 16, 2026). Primary document.

404 Media (Joseph Cox, Oct. 15, 2026), How ChatGPT Targets Ads To You Based On Your Prompts, Phone Number, and Email. Newsletter version read; the rest of the article is paywalled (paid subscription). Secondhand for the test ads, the prompt-based targeting claim, the billion-user figure and the Edwards quote.

OpenAI Developers: Targeting (campaign targeting options and context hints). Primary document.

Gizmodo (Oct. 16, 2026), read as a cross-check only.