The brand gets to send its own agent into ChatGPT. No link. No landing page. The user stays in the chat and talks to the brand's agent, which can answer questions, show products, and with the right integrations, close the sale. Wayfair was an early pilot partner. It's a strong signal that ads in AI assistants are turning into conversations.
Ad tech glossary
Sponsored Agents
Technical definition
A ChatGPT ad unit, announced by OpenAI on September 16, 2026, that opens a labeled conversation between a user and a brand's own AI agent inside ChatGPT.
The ADLINGO translation
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Related terms
- A2A (Agent2Agent Protocol)
- AAMP (Agentic Advertising Management Protocols)
- adagents.json
- AdCP (Ad Context Protocol)
- Agent Manifest
- Agentic Advertising
- Agentic Audiences
- Agentic Commerce
- Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP)
- Agentic Marketplace
- AgenticAdvertising.org
- Answer-Based Ads
Where this shows up
AI: What we owe the team
I'm clocking two kinds of advertising executives right now: Ones who treat AI like a procurement decision, and the ones treating it like a leadership test. One buys tools. The other builds teams that know how to use them.
The skills that survive
You cannot automate a decade of being trustworthy. You can't prompt your way to someone wanting to work with you for the next year.
The RFP Oracle
The ad tech sales season is wrapping up for 2026. AI dominated everything the market responded to this year, and it was the most predictable trend ever. All we had to do was pay attention to what the agencies were asking.