OpenAI lets brands claim a ChatGPT profile and launch a free agent that speaks for them

OpenAI now lets companies claim a profile in ChatGPT through a new Business Hub. There, a brand gets verified and submits information about the company and its products. In the United States, ecommerce and online services businesses can go a step further for now and publish a business agent: a separate, clearly labeled chat that speaks on the brand's behalf when a user wants to dig deeper into a product.

According to Digiday, in a story published on November 10, Benji Shomair, OpenAI's vice president of monetization, gave no timeline for bringing the feature to other markets. He explained that the business agent is the free, organic entry point to a format OpenAI began testing in September as a paid ad.

"Think of the business agent as the organic experience. The sponsored agent is the paid experience, but the agent behind it should be the same," Shomair said during a press briefing.

Two paths into the same conversation

Brands now have two ways into the conversation: through ChatGPT's organic recommendations or through paid placements, and only the second one costs money. Shomair said early tests of sponsored agents showed "promising results," especially in how deep the conversations went. "When a consumer chooses to engage further with the business, there's a high level of intent," he said.

In the typical use case he described, a shopper compares options by weighing size, color and price before exploring related purchases. When it's time to pay, the agent sends the buyer to the brand's website, because "it's up to the business to decide how it wants to complete the transaction."

The agent is built from the instructions and product catalog the company provides, with no room for a brand's own version. "We're not allowing businesses to bring their own agents," Shomair said. OpenAI keeps the transcripts: the brand only gets the topics of the conversations it shows up in.

What the Insights dashboard shows

The rest of the Business Hub lives in Insights, a beta dashboard with mentions, views, clicks to the website and discovery topics. According to an OpenAI spokesperson, those topics are common themes from conversations in which ChatGPT cites the company's site. Brands can't see prompts or individual conversations, and share of voice isn't part of the beta.

For local businesses, a mention counts when ChatGPT surfaces a result for that location. For online businesses, it counts when ChatGPT references the company's website. "Just citing the brand name doesn't count," the spokesperson said. Clicks are on links in supported ChatGPT surfaces, not completed visits or purchases, and low counts may be withheld for privacy reasons. An ad executive with access to the dashboard said the chart shows the last 7 or 28 days.

Debra Aho Williamson, founder and chief analyst at Sonata Insights, said OpenAI sharing its own data "will take away some of the power of third-party companies." "But OpenAI isn't going to share everything it knows, and ChatGPT is just one of several AI platforms," she added.

What this changes for brand teams

The Business Hub and the agents are free for now, and Shomair didn't rule out charging in the future. According to him, none of this buys an edge in recommendations: the product has to "maintain objectivity," and the business "shouldn't have an impact on how often it shows up."

Still, he said the information can help ChatGPT surface the brand in more relevant conversations, because the platform gets a better understanding of what it offers. For anyone working on brand visibility in AI answers, a fully filled out profile and catalog become a way to be understood by ChatGPT, and the dashboard delivers mention data straight from OpenAI.