How ChatGPT serves ads. Here's the full attribution loop.

28 Apr 2026

OpenAI's ad platform has two halves. On the ChatGPT side, the backend injects structured single_advertiser_ad_unit objects into the conversation SSE stream while the model is responding. On the merchant side, a tracking SDK called OAIQ runs in the visitor's browser and reports product views back to OpenAI. The two are tied together by Fernet-encrypted click tokens, four of them per ad.I captured both halves on a consented mobile-traffic research fleet. Everything below comes from observed traffic.When you send a message to ChatGPT, the backend opens an SSE response at chatgpt.com/backend-api/f/conversation. Most events in that stream are model-output. Some are ad units. They look like this:event: delta data: { "type": "single_advertiser_ad_unit", "ads_request_id": "069e89b3-c038-7764-8000-6e5a193e5f69", "ads_spam_integrity_payload": "gAAAAABp6Js_<...redacted...>", "preamble": "", "advertiser_brand": { "name": "Grubhub", "url": "www.grubhub.com", "favicon_url": "https://bzrcdn.openai.com/cabfae7ead26b03d.png", "id": "adacct_6984ed0ba55481a29894bb192f7773b4" }, "carousel_cards": [{ "title": "Get Chinese Food Delivered", "body": "Satisfy Your Cravings with Grubhub Delivery.",

"image_url": "https://bzrcdn.openai.com/cabfae7ead26b03d.png", "target": { "type": "url", "value": "https://www.grubhub.com/?utm_source=chatgptpilot&utm_medium=paid&utm_campaign=diner_gh_search_chatgpt_kw_traffic_nb_x_nat_x&utm_content=nbchinese&oppref=gAAAA<...>&olref=gAAAA<...>", "open_externally": false }, "ad_data_token": "eyJwYXlsb2<...>" }] } Notes:single_advertiser_ad_unit is a typed schema. The naming implies siblings (multi-advertiser, etc.).advertiser_brand.id is adacct_<32-hex> — a stable per-merchant account identifier.Brand favicon and ad image both load from bzrcdn.openai.com. OpenAI hosts the advertiser's creative, not the merchant.target.open_externally: false opens the link in ChatGPT's in-app webview, so OpenAI observes the post-click navigation on top of any pixel signal.Four Fernet tokens per ad: ads_spam_integrity_payload, oppref, olref, and a base64-wrapped ad_data_token. Each is AES-128-CBC under a server-only key with HMAC-SHA256 integrity.How ads get selectedA single account in the panel received six different ads across six conversations on six different topics. The targeting is contextual to the chat:

Conversation topic Advertiser delivered

Beijing trip planning (Great Wall, Forbidden City) Grubhub — "Get Chinese Food Delivered"

Beijing tour bookings GetYourGuide — Great Wall tour, ad_id=beijing003

Beijing flights Axel —

utm_term=vflight_beijing_03

NBA playoffs Gametime — utm_campaign=nba&utm_content=playoffs

Spring fashion/trends Aritzia — utm_campaign=chatgptpilot_trav3

Productivity / slides Canva — utm_campaign=…link-clicks_products

Same account, different topic, different brand. I didn't find evidence one way or the other on whether targeting also incorporates prior conversation history.The four-token attribution chainEvery ad ships with four distinct Fernet-encrypted blobs. Their roles, based on where they appear:ads_spam_integrity_payload sent inside the SSE data, never on the click URL. Server-side integrity check against forged ad clicks.oppref present on the click URL and copied verbatim by the OAIQ pixel into the cookie __oppref (TTL 720 hours / 30 days). The forward attribution token. Travels with every subsequent merchant pixel event.olref paired with oppref on the click URL but not stored by the SDK we observed. Likely impression-side / outbound-link-reference logging on OpenAI's servers.ad_data_token base64-wrapped JSON containing yet another Fernet token. Carried in the SSE payload, presumably reconciled server-side at click time.Fernet's first nine bytes are public: version byte 0x80 plus an 8-byte big-endian Unix timestamp. So the mint time of any of these tokens is recoverable without OpenAI's key:import base64, struct, datetime b = base64.urlsafe_b64decode("gAAAAABp7fdA" + "==") print(datetime.datetime.utcfromtimestamp(struct.unpack(">Q", b[1:9])[0])) # → 2026-04-26 11:30:08 UTC The Home Depot click URL we captured was minted at 11:30:08; the browser fetched the merchant page at 11:31:43. Click latency: 95 seconds.How the loop closes on the merchant sideUser taps the card.