On September 29, AdExchanger reported on OpenAI's ad plans. Colleen Coulter, who leads ad solutions at OpenAI, described sponsored chats: a shopper clicks an ad and talks to a brand's own agent, which answers from a knowledge base the brand controls, like its product feed or help center. ChatGPT ads have reached a $1 billion run rate.
On publishers, Coulter's position was that ChatGPT already gives them value, because its answers cite and link to their sites.
That's a claim mapou can test, the way shoppers actually use ChatGPT: in a conversation. mapou ran 77 simulated shopping conversations with ChatGPT, its own web search turned on, across credit cards, streaming, live TV, skincare and allergy medicine. Each shopper kept asking until they decided. Then mapou sorted all 817 links ChatGPT gave by who owns the site.
ChatGPT sent the shopper to a publisher in 10 of the 77 conversations.
The numbers
Shoppers got plenty of links, just not to publishers. 70 of 77 conversations included at least one link. 54.8% of the 817 links went to the brand being discussed: the bank's card page, the streaming service's help center, the skincare brand's product page. Publishers got 5%.
817 links in 172 ChatGPT answers. Medical and government includes the American Academy of Dermatology, Mayo Clinic, the FDA, the NIH and the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Publishers fade as the conversation goes on. In ChatGPT's first answer, publishers got 8.5% of the links. In every answer after that, about 2%. The deeper a shopper gets into a decision, the more ChatGPT points them at the company itself.
Share of links in each answer that went to a publisher.
It varies by category, but nowhere is it high. Credit cards had the most publisher links, and nearly all of them were NerdWallet. In live TV it was mostly Consumer Reports. In streaming, the only publisher ChatGPT linked was NBC Sports, which shares an owner with Peacock; it still counts as a publisher here. Allergy medicine conversations never linked a publisher. They went to medical and government sources instead.
| Category | Conversations | Linked a publisher | Links | To the brand | To a publisher |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Credit cards | 15 | 3 of 15 | 146 | 118 | 18 |
| Streaming | 15 | 2 of 15 | 142 | 133 | 7 |
| Live TV | 18 | 2 of 18 | 134 | 126 | 8 |
| Skincare | 14 | 3 of 14 | 259 | 71 | 8 |
| Allergy medicine | 15 | 0 of 15 | 136 | 0 | 0 |
Each persona run 3 times. One empty run excluded.
The same pattern in single questions
mapou also asked ChatGPT 50 buying questions once each. 22 answers had no link at all, 5 linked a publisher, and 63.4% of the 123 links went to the brand being asked about. Conversations produce far more links than single questions, but the share going to publishers stays small.
What it means
mapou's read: ChatGPT's links mostly send shoppers to the company, not the publisher, and more so the longer they talk. Publishers show up early, as background, if at all.
That also explains sponsored chats. The pages ChatGPT already links to most, product pages, help centers and feeds, are the same material OpenAI says a brand's sponsored agent will answer from. The brand ends up owning both the organic conversation and the paid one.
What this doesn't show
The conversations ran through OpenAI's API, not the ChatGPT app, and the shoppers are simulated. Medical sites like Mayo Clinic count as medical, not publishers; counting them as publishers would raise the publisher share but not change the pattern. This shows where links point, not how many people click them.
How we measured this
- Conversations
- 77 simulated shopping conversations with ChatGPT on October 4, 2026: 26 shopper personas from mapou's September studies (credit cards, streaming, live TV, skincare, allergy medicine), each run 3 times. The shopper keeps asking until it decides, up to 6 ChatGPT answers. One run that ended before ChatGPT answered is excluded.
- ChatGPT
- gpt-5.4-mini through OpenAI's API with ChatGPT's own web search on and no system prompt. Every link in every answer was recorded.
- Single questions
- 50 buying questions sampled from the same studies, asked once each, as a second check.
- Who owns the site
- Each of the linked sites was assigned by hand: the brand being asked about (including its help, press and benefits pages), publishers (editorial, review and comparison sites), medical and government, retailers, forums. Ambiguous sites count as publishers, so the publisher share is never understated.
- Limits
- The API can behave differently from the ChatGPT app, and shoppers are simulated. This counts where links point, not how many people click them.
Cite this article
mapou, “OpenAI says links are enough for publishers. In 77 shopping conversations, ChatGPT sent the shopper to one 10 times.,” mapou.ai, October 4, 2026. https://mapou.ai/articles/does-chatgpt-link-to-publishers
Reporters can reach mapou through for more on the method, other breakdowns or a comment.
Which of your pages does ChatGPT link to?
mapou runs full shopping conversations in your category every month and tracks which pages each AI assistant links to, and runs ChatGPT ad campaigns built on the same data.
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