{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BlogPosting","headline":"ChatGPT Hotel Ads for Logged-Out Users Fell to Almost Zero, Then Partly Came Back (2026)","description":"On the same 616 hotel prompts, scraped weekly from the US while logged out, 84 to 90% of ChatGPT answers carried an ad in July 2026, 2 to 7% in September and 0.5% in the week of 5 October. In the week of 12 October the rate went back to 14% (261 of 1,848 answers), 223 of the 261 ads from Expedia; Booking.com has not appeared since mid-September. Ads paused twice before (late April, and 25 May to 15 June). Over the same months OpenAI's ad product moved to view-through conversions, hashed-identity matching and impression billing, none of which works on a logged-out impression.","datePublished":"2026-10-14","dateModified":"2026-10-14","url":"https://nicolassitter.com/research/chatgpt-hotel-ads-logged-out-2026","category":"research","keywords":["ChatGPT ads logged out","ChatGPT ads disappeared","ChatGPT hotel ads","ChatGPT ads Expedia Booking.com","ChatGPT ads oCPM"],"articleSection":"Research","wordCount":1500,"readTime":"6 min","articleBody":"Hotel study · October 2026ChatGPT · Ads · Logged out\n\n# ChatGPT hotel ads for logged-out users fell to almost zerothen partly came back\n\n**TL;DR:** I send the same 616 hotel prompts to ChatGPT every week, logged out, from the US. In July, **84 to 90%** of answers came back with an ad. In September it was 2 to 7%, and in the week of 5 October, **0.5%**. In the week of 12 October it went back up to 14.1%, almost all of it Expedia. Ads on this surface have paused twice before. OpenAI has said nothing about logged-out users.\n\nNS\n\nNicolas Sitter\n\nPublished 14 October 2026\n\n84–90%\n\nof answers with an ad, every week of July\n\n2–7%\n\nSeptember, four weeks\n\n0.5%\n\nweek of 5 October (3 of 616)\n\n14.1%\n\nweek of 12 October (261 of 1,848)\n\n[Read the study](#intro)\n\n[Overview](#intro)[The drop](#drop)[It happened before](#before)[The October return](#return)[Advertisers](#advertisers)[The ad product](#product)[My reading](#reading)[Methodology](#methodology)[FAQ](#faq)\n\n## What I measure\n\nThe panel is 616 hotel prompts across 56 destinations: “best hotels in Chicago”, “hotels near Anne Frank House, Amsterdam”, “family friendly hotels in Zermatt” and so on. They are sent to ChatGPT once a week with web search on, logged out, from the US. The prompt list has been fixed since May. Before that the panel was smaller and less regular, so the March and April weeks are less comparable.\n\nAn answer counts as having an ad when it carries a sponsored unit. The chart below is the share of answers with one, week by week.\n\nShare of logged-out ChatGPT hotel answers with an ad, by week\n\nEarly, smaller panel616 prompts, ad found in the answer616 prompts, ad list returned with the capture\n\nWeek starting Monday. ChatGPT, logged out, scraped from the US. The week of 31 August could not be measured and is left empty. Hover a bar for the count.\n\nPart 1 · The drop\n\n## From 90% to under 1% in two months\n\nAds peaked at 89.8% of answers in the week of 13 July and stayed between 83.2% and 89.8% for all of July. They eased to about 68% for three weeks in August. The week of 31 August could not be measured. From the week of 7 September the rate was 2.7%, then 6.8%, 3.7% and 2.3%. In the week of 5 October, 3 of 616 answers had an ad.\n\nThe provider I use to capture these answers told me it saw ads mostly disappear across its own traffic over the same period. So the drop is not limited to hotel prompts.\n\nPart 2 · It happened before\n\n## Logged-out ads have paused twice before\n\nAds first appeared in the week of 30 March, on about a third of answers. By the end of April they were down to 0.3%. They came back at 18.7% and 21.3% in mid-May, then disappeared for four weeks: 0.0%, 0.0%, 1.1% and 0.3% from 25 May to 15 June. On 22 June they returned at 44.5%, and two weeks later they were close to 90%.\n\nThe September level is the lowest since the June pause. A pause of that length has happened before and ended with a higher rate than before it.\n\nPart 3 · The October return\n\n## In the week of 12 October, ads came back, mostly Expedia\n\nThe same prompts were captured three times on 12 and 13 October, for a separate study of the [new questionnaire format](/research/chatgpt-hotel-questionnaire-2026). All three captures had more ads than any week in September, and the rate varied from one capture to the next.\n\nCapture (US, logged out)\n\nAnswers\n\nWith an ad\n\n12 Oct, 02:00 UTC\n\n616\n\n61 (9.9%)\n\n12 Oct, 05:25 UTC\n\n616\n\n157 (25.5%)\n\n13 Oct, 05:13 UTC\n\n616\n\n43 (7.0%)\n\nExpedia placed 223 of the 261 ads. The rest were scattered: a coworking network 22 times, a Bahia Principe resort, The Mayfair Townhouse in London, an eSIM seller, a tour operator. Booking.com, the largest advertiser over the summer, has not appeared since the week of 14 September.\n\nAt 14.1% the October week is far from the summer level, and one week is not a trend. It does show that logged-out inventory has not been switched off.\n\nPart 4 · Advertisers\n\n## Two travel agencies bought most of it\n\nFrom 30 March to 5 October I recorded roughly 5,300 ads. Booking.com and Expedia account for about 7 in 10. Hotel groups bought placements too: Marriott and Preferred from the first weeks, IHG and Radisson over the summer.\n\nAdvertiser\n\nAnswers with their ad\n\nFirst seen\n\nLast seen to 5 Oct\n\nBooking.com\n\n1,961\n\nMar 31\n\nSep 14\n\nExpedia\n\n1,729\n\nMar 31\n\nOct 5\n\nIHG Hotels & Resorts\n\n154\n\nJun 22\n\nAug 24\n\nAirbnb\n\n153\n\nApr 7\n\nAug 17\n\nRadisson Hotels\n\n127\n\nJul 13\n\nAug 24\n\nPriceline\n\n99\n\nMar 31\n\nAug 24\n\nPreferred Hotels & Resorts\n\n89\n\nMar 31\n\nJun 22\n\ntrivago\n\n72\n\nApr 8\n\nAug 24\n\nLuxury Escapes\n\n62\n\nMay 17\n\nSep 14\n\nMarriott\n\n60\n\nMar 31\n\nJul 6\n\nHilton\n\n52\n\nApr 13\n\nAug 17\n\n331 ads carried no readable advertiser name.\n\nPart 5 · The ad product\n\n## Meanwhile, the ad product moved towards identity\n\nThe product update emails OpenAI sends to ChatGPT advertisers describe a move from paying per click towards paying per impression, with sales credited to an ad that was only seen, and a growing set of ways to match an ad to a known person.\n\n![Timeline of ChatGPT Ads pricing from 2 June to 16 September 2026: CPM and CPC, then optimised CPC, then one-day view-through conversions, then optimised CPM as the recommended model, alongside growing customer matching features](/images/chatgpt-ads-pricing-timeline.png)\n\nSource: ChatGPT Ads product update emails, 2 June to 30 September 2026.\n\n-   **20 August:** a sale within one day of seeing an ad can be credited to it, without a click.\n-   **3 September:** more fields to match conversions (hashed email, phone, name, postal code) and larger custom audiences.\n-   **16 September:** conversion optimisation billed on impressions becomes the recommended model.\n\nNone of these updates mentions logged-out users.\n\nPart 6 · My reading\n\n## A logged-out impression is hard to price\n\nEach of those features needs to know who saw the ad. This is my reading, not an OpenAI statement.\n\nAn ad impression\n\nLogged in\n\nLogged out\n\nConversion matching\n\nHashed email and phone\n\nNothing to hash\n\nAudiences\n\nCustom audiences to include or exclude\n\nNo audience to match\n\nView-through credit\n\nA view can be credited with a booking\n\nHard to link the view to a sale\n\nFrequency cap\n\nFollows the person\n\nFollows a browser at best\n\nConsent and age\n\nKnown from the account\n\nMust be safe for anyone\n\nIf the product is moving to impressions priced on measured conversions, logged-out impressions are the ones that cannot be priced that way. The timing fits: the September drop came about two weeks after view-through credit and before impression billing became the recommended model.\n\nIt does not prove the link. I have no logged-in data to compare. Ads paused on this surface in April and June with no related announcement, and the October return shows the inventory is still sold. A test, or a throttle on logged-out inventory, fits the data as well as a deliberate exit.\n\n### What it means\n\n-   **Advertisers:** less logged-out inventory and better measurement on the logged-in part. Whether prices rise depends on how much of the volume was logged out, which I cannot see.\n-   **OpenAI:** fewer logged-out ads trade reach on people who never sign in for impressions it can measure and price. That is closer to how Meta sells ads than to search ads.\n-   **Hotels:** on logged-out ChatGPT, appearing in a hotel answer depends mainly on being recommended and cited. The paid slot next to it comes and goes, and when it is there, Expedia usually has it.\n\n## Methodology\n\n-   **Prompts:** 616 English hotel prompts across 56 destinations, fixed since May 2026. Before May the panel ranged from 81 to 1,099 prompts and some ran several times a week.\n-   **Captures:** ChatGPT answers scraped from the US, logged out, with web search on, once a week. The week of 12 October has three captures (12 October 02:00 and 05:25 UTC, 13 October 05:13 UTC).\n-   **Ad detection:** until 24 August, from the sponsored unit in the answer stream. From 7 September, from the list of ads returned with each capture, because the stream stopped arriving on most captures. The two methods are not directly comparable, which is why the chart colours them differently.\n-   **Advertiser:** the name on the ad, or the advertiser’s domain when no name was given.\n\n### Limits\n\n-   Logged-out ChatGPT only. Logged-in users may see a different rate.\n-   Hotel and travel prompts only, in English, from the US.\n-   The week of 31 August has no measurement, so the exact date of the drop is approximate.\n-   The ad-product dates come from OpenAI’s emails to advertisers, not from a public announcement.\n-   Summary data: [summary.csv](/data/chatgpt-hotel-ads-logged-out-2026/summary.csv).\n\n## FAQ\n\n### Summarize with AI\n\n### More on ChatGPT and hotels\n\n[ChatGPT Hotel Ads Are Live](/research/chatgpt-hotel-ads-live-2026)[The ChatGPT Hotel Questionnaire](/research/chatgpt-hotel-questionnaire-2026)[Anatomy of a ChatGPT Hotel Search](/research/anatomy-chatgpt-hotel-search-2026)[All research](/research)","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Nicolas Sitter","url":"https://nicolassitter.com/about","sameAs":["https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolassitternolleau/","https://github.com/Nicositter88","https://hotelrank.ai"]},"publisher":{"@type":"Person","name":"Nicolas Sitter","url":"https://nicolassitter.com"},"image":"https://nicolassitter.com/api/og/chatgpt-hotel-ads-logged-out-2026","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://nicolassitter.com/research/chatgpt-hotel-ads-logged-out-2026"},"tags":["Hotels","ChatGPT","AI Search","Advertising"],"sameAs":["https://hotelrank.ai/research/chatgpt-hotel-ads-logged-out-2026"],"alternateFormat":{"html":"https://nicolassitter.com/research/chatgpt-hotel-ads-logged-out-2026","json":"https://nicolassitter.com/api/post/chatgpt-hotel-ads-logged-out-2026","rss":"https://nicolassitter.com/rss.xml"},"datasets":[{"name":"summary","contentUrl":"https://nicolassitter.com/data/chatgpt-hotel-ads-logged-out-2026/summary.csv","encodingFormat":"text/csv"}]}