As Seen In New Digital Age
OpenAI’s latest move is the introduction of GPT Apps. The launch marks a quiet but profound shift in how brands can live inside conversational AI.
These aren’t just “plugins” or chatbots. GPT Apps are full-fledged, branded experiences that exist within ChatGPT itself. They allow users to interact directly with companies, for example, asking Spotify to create a playlist for a party, browsing homes through Zillow, or searching for hotels via Booking.com. All without ever leaving the ChatGPT interface.
The key here is personalisation. Each app can connect to a user’s existing account, pulling in preferences, history, and saved data. It’s the same Spotify users know. But now it’s speaking their language in real time and opens up a new way for consumers to interact with existing services and tools.
Launch brands in the US
At launch, OpenAI partnered with a handful of household names in the US. Early examples include Spotify, Zillow, and Booking.com – each demonstrating what’s possible when chat becomes the interface.
Ask Spotify to “make me a playlist for my morning runs,” and it can do so instantly, drawing from your listening history. Ask Zillow to “find family homes in Austin under $1.2M,” and it responds with listings, maps, and filters.
These integrations already hint at the direction this ecosystem is heading. An environment where brand apps can combine natural language, real-time data, and account-linked actions in one seamless thread.
Why brands should be paying attention
For marketers, GPT Apps aren’t just another channel. They could be the next frontier of branded interaction. And here’s three big reasons:
Access. ChatGPT is becoming a platform with tens of millions of daily users. Being present within it means meeting audiences where they already are. And these users are in their flow of thought, not in an ad break or an app store.
Engagement. When users consciously choose to activate a brand’s GPT app, they’re signalling intent. It’s not a passive scroll; it’s an active conversation. That’s unbeatable for any marketer trying to build meaningful engagement.
Personalisation. The account-linking capability allows brands to use a customer’s saved data (i.e. playlists, shopping lists, favourite properties) to deliver experiences that feel uniquely tailored, though the extent of this depends on each brand’s technical setup and privacy framework.
App suggestion. Users will be made aware of apps even if they haven’t enabled them. For example, if you’re talking about buying a new home, ChatGPT can surface the Zillow app as a suggestion so you can browse listings that match your budget on an interactive map right inside ChatGPT.
Strategic decisions ahead
Brands will need to make a few strategic calls early on.
The first is about data and content replication. How much of your brand experience should live inside ChatGPT, and how much should remain on your own site?
A full in-chat experience keeps users engaged but limits the ability to collect as much first-party data or drive retargeting. Equally, a lighter version might push traffic back to your owned channels.
Another consideration is measurement and retargeting. The traditional marketing stack (cookies, pixels, etc for running retargeting on Google and Meta) doesn’t exist in the GPT ecosystem – at least, not yet. Future models might rely on account linking or in-chat signals, but for now, brands need to think differently about how they define and measure engagement.
The User Experience
From the user side, GPT Apps are deliberately opt-in. You don’t stumble across a brand, you choose it. You type “Zillow,” click a button, and activate the experience. That makes brand recall more important than ever.
The winners here will be the brands that are top of mind. The ones people instinctively summon into their chat when planning a trip, shopping for clothes, or hunting for recipes.
The Bigger Picture: multi-brand experiences
The real power of GPT Apps becomes clear when you start imagining multi-brand experiences.
For example, a travel planning session – a user asks ChatGPT to help them plan a two week trip to Japan. Behind the scenes, the model could call on apps from Expedia for flights, Booking.com for hotels, Yelp for restaurants, and Spotify for local playlists – all orchestrated in one conversation.
The demos of this type of behaviour showcased at Open AI’s demo day was one app being used at a time. However, in the future, concurrent usage of apps should be possible, apps talking and co-ordinating with each other to complete a task for the user.
For brands, the time is now
OpenAI launched GPT Apps in the US on 8 October, during its Developer Day event. The initial rollout is limited, but broader brand submissions are expected soon.
For forward-thinking marketers, this is the moment to experiment. The barrier to entry is low for brands with existing APIs and account systems, and early visibility in a new ecosystem, is significant.
The brands that move first here will be perceived as the innovators, the ones defining how consumers experience conversational AI.
The ones that wait? They’ll be playing catch-up in a space that may soon be as fundamental to marketing as the App Store or social media once were.
