Wedding planning platform The Knot Worldwide is among the handful of brands piloting ads in OpenAI’s ChatGPT agentic AI chat platform.
Jenny Lewis, Chief Marketing Officer and President of Global Media Solutions at The Knot, is pleased to have “a seat at the table” in shaping this product and getting a first look at how consumers will interact with ads within ChatGPT for wedding planning.
“We don’t have any particular KPIs that we’re tying the pilot to from a pure hard metric standpoint, but focusing primarily just on what can we learn through this around how users are behaving and seeing volume of traffic potentially coming through,” Lewis said.
The Knot brand allows couples to build a wedding website, review content for planning inspiration and browse through hundreds of thousands of wedding vendors across categories including venues, florists, attire, jewelers and more.
For the ads pilot, OpenAI will show consumers ads based on the topic of conversation, past chats and past interaction with ads, for logged-in, adult, free and Go tier ChatGPT users. OpenAI says that ads do not influence ChatGPT’s answers and it labels the ads as sponsored. Retailers including Target (plus brands that advertise in its retail media network Roundel), HelloFresh, Williams-Sonoma and Albertson’s are part of the OpenAI Ads pilot.
Wedding Planners Search Everywhere For Content
SEO and content have been a pillar in The Knot’s marketing strategy for three decades, and it’s built authority within the traditional search engines, Lewis said.
As consumers have shifted their online search habits to new platforms, like large language models and social media, The Knot’s marketing team has been adjusting its strategy to drive visibility on those platforms. In fact, in January The Knot recently rebranded its SEO team to the “Search Everywhere Optimization” team, Lewis said.
“As part of our marketing strategy and approach, it’s all about being where consumers are,” Lewis said. “So AI has been a part of that journey as we’ve started to understand and learn more about AI-driven search and how couples are using it to plan their weddings today.”
The Knot has noticed these search shifts in its own traffic. In fact, in its own Q4 2025 survey of 228 engaged couples, 36% of couples said they are using AI tools to plan their weddings. This is up from 20% using AI in 2024, according to a September 2024 survey on wedding trends The Knot conducted.
“We’re working with some third-party tools to get deeper insights into visibility and sentiment and what’s driving us showing up there as a brand,” Lewis said. “And then it led to us starting to tinker and play around with different ways that we can drive those metrics forward.”
For example, The Knot has made adjustments to its help center and FAQ page to ensure large language models can easily pull relevant information from them. It’s also more active on the Reddit platform and staying engaged with wedding related conversations there, Lewis said.
The Knot Launches an App Within ChatGPT
As another tool in this initiative, The Knot launched an app within ChatGPT in January 2026. This allows consumers to specifically request information from The Knot within ChatGPT. For example, a consumer could type, “@TheKnot, What are the five best wedding venues in Atlanta for 200 guests?” ChatGPT would then call on the content within The Knot’s ChatGPT app to populate the answer with images and extended information, all within that chat.
“It’s a product that’s custom built to surface that content in a way that it’s not just words on a page,” Lewis said. “It’s much more integrated, more visual, so you can actually see the imagery and you can see a lot of the information that you need to then make decisions right then and there instead of having to go to multiple places.”
Like many marketers, The Knot wants to advertise on platforms where consumers are. So when the OpenAI pilot opportunity opened, it made sense for the brand to jump in, she said. Because The Knot was one of those early adopters with the app content, it had a relationship with OpenAI and it did not have to formally apply for this pilot, Lewis said. OpenAI declined to share the number of brands in the pilot but said in an email it is “an early, limited test” with industry-leading brands.
The Knot’s Ads Will Promote Vendor Category Pages
Lewis said The Knot’s ads will focus on helping couples find vendors for their wedding. The goal is for couples to find the ads helpful and not intrusive.
“Our expectations going into it are not to out of the gate see a really strong ROAS and have it completely optimized and immediate return,” Lewis said. “It’s more to understand what some of the user behavior is and have a really robust learning agenda for both things like site conversion and seeing how that differs from some of the organic traffic that we’re seeing.”
One of The Knot’s revenue streams is from vendors paying for advertising, preferred placement and a robust profile, among other tools. This, however, will not impact the ads The Knot places within ChatGPT, Lewis said, as The Knot’s ads will be at a category level and not drive traffic to specific vendors.
“For this pilot, we’re focused primarily on driving to storefront categories, so things like ‘florist and Boston’ instead of one specific florist in Boston,” she said. “It’s not as personalized down at the vendor level, but more focused on the category level. So the dynamics of how much a vendor’s paying to advertise with us doesn’t come into play here.”
ChatGPT Users Can Opt Out of Ads
The Knot has one in-house marketer heading up ChatGPT ads and managing the partnership, Lewis said. This marketer also handles other performance media buying for the brand.
ChatGPT users can opt out of ads in the free subscription tier in exchange for fewer daily free messages, according to OpenAI’s blog announcement. Consumers in the Plus or Pro subscription plan ($20 a month and more) do not see ads.
OpenAI says advertisers do not have access to a consumer’s chats, chat history, memories or personal details. Advertisers only receive aggregate information about how their ads perform such as number of views or clicks.
