# AI adoption is growing. Your addressable audience is a different number.

Two public studies offer useful context—and a reminder to separate chatbot usage from the audience a campaign can actually reach.

Published: 2026-11-05T04:11:37Z

![AI adoption is growing. Your addressable audience is a different number.](https://jolts.xyz/rails/active_storage/blobs/redirect/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsiZGF0YSI6MjIsInB1ciI6ImJsb2JfaWQifX0=--3c8ec54fb2359469a8933adff8296ba1fec21ea3/adoption-is-not-inventory.webp)

A large AI adoption figure is a reason to investigate a channel. It is not a media plan.

An advertiser still needs to know who a particular publisher reaches, which contexts support an offer and whether the product is available to those people. A publisher needs the same distinctions before forecasting revenue. Two public studies make the difference easier to see.

## “Has used” is not “available to reach today”

Pew Research Center reported in June 2025 that 34% of U.S. adults had ever used ChatGPT; the figure was 58% among adults under 30. The survey covered 5,123 adults from February 24 to March 2, 2025. These are adoption measures for one product, not daily usage, ad exposure or purchase intent. [Read Pew's findings and methodology](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/06/25/34-of-us-adults-have-used-chatgpt-about-double-the-share-in-2023/).

The distinction matters when someone proposes a campaign aimed at “AI users.” A person who tried a chatbot once and a person who uses a specialist assistant every day belong to that label for very different reasons. Neither figure tells you whether your intended publisher can reach them.

## A question is not always a shopping question

OpenAI's September 2025 consumer-usage research classified roughly 49% of messages as Asking, 40% as Doing and 11% as Expressing. The study covers consumer ChatGPT usage; it does not describe Jolts inventory or the distribution in an individual publisher's app. [Read the research](https://openai.com/index/how-people-are-using-chatgpt/).

```chart
{
  "type": "doughnut",
  "title": "What kind of message?",
  "summary": "Asking accounts for about half of messages; the categories do not measure shopping intent.",
  "period": "Consumer ChatGPT usage \u00b7 September 2025 research",
  "source": "OpenAI: How people are using ChatGPT, September 15, 2025. Rounded shares.",
  "updated_at": "2026-11-05T04:11:37Z",
  "x_label": "Message category",
  "y_label": "Share of messages",
  "unit": "percent",
  "precision": 0,
  "labels": [
    "Asking",
    "Doing",
    "Expressing"
  ],
  "series": [
    {
      "name": "Share",
      "values": [
        49,
        40,
        11
      ]
    }
  ]
}
```

The categories make a useful point for advertisers: people come to AI products to do many kinds of work. Even the Asking category includes needs that have no sensible commercial next step. It would be a mistake to multiply total messages by 49% and call the result available impressions.

For a specialist app, the mix could be very different. A writing tool, a travel planner and a coding assistant may share a conversational interface while serving different decisions. That is why the publisher's actual product context belongs in the campaign brief.

## Build the audience estimate from the placement up

Start with the market and task your offer can serve. Ask how often the publisher sees that task, which sessions it permits advertising in, and whether there is a supported format. Then check availability, geography and other hard constraints on the offer.

Keep those stages visible in a forecast. If the publisher has only measured total active users, the next step is to measure eligible activity—not to disguise the missing data with a precise CPM calculation.

For a first campaign, a smaller audience with an understandable task may be easier to evaluate than a large undifferentiated reach figure. That is a hypothesis worth testing against qualified outcomes, not a promise that niche inventory always performs better.

The public research establishes that AI products have become part of people's lives. The commercial opportunity still has to be found in a particular product, with a particular audience, at a particular moment.



## Next step

[Explore advertising](https://jolts.xyz/advertisers) or [monetize your AI app](https://jolts.xyz/publishers).