Advertising on ChatGPT

The short answer

You advertise on ChatGPT through OpenAI’s Ads Manager, a self-serve beta at ads.openai.com. You set up a campaign with an objective and a budget, ad groups with a bid and a few lines on the conversations you want to appear in, and ads with a headline, description, image and landing page. You pay per thousand impressions or per click, and you measure sales with OpenAI’s pixel or its Conversions API.

What ChatGPT ads are

Paid placements that appear below a ChatGPT answer, labelled as ads and kept apart from the answer. OpenAI says ads do not influence what ChatGPT answers, and that advertisers never see users’ conversations: they get aggregated reports, such as views and clicks.

Each ad carries the advertiser’s name and logo, a headline, a short description, an image and a link to a landing page. One ad unit shows under a response, with one image or several. OpenAI is also testing a multi-image format that appears while ChatGPT generates an image.

In detail: What Are ChatGPT Ads? A 2026 Guide · ChatGPT Ad Formats: What They Look Like (2026) · ChatGPT Ads Policies and Brand Safety (2026)

Who sees them

Users on the Free and Go plans. Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Edu accounts see no ads, and neither do accounts identified as belonging to people under 18, or Temporary Chats. Ads are kept away from sensitive topics such as personal health, mental health and politics, and political advertising is not allowed.

Testing started in the US on 9 February 2026, and OpenAI is rolling ads out to Free and Go users in more regions over time. Where ads run in the European Economic Area and Switzerland, they are not personalised at first: they are chosen from the current conversation.

In detail: ChatGPT Ads Targeting and Audiences (2026 Guide) · ChatGPT Ads Privacy and Data: What Is Shared (2026)

Who can advertise

Any business can create an account at ads.openai.com. Buying on your own depends on where you are: the company that advertises and is billed must be based in a country where self-serve Ads Manager is open. On 26 October 2026, OpenAI’s availability list showed it open in the United States, the United Kingdom and all 27 EU countries, among others.

The same page says advertisers in the newly added European markets can start through OpenAI’s ads team or its agency and technology partners, so check the list for your country before you plan a launch. Larger advertisers can also buy through OpenAI’s sales team.

How buying works

Three levels, as on Google and Meta: the campaign holds the objective, budget and dates; the ad group holds the bid and the context hints; the ad holds the creative.

• The objective sets what you pay for. Views is billed per thousand impressions (CPM), Clicks per click (CPC). Conversions optimises toward a conversion event and, for eligible advertisers, is billed on clicks or impressions, never per conversion.
• You set a maximum bid for each ad group. For click campaigns, OpenAI recommends starting at a maximum of $3–$5 per click. A relevance-weighted, second-price auction chooses among the eligible ads.
• Context hints replace keywords. They describe the conversations, topics or searches where your product fits. They guide matching but are not exact-match keywords and guarantee nothing.
• A daily budget is an average. Over seven days, one day can spend up to twice the daily budget, and the week no more than seven times it. A campaign-total budget is the alternative.
• Billing comes after delivery. On self-serve accounts, the card is charged each time unpaid spend reaches the account’s payment threshold, and at the end of the month.

Prices come from the auction, and OpenAI says there are no performance benchmarks yet across advertisers, industries or campaign types. A first campaign is a test of your own numbers.

In detail: How to Advertise on ChatGPT (2026 Guide) · How Do ChatGPT Ads Work? Match, Auction, Render · How Much Do ChatGPT Ads Cost? The Honest Answer (2026)

How to measure them

Ads Manager reports impressions, clicks, spend, click-through rate, average CPC, average CPM and conversions. Impressions and clicks refresh about every 15 minutes; spend can arrive 7–8 hours late.

Conversions need a data source in Ads Manager, fed by the OpenAI Pixel, the Conversions API, or both. Each ad click adds a reference (oppref) to the landing page URL: keep it through redirects, and send the same event ID through the pixel and the API so a sale is counted once. GA4 can be connected to Ads Manager, and UTM parameters on your landing page URLs carry through to your own analytics.

Expect OpenAI’s totals to differ from GA4 and from Google and Meta: the attribution windows differ, OpenAI’s totals can include modelled conversions, and consent and browsers decide what each tag can see. We check every channel against the client’s own orders or CRM.

In detail: Measuring ChatGPT Ads Performance: Metrics & Tracking · ChatGPT Ads vs Google & Social Ads (2026)