How to advertise on ChatGPT: access, account setup and your first campaign

You advertise on ChatGPT through OpenAI's self-serve Ads Manager at ads.openai.com, open to businesses in listed countries. You create a business account, then build a campaign around a daily budget and conversation targeting. This guide shows how to advertise on ChatGPT for a first four-week test.

Platforms like AirOps track which brands ChatGPT names and which ads show beside those answers. That view separates prompts you already win from prompts where an ad adds reach. OpenAI says ChatGPT ads appear below the answer, labeled and separate from it, so plan paid and organic together.

The ChatGPT advertise path below runs in nine steps, grouped by access, account, campaign, and test. Every price, minimum, and spec comes from OpenAI or a named publisher. Prices are in US dollars unless a table names another currency. Check each source page again on launch day, because OpenAI updates its ads docs often.

Can you advertise on ChatGPT?

Yes, you can advertise on ChatGPT through Ads Manager, which OpenAI labels as beta. Ads Manager is self-serve, so you build and launch campaigns yourself. The legal entity that advertises and pays must be based in a country OpenAI lists as available. OpenAI's Ads Manager availability page lists 63 countries as of October 14, 2026.

Eligibility follows the billed entity's country, wherever your buyers or logins sit. OpenAI's Ads in ChatGPT help article sets the audience rules below.

There is no ChatGPT ads waitlist in the listed countries, so you sign up and start. Businesses elsewhere can still create an account, and OpenAI notifies them when their country opens. OpenAI Ads sales is the other ChatGPT advertise option for larger advertisers.

OpenAI's ad policies are at version 1.6 (September 2026). Check your category against these rules before anyone writes an ad.

• Adult content, alcohol, tobacco, gambling, and political content are disallowed.
• Financial, health, and legal services ads are US-only, limited to approved advertisers, and reviewed case by case.
• Legal services ads also require a license in the jurisdiction where the ad shows.
• OpenAI reviews each ad with its landing page, and the two must match end to end.
• OpenAI can decline any ad that conflicts with its advertising principles.

Brand interest is running ahead of the performance data. Ali McCarty, VP and GM of Managed Services at AirOps, says every brand she talks to wants an ads test. That interest makes a small, tracked test the right first move. Your job is to turn that test budget into evidence.

In the clip below, Ali McCarty, VP and GM of Managed Services at AirOps, discusses AI search budgets. Her ads segment covers testing paid placements alongside organic visibility.

What to prepare before you advertise on ChatGPT

Prepare business details, landing pages, and tracking before you open Ads Manager. This checklist covers how to sign up for ChatGPT ads without rework.

• Confirm the billed legal entity is based in a listed country.
• Gather your brand name, legal name, website, logo, and billing details.
• Choose the account country, currency, and time zone, because you cannot change them later.
• Allow OAI-AdsBot on every landing page, which OpenAI's crawler guidance requires.
• Allow OAI-SearchBot as well, which OpenAI recommends.
• Pick the OpenAI Pixel, the Conversions API (CAPI), or both.
• Set a test budget you can hold for four weeks.
• Name one person who approves ad copy and claims.

Every ad makes claims about your product, so the facts come first. Matt Hammel, Co-founder and COO at AirOps, names the first generative-ad inputs as "Product truth, claims and evidence, customer policies." Collect those in one approved document, with your brand rules, before anyone drafts copy.

Check where you already appear organically

Run your buyers' questions in ChatGPT before you buy a single placement. Track the results with the AI visibility metrics you use for organic work. That baseline shows where an ad adds reach and where you already win.

1. List the decision-stage questions your buyers ask about your category.
2. Run each question in ChatGPT on a Free or Go account, the plans that show ads.
3. Record the brands each answer names and any ad shown with it.
4. Flag questions where competitors show up and your brand does not.

Those flagged questions are your first paid candidates. Keep the baseline, because week four compares against it. Save each answer and ad you saw with the date checked.

How to create a ChatGPT ads account

You create a ChatGPT ads account by signing in at ads.openai.com with the OpenAI account you use for ChatGPT. One person creates the advertiser account, then invites anyone else who needs access. OpenAI checks each ad against its policies, and ads go live once they pass review.

OpenAI's account setup guide covers signup, names, billing, and team access. Here is how to sign up for ChatGPT ads in three steps.

Step 1. Create the advertiser account

Sign in at ads.openai.com and enter your advertiser name. Then pick one of two paths. Enter your website URL, and Ads Manager helps create your first ad and campaign during signup. Or skip that path and build the campaign inside Ads Manager.

The country or region, currency, and time zone you choose are permanent. Changing them means creating a new account. Some new self-serve accounts can also advertise only in their home country at first.

OpenAI's campaign guide says other countries open after OpenAI approves your identity verification and you reach required home-country spend. OpenAI does not publish that spend amount.

Step 2. Set your names and billing

Your advertiser name first fills three names. You edit each one separately in Settings > General.

• Account Name is your internal name for the account.
• Brand Name is the public name shown with your ads.
• Legal Name is the registered name used for billing and business verification.

A Brand Name change triggers brand review and pauses ad serving until OpenAI approves it. A Legal Name change restarts business review. Set both names correctly the first time.

No campaign delivers until you set up billing. You add a credit card plus a billing profile with business name, billing address, and invoice email.

OpenAI charges your saved card when accrued spend reaches your payment threshold, per its billing guide. OpenAI's example uses a $25 threshold. The threshold is neither a campaign budget nor a spend cap.

Step 3. Invite your team

Invite people under Settings > Users > Invite. The setup guide lists three roles, so give each person the narrowest role their work needs.

• Admin gets full access to the account.
• Member creates and manages campaigns.
• Viewer sees content only.

If you manage multiple advertisers, create a separate account for each one. One login can access several accounts. At 10 or more ad accounts, you cannot create another yourself, but others can still invite you.

For agency work, we recommend your brand create the account and invite the agency as a Member. Ownership then stays with you.

How to set up a ChatGPT ad campaign

You set up a campaign in three levels: the campaign, its ad groups, and the ads inside each group. You can finish ChatGPT ads setup in the guided flow or by bulk upload. Steps 4–7 show how to advertise on ChatGPT at the campaign level.

Step 4. Choose your campaign objective

Pick the objective by the result you want to pay for. OpenAI's campaign creation guide lists three objectives.

The Conversions objective optimizes toward conversions, but you still pay for clicks or impressions. You cannot switch a campaign's objective later, so OpenAI advises creating a new campaign instead.

Step 5. Set your budget and bid

OpenAI sets a minimum daily budget by billing currency. Its daily budgets article treats that budget as an average across seven days.

OpenAI says Maximize results guarantees no specific cost target. To set your own bid, choose "Manual: Max bid." OpenAI's ads basics article recommends a $3–$5 starting bid for manual CPC campaigns. Treat that figure as a starting point only.

Search Engine Journal reported on September 8, 2026 that CPCs in advertisers' self-reported tests ranged $3–$22. The same article says OpenAI publishes no performance benchmarks yet. Read every outside CPC figure as one advertiser's result.

Step 6. Write context hints and set targeting

Context hints are short descriptions of the conversations where your ad should show. OpenAI's ads basics article says they are not exact-match keywords and do not guarantee delivery. OpenAI also reads your landing page, ad title, and copy as signals.

Write each hint as the moment a buyer describes, in plain words. One illustrative pattern is "[product] for [situation] for [persona]," such as "expense software for a first finance hire." Tie each hint in an ad group to one buyer moment.

OpenAI's campaign guide lists the targeting options below. Start with country and platform, then add location or audience limits.

• Choose platforms across the Android app, Android web, desktop web, iOS app, and iOS web.
• Target states, regions, cities, markets, or postal codes where available, in campaigns without product feeds.
• Expect country-level targeting only in new product-feed campaigns.
• Include a custom audience only when it has at least 25,000 matched users.
• Exclude smaller audiences freely, since exclusions carry no 25,000 minimum.
• Skip custom audiences in the European Economic Area and Switzerland while ads personalization is unavailable there.

Step 7. Write ads and match landing pages

Each ad pairs a title and copy with a square image and a landing page. OpenAI's launch guide gives these limits in its bulk upload schema.

Give each new ad group several ads to compare. Alex Hallenbeck, Lead Product Manager, Enterprise at AirOps, advises "3 to 5 ad variants as a starting point." Change one element per variant, so each result teaches you something specific.

Send each ad group to the page that matches its intent, and keep the homepage out of rotation. OpenAI reviews the ad and landing page together, so the page must deliver what the ad promises.

Leave two newer formats out of your first plan. OpenAI announced visual ads on October 5, 2026, as a US test with an initial group of advertisers. Sponsored Agents sit in a limited alpha, and OpenAI accepts no early access requests.

How to run ads on ChatGPT in your first four weeks

Set up tracking first, then run a four-week test before you judge results. This part of the ChatGPT ads tutorial covers both steps.

Step 8. Set up ChatGPT ads conversion tracking before launch

OpenAI's conversion measurement guide accepts events from the OpenAI Pixel, CAPI, or both. Send the same event ID from both sources so OpenAI removes duplicates. Fire a test conversion before the first ad goes live.

• OpenAI appends oppref, its click reference, to the end of your landing page URL.
• Keep oppref intact through redirects so conversions match the click.
• Reported totals include modeled conversions where available.
• Ads Manager totals will differ from your analytics, and OpenAI says that "does not necessarily indicate an error."
• Impressions, clicks, and click-through rate (CTR) refresh about every 15 minutes, per OpenAI's ads basics article.
• Spend data can lag 7–8 hours, so zero spend on screen does not mean zero charges.

Step 9. Follow a four-week test plan

A ChatGPT test needs a month before its pattern is readable. Alex Hallenbeck, Lead Product Manager, Enterprise at AirOps, saves the final stretch to "identify where the winners really are." He uses four weeks as the default span, drawing on guidance from OpenAI Ads.

OpenAI's Ads in ChatGPT article says "advertisers have no ability to shape, rank, or alter ChatGPT's responses." Track paid results and organic mentions separately for that reason. Skip verdicts after two days or one week, since spend lag and pacing distort early numbers.

1. In week one, launch and confirm that tracking and delivery work.
2. In week two, compare which ad variants perform better.
3. In week three, refine weak ads and add ad groups for new opportunities.
4. In week four, move budget to the winners and compare results with your organic baseline.

Common mistakes when you advertise on ChatGPT

These mistakes stop delivery or blur results in a first test. Check each one before launch.

• Skipping billing setup, which blocks every campaign from delivering.
• Blocking OAI-AdsBot through robots.txt, a firewall, or a login wall.
• Setting a fixed-bid daily budget below your highest per-event bid.
• Reading a mid-week stop as an error when the seven-day spend ceiling caused it.
• Treating context hints as exact-match keywords.
• Buying prompts you already win instead of planning paid and organic AI search together.
• Judging results within days instead of four weeks.
• Sending every ad group to the homepage.
• Launching without ChatGPT ads conversion tracking.
• Ignoring the 7–8 hour spend delay when you check early budgets.
• Expecting Plus or Pro subscribers to see your ads.

What to do next

Start with one small, tracked test and expand from its results. Keep the scope narrow so week-four results read cleanly. These three actions get you there.

1. Run your organic baseline on the buyer questions that matter most.
2. Complete ChatGPT ads setup, including account, verification, billing, and tracking.
3. Build one ChatGPT ad campaign with two or three ad groups and run it for four weeks.

Use this ChatGPT ads tutorial as your launch checklist. You now know how to run ads on ChatGPT through a first test. Pair those results with your organic baseline when you report to leadership. Next, see how AI ads in AirOps track paid placements beside organic answers.

AirOps for advertising on ChatGPT

This guide pairs an organic baseline with a four-week test, and AirOps AI Ads connects the two. AI Ads is a product with expert support, live in the platform for Enterprise customers and starting with ChatGPT ads. Observed ads also cover Google AI Mode answers. Ad Load %, Paid Share of Voice, and Ads Library show where you and competitors advertise across tracked prompts.

Playbooks and the Brand Kit create and update on-brand ads. The AI Ads launch post says a connected ChatGPT ads account brings in spend, impressions, clicks, CTR, CPC, and CPM. AirOps ad experts can help you choose first opportunities and set up the channel.

Your next step is an organic baseline for the buyer questions where you plan to advertise on ChatGPT.

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