ChatGPT Ads are becoming a new advertising channel for businesses, giving advertisers a way to reach potential customers inside the ChatGPT experience.
OpenAI introduced its self-service Ads Manager Beta in May 2026, allowing businesses to create campaigns, set budgets, upload creatives, manage ads, and track performance. On August 31, 2026, OpenAI announced that self-service access was expanding to India, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.
If you’ve already worked with Google Ads, Meta Ads, or other paid advertising platforms, the basic structure of ChatGPT Ads will feel familiar: campaigns, ad groups, ads, targeting, budgets, bidding and measurement.
However, ChatGPT advertising works differently from traditional search advertising because ads can appear within a conversational environment where users are researching, comparing and making decisions.
This guide explains how to set up a ChatGPT Ads campaign, from creating your campaign to configuring conversion tracking, audiences, ad groups, creatives and launch settings.
Ads Manager Beta is still evolving. Campaign options, availability, minimum budgets and interface details may change as OpenAI expands the platform.
What ChatGPT Ads Actually Are
A ChatGPT ad is a clearly labeled sponsored card that appears below ChatGPT’s own answer – it never changes or influences the response itself. Each ad unit includes your advertiser name and logo, a title, a description, an image, and a link to your landing page.
Before You Start
- Have a pixel-ready site. You’ll want to install OpenAI’s conversion pixel before you launch, so click and conversion data flow back into Ads Manager from day one.
- Know your conversion goal. If you pick the “Conversions” objective, the platform requires you to select a conversion event before it lets you proceed – so it’s worth setting that up first.
- Billing is postpay and budgets are set in your local currency (Ads Manager shows amounts in your account’s currency, e.g. INR, alongside your maximum daily and seven-day spend caps).
Step 1: Create the Campaign
Click Create → New campaign and fill in the top-level settings:
- Campaign name — internal only, not shown to users.
- Campaign type — Standard is the default, controlling how the campaign creates ads and where people are sent.
- Objective — a dropdown that determines how you bid in the auction and which ad formats are available. Conversions is one option alongside reach/click-style objectives.
- Conversion event — if you chose Conversions, you must add at least one event here (see Step 2) before you can continue; Ads Manager blocks the “Next” step until one is selected.
- Locations for this campaign — include specific countries or regions (e.g., India); you can also add locations to exclude, which override includes even if a user also matches an included location.
- Eligible platforms — restrict to specific platforms, or leave as “All platforms.”
- Landing page query parameters — optional query string appended to your destination URL, supporting template values like
{campaign_id},{ad_group_id},{ad_id},{ad_account_id}, and{oppref}for tracking. - Custom audiences — optionally create an “include” audience (only these users are eligible) or an “exclude” audience (these users are filtered out). See Step 3 for building an audience.
- Budget — choose Daily budget (or another budget type) and enter an amount in your account currency. Ads Manager shows your resulting maximum daily spend and maximum seven-day spend as guardrails.
- Start date / time and an optional end date (toggle “Set an end date” if you want one).
- Text customization — a toggle that, when on, lets OpenAI’s AI automatically generate personalized and translated versions of your headlines and descriptions. Note these variants can go live without your individual review or approval, so turn this off if you want full manual control over copy.
Click Next: Ad group once everything is filled in (a warning icon next to the campaign name in the sidebar flags any incomplete required field).
Step 2: Set Up Conversion Tracking (if using the Conversions objective)
If your objective needs a conversion event, you’ll be prompted to create one:
- Base event — pick the action you want to track from a standard list: App installed, App opened, Appointment scheduled, Checkout started, Contents viewed, Items added, Lead created, Order created, Page viewed, Registration completed, Subscription created, or Trial started.
- Name — a label for the event (up to 30 characters).
- Data source — select which pixel/data source reports this event.
- Click-through attribution window — how long after an ad click a conversion still counts (defaults to 30 days).
Before this event can actually fire, you need a data source connected. Under Conversions → Data Source, OpenAI gives you a Pixel ID and a setup script to install in your site’s HTML <head> (once per page), plus an example event call — something like:
oaiq("measure", "registration_completed", { type: "customer_action", amount: 0, currency: "USD" })
that you place at the specific point in your code where that action actually happens, not sitewide. Once the pixel is installed and firing, link the conversion event back to your campaign.
Step 3: Build a Custom Audience (optional)
From Audiences → Create audience, you can:
- Name the audience and add an optional description.
- Optionally upload a member file immediately, or create the audience empty and add members later.
- Accepted formats: CSV with headers or a TXT file. (Files size up to 500 MB).
Use these audiences as the include/exclude lists back in your campaign settings (Step 1).
Step 4: Create Your Ad Group
Inside the campaign, add an ad group:
- Ad group name.
- Conversion type — the specific conversion this ad group is optimizing toward (e.g., “Page viewed”).
- Bid strategy — choose Maximize results (OpenAI automatically adjusts your bid to get the most results from your budget) or Manual: Max bid (you set your own ceiling).
- Landing page query parameters — same optional tracking-parameter field as at the campaign level, scoped to this ad group.
- Default Ad Destination URL — the default landing page for new ads created in this group.
- Context hints (optional) — plain-language phrases describing the conversations, topics, or keywords where your product or service may be relevant. Ads Manager is explicit that these guide matching — they are not exact-match targeting rules, so treat them as descriptive signal rather than a keyword list.
Click Next: Configure Ads.
Step 5: Create Your Ads
For each ad in the group:
- Ad name (internal, minimum 3 characters).
- Ad Destination URL — can override the ad group’s default.
- Landing page query parameters — again optional, ad-level.
- Title — up to 50 characters (Ads Manager will warn that copy may be truncated in some placements if you run close to the limit).
- Description — up to 100 characters.
- Ad images — upload a PNG or JPG; for best quality use a square image at least 256×256 px.
A Preview creative panel on the right shows roughly how the ad will render in ChatGPT — advertiser name, logo, “Ad” label, title, and description — as you fill in each field. Use Add another Ad to create multiple creative variants within the same ad group for testing.
Step 6: Review and Launch
The final step in the wizard is Review, showing a full campaign summary — objective, budget, dates, locations, ad group(s), and ad(s) — before you submit. Once submitted, the campaign goes into review; you’ll see its status update as it’s approved and begins serving.
Quick Reference (from Ads Manager Beta)
Field | What you’ll see |
Campaign type | Standard |
Objective | Includes Conversions (plus other formats) |
Bid strategy | Maximize results (auto) or Manual: Max bid |
Title limit | 50 characters |
Description limit | 100 characters |
Min image size | 256 × 256 px (PNG or JPG) |
Budget | Daily budget, shown with max daily & 7-day spend caps |
Attribution window default | 30 days |
Audience file limit | Up to 500 MB (CSV w/ headers or TXT) |
Text customization | AI can auto-generate/translate ad copy — can publish without manual review if left on |
A Few Practical Notes
- Context hints are optional but worth using. Since they’re explicitly non-exact-match, write several natural-language descriptions of the conversations where your offer fits rather than a short keyword list.
- Set up your pixel and conversion event before you build the campaign if you’re using the Conversions objective — Ads Manager won’t let you finish the campaign step without one selected.
- Decide on Text customization deliberately. Leaving it on gives OpenAI’s AI room to generate and publish headline/description variants automatically; turn it off if brand copy needs to stay exactly as written.
- Locations behave like an allow/deny list. Anything in “exclude” wins even over a matching include, so double-check for overlaps before launching.
Ads Manager Beta is an evolving product — field names, limits, and available objectives may change. This guide reflects the interface as of your current account view; always confirm against what you see on screen before launching a live campaign.
Minimum Campaign Spend
Country | Daily Minimum |
Australia | 25 AUD |
Brazil | 40 BRL |
Canada | 25 CAD |
India | 725 INR |
Japan | 2,500 JPY |
Mexico | 150 MXN |
New Zealand | 25 NZD |
South Korea | 25,000 KRW |
United Kingdom | 15 GBP |
United States | 25 USD |
FAQs about ChatGPT Ads Manager
There’s no fixed minimum for a ChatGPT Ads campaign – OpenAI removed the earlier six-figure spend requirement when it opened ChatGPT Ads to self-serve advertisers. In practice, a daily budget in the $50–$100 range (or your local currency equivalent) is enough to get a ChatGPT Ads campaign generating meaningful data within a couple of weeks.
ChatGPT Ads doesn’t use keywords or interest categories. Instead, you write context hints – plain-language descriptions of the conversations and topics where your product is relevant. OpenAI is explicit that ChatGPT Ads context hints guide matching rather than function as exact-match rules, so relevance in a ChatGPT Ads campaign is scored across your hints, ad copy, and landing page together.
Only if you’re using the Conversions objective, but it’s worth setting up for any ChatGPT Ads campaign. You install the ChatGPT Ads pixel snippet in your site’s <head>, then fire specific event calls (like registration_completed or order_created) at the moments those actions actually happen. Without it, ChatGPT Ads can’t attribute clicks to real outcomes.
Maximize results is ChatGPT Ads’ automatic bid strategy — OpenAI adjusts your bid within your budget to get the most results it can. Manual: Max bid lets you set your own ceiling per click or impression. Most ChatGPT Ads advertisers start with Maximize results and switch to manual bidding once they have enough data to know what a result is actually worth.
Yes — the Text customization toggle in ChatGPT Ads campaign setup controls this. Left on, OpenAI’s AI can automatically generate personalized and translated versions of your ChatGPT Ads headline and description, and those variants can go live without your individual review. Turn it off if your brand copy needs to stay exactly as written.
As of this beta, ChatGPT Ads does not accept dating, alcohol, tobacco, healthcare, financial and legal services, gambling, or political content. Categories currently eligible for ChatGPT Ads include household and consumer goods, local services, travel and experiences, and digital products and education — though this list is expected to evolve.
Business account verification for ChatGPT Ads is manual and typically takes a few business days. Once your account is verified, individual ChatGPT Ads review is faster – usually within 24 hours.
A ChatGPT Ads placement shows as a clearly labeled sponsored card beneath ChatGPT’s own answer – it never edits or influences the response itself. Users see your advertiser name, logo, an “Ad” label, a title, a description, and an image, all separate from the AI-generated reply above it.
