# How to get access to ChatGPT ads and register

URL: https://adsonomy.com/guides/how-to-get-access-to-chatgpt-ads-and-register
Published: 17 September 2026
Last updated: 17 September 2026
Plain-text version of the page above. Adsonomy is an independent product and is not affiliated with OpenAI.

## Summary

How a business gets access to ads in ChatGPT: where to sign up, the business and account details asked for, verification and review, adding a payment method, API keys and the features OpenAI enables per account. Sets out what to gather before registering, the registration steps themselves, and what happens once the account exists: features, roles, API keys, partners and how Adsonomy connects.

## Key facts

- Sign-up happens at ads.openai.com; you sign in with an existing OpenAI account or create one during the flow.
- The application asks for business details (business name, website, logo, industry) and account details (country, currency, timezone), then runs account verification before the account can serve ads.
- Currency and timezone are set once, at account level, and stay fixed: the Ads API and Adsonomy both read them back rather than let you choose them per campaign.
- A payment method is added and managed in Ads Manager only. The Ads API has no billing endpoints, so a missing or unauthorised one never shows as a rejected review: it shows as the serving issue ad_account_payment_method_missing_or_unauthorized, which Adsonomy observed live on 15 September 2026.
- Advertiser API keys are self-issued per ad account in Ads Manager Settings, one key per account; a partner key adds an OpenAI-Ad-Account header for an agency managing several clients.
- Capabilities such as conversion pixels, Conversions API keys, product feeds, spend-limit windows, CPM bidding and brand updates are switched on per account by an OpenAI partner representative, not by the API key itself.
- Which markets and business types are eligible is decided by OpenAI per account and changes over time; check your own Ads Manager sign-up flow and its ad policies rather than a fixed list.

## Full text

Getting an OpenAI Ads account is a separate job from building a campaign in it, and most of what trips a first-time advertiser up happens before a single ad exists: the wrong details on the application, a payment method never added, or an assumption that a colleague can just be added the way an ad account is added. This guide walks through where to register, what the sign-up flow asks for, what happens while OpenAI reviews the account, and how an account is connected to software such as Adsonomy once it is live.

**Key takeaways**

- Have business details, a live website, a payment method and creative assets ready before you start; the sign-up flow asks for most of them in one pass.
- Account verification and creative review are two separate gates: getting through one does not mean the other is done.
- Currency and timezone are chosen once, at account creation, and OpenAI does not document a way to change them afterwards.
- Capabilities such as pixels, feeds, spend-limit windows and CPM bidding need an OpenAI partner representative to switch on; a verified account alone does not unlock them.
- If an approved ad still is not serving, check the payment method before you touch the ad, the targeting or the bid.

### Where do you sign up for ads in ChatGPT?

At ads.openai.com, which OpenAI's help centre currently badges the Ads Manager Beta. You sign in with an existing OpenAI account tied to a work email, or create one during the sign-up flow itself; there is no separate application form outside it. From the same place you later manage billing, users, campaigns built by hand, and the Settings page where Advertiser API keys are issued.

Everything downstream, the object model, the bidding rules, the review states, is documented for the API and covered in our [how ads in ChatGPT work](https://adsonomy.com/guides/how-ads-in-chatgpt-work) and [Ads Manager versus the API](https://adsonomy.com/guides/openai-ads-manager-vs-api) guides. This guide stays one step earlier: getting an account to exist at all.

### Who is eligible, and in which markets?

OpenAI decides eligibility per business and per market, and both change over time, so this guide does not list countries or business categories. The sign-up flow itself asks for the country of the legal entity that will advertise and be billed, and account verification is where OpenAI checks whether that business and its offer can be accepted, rather than publishing a fixed pass or fail list in advance. If self-service is not yet open where you are, OpenAI's own guidance is that you can still create an account and it will follow up once it is.

Some categories of business are restricted or excluded under OpenAI's advertising policies, and the exact current list is only reliable on OpenAI's own policy page, not in a guide like this one that can go stale. Read it for your business before you invest in creative or a feed. Once an account exists, availability keeps being a property of that account: campaigns target locations through a geo lookup endpoint, and what it returns is the honest current answer, covered in [running ChatGPT ads across markets](https://adsonomy.com/guides/chatgpt-ads-in-the-us-eu-and-asia).

### What do you need before you register?

Gather these before you start the sign-up flow. None of them are optional extras: the application asks for most of the first group directly, and the rest determines how quickly the account is useful once it is approved.

| You will need | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Business and legal details | Business name, industry and the country of the legal entity that will advertise and be billed are asked for directly in the sign-up flow and used in account verification. |
| A live website | Business details include a website. Have the real site ready, not a placeholder, since account and creative review both look at where an ad would send someone. |
| A payment method | Added in Ads Manager only, after the account exists; the Ads API has no billing endpoints, so nothing spends until this is done and stays authorised. |
| A currency and timezone decision | Chosen once as account details when you register. Every budget, bid and report in that account is read in that currency and against that timezone from then on. |
| A plan for users and roles | Adding people to the account happens in Ads Manager itself, not through the Ads API, so decide who needs access before you rely on an account only one person can reach. |
| Pixel and Conversions API readiness | Not needed to open the account, but conversion tracking is a capability OpenAI enables per account and takes its own setup; do this before your first conversion-optimised campaign, not after. |
| A product feed, if you sell physical products | Only needed for product ad templates, and product feeds are a capability OpenAI enables per account. Chat cards need no feed at all. |
| Creative assets | A square image of at least 640 by 640 pixels, a title of 3 to 50 characters and a body of up to 100 characters are enough for a first chat card; build these while the account is in review. |

### Step 1: go to Ads Manager and sign in or create an OpenAI account

Start at ads.openai.com. Sign in with an existing OpenAI account or create one during the sign-up flow; there is no separate registration outside it.

### Step 2: enter your business and account details

Provide business details, business name, website, logo and industry, and account details: the country of the legal entity that will advertise and be billed, the account's currency and its timezone. These account-level choices carry through everything you do afterwards, including how budgets and reports read.

### Step 3: complete verification and wait for account review

OpenAI's Ads Manager help centre describes a verification step separate from creative review, using a named third-party identity and business check (Persona). Applications go through a queue, and OpenAI states it does not expedite review, so treat the wait as normal rather than a sign something went wrong, and watch your email and the account status for the outcome.

This account-level check is distinct from the review_status the Ads API reports later on individual creatives (in_review, approved, rejected with a reason) and from the account's own brand review and account integrity review. Getting through account verification means the account exists and can be configured; it does not mean a campaign you later build will be approved on its first submission.

### Step 4: add a payment method

Add a payment method in Ads Manager under Settings, Billing. The Ads API has no billing endpoints at all, so this only happens in Ads Manager, and it has to be done, and stay authorised, before anything can spend.

This is also the single most common reason an approved, correctly targeted ad still does not serve. A missing or unauthorised payment method never appears as a rejected review; it appears as a serving issue on the account, reported as the code ad_account_payment_method_missing_or_unauthorized when you call the ad, ad group or campaign with include[]=serving_issues. Adsonomy observed this exact code live on 15 September 2026, on an account with no payment method attached yet, and treats it as the highest-severity issue in its own dashboard for that reason: fix it before touching creative, bids or targeting.

### Step 5: issue an Advertiser API key

If you plan to run the account through software rather than by hand, issue an Advertiser API key in Ads Manager Settings. Keys are self-issued: OpenAI's documentation does not describe a separate approval step or a role dedicated just to creating one, so whoever can reach that Settings page can generate a key. One key maps to one ad account; verify it works with a plain GET /ad_account call before connecting anything to it.

An agency or a piece of software managing several client accounts has a second, documented option: a partner key, which adds an OpenAI-Ad-Account header naming the client account to every request, instead of holding a separate key per client. Adsonomy supports connecting either way.

### What happens to features and access after the account exists?

Three things are worth separating, because they are switched on by different people at different times: your own account access, capabilities OpenAI enables on the account, and API keys.

**Inviting other users, and what roles exist.** Adding people to an ad account is handled entirely in Ads Manager and OpenAI's account administration tools; the Ads API has no user or seat management endpoints at all, so no integration, Adsonomy included, can invite someone or change what they can see. OpenAI's help centre documents this as a distinct identity and access layer with its own admin console and account-level roles, separate from being an administrator of the wider OpenAI organisation. Decide who needs access to the ad account itself, and add them there, before you depend on an account only one person can reach.

**Features OpenAI enables per account.** A set of capabilities are gated per account and switched on by an OpenAI partner representative rather than by a setting you flip yourself: brand updates, conversion pixels, Conversions API keys, conversion-optimised bidding, product feeds, spend-limit windows, CPM bidding, the conversion event stream and zero-impression product reporting. Without them, an account can still run impression and click campaigns with chat cards, but not much beyond that. This is different from custom audiences, which are not partner-gated: they are simply unavailable for campaigns targeting the EEA or Switzerland, wherever the account is based, a geography rule rather than an account permission.

**API keys and what they are scoped to.** An Advertiser API key is scoped to exactly one ad account; it does not carry any capability the account does not already have; enabling a gated feature happens on the account, and the same key then simply starts working against the newly enabled endpoints. A partner key is scoped more broadly, to every client account it is given the header for, which is what makes it the agency path rather than the default one.

**Partners and agencies.** The documented route for an agency or a platform managing several advertisers is the partner key: one credential, with each request naming the specific client account through the OpenAI-Ad-Account header, so a client's own key never has to be held or shared. Adsonomy's ad account connection form offers both paths: your own Advertiser API key for a single account you keep full control of, or Adsonomy's own partner key for an account you name by its account ID and let Adsonomy connect to on your behalf.

### How does Adsonomy connect once you have an account?

You paste the Advertiser API key you issued in Ads Manager Settings (or, on the partner path, just the ad account ID) into Adsonomy's Ad accounts page. Adsonomy calls GET /ad_account to test the connection, reads back the account's currency, timezone and review status exactly as the platform reports them, and probes the gated endpoints to record which capabilities are already enabled. A new connection starts in shadow mode: every intended change is recorded, nothing is sent to the platform, until you deliberately turn it off.

The key itself is stored encrypted in Adsonomy's own database and is never shown again after you save it; the connect form says so directly, and the underlying record's own documentation states that credentials are encrypted at rest and never leave that record except into the code that calls the OpenAI Ads API on your behalf. Nothing else uses the key. You can revoke or rotate it in Ads Manager Settings at any time, which immediately cuts Adsonomy off from that account until you paste in a replacement.

On first connection, Adsonomy also checks whether a pixel, a Conversions API key and a matching conversion event already exist for the account, and offers a one-click action on its Conversions page that creates whichever of the three is missing. Any step OpenAI has not enabled on the account yet is reported back in plain language, so you know to go and enable it in Ads Manager rather than wonder why nothing happened. The [conversion tracking guide](https://adsonomy.com/guides/openai-ads-conversion-tracking-pixel-and-conversions-api) covers what each piece does once it exists.

## Frequently asked questions

Q: Do I need a live website before I can sign up?
A: The sign-up flow for an Ads Manager account asks for business details, including a website, as part of creating the account. Have your live site ready before you start; a landing page still counts as a website, but what you can advertise for it is a separate question, decided during account and creative review.

Q: Can I change my ad account's currency or timezone later?
A: Not that OpenAI documents. Currency and timezone are entered as account details when the account is created, and every budget, bid and report in that account is read in that currency and against that timezone from then on. If you need a second currency, that is a separate ad account, not a setting you change on the first one.

Q: Does connecting Adsonomy replace the OpenAI Ads Manager?
A: No. Creating the account, billing and payment methods, and adding other users all happen only in Ads Manager, because the Ads API has no endpoints for any of them. Adsonomy connects to an ad account that already exists there and runs the day-to-day campaign work from that point on.

Q: My account is approved but ads still are not serving. What do I check?
A: The payment method first. It never shows up as a rejected review: call the ad, ad group or campaign with include[]=serving_issues and look for the code ad_account_payment_method_missing_or_unauthorized, then add or reauthorise a payment method in Ads Manager under Settings, Billing.

Q: Who can create an Advertiser API key?
A: OpenAI's documentation says only that Advertiser API keys are self-issued in Ads Manager Settings, one key per ad account; it does not describe a separate permission just for creating a key. Whoever has access to that Settings page can issue one, so treat account access itself as the control that matters.

Q: Can an agency or partner manage the account on my behalf?
A: Yes, through the documented partner-key path: a partner adds an OpenAI-Ad-Account header naming a client's ad account to each request, so one integration can manage several client accounts without holding each client's own key. Adsonomy's own connection instead uses the API key you issue for your account, so you keep direct control of it.