# How to run ads on ChatGPT

URL: https://adsonomy.com/guides/how-to-run-ads-on-chatgpt
Published: 21 September 2026
Last updated: 21 September 2026
Plain-text version of the page above. Adsonomy is an independent product and is not affiliated with OpenAI.

## Summary

The complete process for running ads on ChatGPT, in order: what advertising in ChatGPT is and who sees the ads, what a business needs before it starts, opening an OpenAI Ads account in Ads Manager, setting up conversion tracking, structuring campaigns, targeting with context hints instead of keywords, creating chat card or product ads, choosing bids and budgets, getting through review, and managing, optimising and measuring the campaign, plus when a tool or agency makes sense.

## Key facts

- Ads in ChatGPT are bought through OpenAI Ads: self-serve in Ads Manager at ads.openai.com, or through the Ads API for tools and agencies.
- OpenAI shows the ads to logged-in adults on the Free and Go plans, labelled and kept separate from the answer; Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Education are ad-free.
- There are no keywords: each ad group carries up to 2,000 context hints, free-text sentences describing the conversations an offer fits.
- Two ad formats exist: chat cards (title of 3 to 50 characters, body of up to 100, square image) and product ads built from a product feed.
- You pay per click or per impression; the daily campaign minimum on a EUR account is EUR 15.00, and a single day can spend up to twice the daily budget.
- Everything is created paused and reviewed by OpenAI; nothing spends until the ad is approved, the payment method works and every level is active.
- Since 16 September 2026, conversion optimisation billed per impression is generally available and is OpenAI's recommended model; it needs a standard conversion event.

## Full text

To run ads on ChatGPT, you open an ad account in OpenAI Ads Manager at ads.openai.com, add a payment method and install OpenAI's pixel, then build a campaign with an ad group of context hints and a chat card or product ad. OpenAI reviews the ad, you activate it, and it can appear alongside ChatGPT answers wherever a conversation matches what you described. This guide walks through every step in order, from the account to the first weeks of optimisation, using the limits OpenAI documents and no invented benchmarks.

**Key takeaways**

- Finish the account, the payment method and conversion tracking before you design a single ad: they gate everything else.
- Think in situations, not keywords: write context hints as sentences a person in that conversation would recognise, one angle per ad group.
- Start with a chat card; it needs no product feed and works for shops and service businesses alike.
- Read the daily budget as a seven-day average: a day can spend twice it and a week seven times it.
- Judge results on daily data that is at least a day old, and change one thing at a time.

### What does it mean to run ads on ChatGPT?

Running ads on ChatGPT means buying sponsored placements that OpenAI shows alongside ChatGPT answers when a conversation matches your offer. You buy them through OpenAI Ads, target them with context hints instead of keywords, and pay per click or per impression. The ads are labelled as sponsored and kept separate from the answer itself.

OpenAI says the ads run on separate systems from the chat model, do not influence the answers ChatGPT gives, and that conversations are kept private from advertisers. The ads are shown to logged-in adults on the Free and Go plans. Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Education subscribers do not see ads, and OpenAI does not show them to people it knows or predicts are under 18, or next to sensitive or regulated topics such as health, mental health or politics.

For you as an advertiser, that means you never bid on a query and never see the prompts that triggered your ad. The platform matches the meaning of the conversation to the context hints you write and reports results per campaign, ad group and ad. The full mechanics are in [how ads in ChatGPT work](https://adsonomy.com/guides/how-ads-in-chatgpt-work).

### What do you need before you start?

A business that OpenAI's ad policies accept, a live website OpenAI's crawler can reach, a payment method, a conversion you want more of, and a budget of at least the daily minimum for your currency: EUR 15.00 a day on a EUR account. Shops that want product ads also need a product feed.

| You need | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| An eligible business | OpenAI's ad policies restrict some categories, such as financial, healthcare and legal services, which are approved case by case, and exclude others. Check the current policy for your business before you invest in creative. |
| A reachable website | Every ad links to a URL that OpenAI's crawler must be able to reach, and an ad only serves if its landing page is accessible. |
| A payment method | Added in Ads Manager only. The Ads API has no billing endpoints, and nothing spends without a working payment method. |
| A conversion to measure | An order, lead, appointment or trial, measured with OpenAI's pixel and ideally the Conversions API, so you can optimise and judge results. |
| A budget | The daily campaign minimum depends on the account currency; on a EUR account it is EUR 15.00 (15,000,000 micros). |
| Creative | 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. |
| A product feed, for shops (optional) | Needed only for product ads, and product feeds are a capability OpenAI enables per account. Chat cards need no feed. |

Availability is set by OpenAI per country and has widened through 2026. If self-service is not yet open where your business is registered, you can still create an account, and OpenAI follows up once it is.

### Step 1: How do you open an OpenAI Ads account?

Go to ads.openai.com, sign in with an OpenAI account and enter your business details, including the country of the legal entity that will be billed. OpenAI then runs two account reviews, a brand review and an account integrity review. Add a payment method in Ads Manager while you wait.

Choose the account currency and timezone with care: every budget, bid and report in that account is read in them from then on. One API key maps to one ad account, so if a tool such as Adsonomy will manage the account, or you run separate accounts per market, issue a key per account in the Settings tab. OpenAI also documents partner keys for agencies that manage several ad accounts with one key.

Some capabilities are switched on per account by OpenAI rather than by you, among them conversion pixels and Conversions API keys, conversion bidding, product feeds and spend limit windows. If an option in this guide is missing from your Ads Manager, that is usually why. The full sign-up walk-through is in [how to get access to ChatGPT ads and register](https://adsonomy.com/guides/how-to-get-access-to-chatgpt-ads-and-register).

### Step 2: How do you set up conversion tracking?

Create a pixel and a conversion event in the Conversions section of Ads Manager, install the pixel on your site, and send the same events from your server with the Conversions API, using a shared event ID so each conversion is counted once. Choose a standard event, such as order_created or lead_created, as the goal.

Do this before you build the campaign. A conversion-optimised campaign needs exactly one active standard conversion event as its goal, and custom events cannot be optimisation goals. OpenAI's documentation describes the Conversions API as a more reliable tracking source than the pixel alone.

Each conversion event setting carries its own click attribution window, and Ads Manager reports can use a 7, 14 or 30-day click window and a 0 or 1-day view window. Ads Manager also rates each eligible pixel and Conversions API source from 1 to 10 with an Event Quality Score; fix what it flags before launch. Consent, deduplication and verification are covered in the [conversion tracking guide](https://adsonomy.com/guides/openai-ads-conversion-tracking-pixel-and-conversions-api).

### Step 3: How do you structure the campaign?

An ad account holds campaigns, a campaign holds ad groups, and an ad group holds ads. The campaign sets the objective, budget, schedule, locations and platforms; the ad group sets the bid and the context hints; the ad is the creative. Build one campaign per market and one ad group per angle.

| Level | What you set there | A rule that works |
|---|---|---|
| Campaign | Objective, campaign type, billing event, daily or lifetime budget, start and end date, locations, platforms, custom audiences, conversion event | One per market, so budget, pacing and language stay separate |
| Ad group | Bid strategy and bid, up to 2,000 context hints, and the product set in a feed campaign | One per angle, because results are reported per ad group, not per hint |
| Ad | A chat card or a product ad template, the destination URL and tracking parameters | More than one per ad group, replaced rather than edited |

The campaign type decides how ads are made: a standard campaign where you write the ads, or a product feed campaign that builds them from your catalogue. Everything you create starts paused, so you can build the whole tree, check it once, and only then switch it on.

### Step 4: How do you target ads without keywords?

With context hints: free-text sentences, up to 2,000 per ad group, that describe the situations and questions your offer fits. OpenAI matches them to the meaning of the conversation, not to exact words. Locations, platforms and, outside the EEA and Switzerland, custom audiences then narrow who is eligible.

Write hints the way a person would describe their situation, for example "training for a first half marathon and unsure which shoes to buy" for a running shop, rather than a list of product terms. Group hints by angle, such as a problem, an occasion or a comparison, and give each angle its own ad group: there is no report per hint, so the ad group is the only level at which an angle can be measured. Updating an ad group's hints replaces the whole list, so keep a copy of what is live.

Locations are set on the campaign: up to 2,500 regions, markets or DMAs, with exclusions winning over inclusions. Since 16 September 2026, platforms can be targeted one by one: iOS app, Android app, desktop web, iOS web and Android web. Custom audiences built from your own customer lists can include or exclude people, but not in campaigns that target the EEA or Switzerland. How to phrase hints and which angles to cover is in the [context hints guide](https://adsonomy.com/guides/contextual-targeting-and-context-hints-in-chatgpt-ads).

### Step 5: How do you create the ad?

Choose a chat card or a product ad. A chat card needs a title of 3 to 50 characters, a body of up to 100 characters, a square image of at least 640 by 640 pixels and a destination URL. A product ad takes its image, link and price from an item in your product feed.

Write for the moment, not for the brand: the person has just asked ChatGPT something, so a card works best when it speaks to that situation in plain words and links to the page that finishes the job. Ads Manager warns that copy may be truncated in some placements, so put the point in the first words of the title.

Every ad goes into review when it is created and again whenever its creative is edited, so change copy by adding a new ad rather than editing a live one. The campaign's advanced settings in Ads Manager also offer text customization, an opt-in that lets OpenAI generate personalised and translated versions of your headlines and descriptions, which may be shown without your individual review. Decide on it deliberately, because it changes what your results describe. Worked examples are in [writing chat card creative](https://adsonomy.com/guides/writing-chatgpt-ad-creative-chat-cards).

### Step 6: How do you set the bid and the budget?

Choose a bid strategy, then a daily or lifetime budget. A fixed bid sets the most you will pay; maximise clicks and maximise conversions let OpenAI set bids within a daily budget. Once conversion tracking works, OpenAI recommends conversion optimisation billed per impression.

| Strategy | What you set | Budget type |
|---|---|---|
| Fixed bid (Manual: Max CPC in Ads Manager) | Your maximum bid, per click or per impression | Daily or lifetime |
| Maximise clicks (Maximize results) | The budget; OpenAI sets bids to get the most clicks | Daily only |
| Maximise conversions (Maximize results) | The budget and one standard conversion event; OpenAI sets bids toward it | Daily only |

The budget works differently from most platforms. Ads Manager treats a daily budget as an average, so a single day can spend up to twice it and seven days up to seven times it: a EUR 20 daily budget can spend EUR 40 on a busy day and up to EUR 140 in a week. The daily minimum on a EUR account is EUR 15.00; other currencies have their own minimum, which the error message names if you go below it.

Above the campaign budgets, an account can carry up to 60 non-overlapping spend limit windows, a ceiling across all campaigns that OpenAI enables per account. An account limit does not share money out between campaigns: a campaign can still have budget left when the account limit is used up. What this costs in practice is in [how much ChatGPT ads cost](https://adsonomy.com/guides/how-much-do-chatgpt-ads-cost), and the strategies in depth in [budgets, pacing and bidding](https://adsonomy.com/guides/budgets-pacing-and-bidding-strategies-for-chatgpt-ads).

### Step 7: How do you get through review and launch?

Wait until the ad's review status moves from in review to approved, then activate the ad, the ad group and the campaign. Each level has its own paused or active state, so switch on every level you want live. If an approved ad still does not serve, check the payment method first.

OpenAI's troubleshooting guide checks delivery from the top down: the account must be active, with its reviews complete and spend limit available; the campaign active, scheduled, budgeted and validly targeted; the ad group active, with compatible bidding and eligible products; and the ad active, approved and pointing at an accessible landing page. Status only says whether something is switched on; review says whether it passed. A preview, valid for 24 hours, shows how an ad renders but does not confirm that it can serve.

Restricted categories are approved case by case, and ads that exaggerate results or use false endorsements are refused in any category. Read [OpenAI's ad policies](https://openai.com/policies/ad-policies/) for your business before you write the copy, not after a rejection.

### Step 8: How do you manage and optimise the campaign?

Check delivery daily, but judge results weekly. Impressions and clicks appear within minutes, spend a little later, and conversions need at least a day, so read yesterday, not today. Change one thing at a time, a bid, a set of hints or a creative, and give it time before the next change.

There are no notifications to lean on: the platform has no webhooks, so review status, serving issues and spend have to be checked, in Ads Manager or through the API. Hourly figures carry impressions, clicks and spend only; conversions and sales are reported by day. A bid too low warning is guidance, not a block. If a campaign has no serving issues but few impressions, OpenAI's documentation points to limited eligible opportunities, restrictive targeting, uncompetitive bids or a small product set, and advises comparing reporting over a suitable interval rather than a few minutes of activity.

The platform also leaves out controls advertisers know from elsewhere: dayparting, frequency capping, target CPA or ROAS, pacing controls and A/B tests. You work around them with structure, rules and patience, or with a management layer. With Adsonomy's Control edition, you run the account with rules; in Autopilot, its AI manager Nomy makes changes within the guardrails and policy you set. The habits that pay off are collected in [ChatGPT ads best practices](https://adsonomy.com/guides/chatgpt-ads-best-practices).

### How do you measure whether ChatGPT ads work?

Compare the platform's conversions with your own analytics, per campaign and over the same dates. Add tracking parameters so every click arrives labelled in your analytics, and remember that view-through conversions are counted separately. For real lift, run a geo holdout: one market with ads, a comparable one without.

Ads Manager's tracking parameters are added to your link on every click and support placeholders for the campaign, ad group, ad and ad account IDs, for example `utm_source=chatgpt&utm_campaign={campaign_id}&utm_content={ad_id}`. OpenAI adds its own click reference, oppref, by itself. Expect the platform and your analytics to disagree somewhat, because they attribute differently. The [measurement guide](https://adsonomy.com/guides/measuring-chatgpt-ads-ga4-utm-incrementality) covers GA4, UTMs and incrementality, and [how to test ChatGPT ads](https://adsonomy.com/guides/testing-chatgpt-ads-budget-plan) covers sizing a first test.

### Can a tool or an agency run ChatGPT ads for you?

Yes. Ads Manager is enough to run a small account by hand. The Ads API lets software do the same work, which is how management tools such as Adsonomy connect, and OpenAI documents partner keys for agencies that run several ad accounts. OpenAI's own apps for Shopify and HubSpot cover part of the job inside those platforms.

What decides it is how much routine work you want to hand over. The API has no billing endpoints and cannot create ad accounts, so those steps stay in Ads Manager whatever you use. OpenAI's ChatGPT Ads app for Shopify launched for US merchants first, with international availability announced for later, and its HubSpot integration is built around leads. The trade-offs are set out in [Ads Manager versus the Ads API](https://adsonomy.com/guides/openai-ads-manager-vs-api), and every screen of Ads Manager in [how to use OpenAI Ads Manager](https://adsonomy.com/guides/how-to-use-openai-ads-manager).

### Sources

OpenAI's own documentation and policy pages, checked on the date this guide was last updated:

- [OpenAI Ads API quickstart](https://developers.openai.com/ads/api-quickstart)
- [OpenAI Ads: bidding and budgets](https://developers.openai.com/ads/bidding-and-budgets)
- [OpenAI Ads: conversion-optimized campaigns](https://developers.openai.com/ads/conversion-optimized-campaigns)
- [OpenAI Ads: troubleshooting](https://developers.openai.com/ads/troubleshooting)
- [OpenAI ad policies](https://openai.com/policies/ad-policies/)
- [OpenAI: our approach to advertising and expanding access to ChatGPT](https://openai.com/index/our-approach-to-advertising-and-expanding-access/)

## Frequently asked questions

Q: Can anyone run ads on ChatGPT?
A: Any business that OpenAI's ad policies accept, in a country where OpenAI has opened advertising, can apply through Ads Manager at ads.openai.com. OpenAI reviews every account with a brand review and an account integrity review, and approves restricted categories such as financial, healthcare and legal services case by case.

Q: How much does it cost to run ads on ChatGPT?
A: There is no price list. You pay per click or per impression at prices set in an auction, capped by your budget and, with a fixed bid, by your bid. The fixed floor is the daily campaign minimum, EUR 15.00 a day on a EUR account, and a single day can spend up to twice the daily budget.

Q: Who sees ads in ChatGPT?
A: Logged-in adults on ChatGPT's Free and Go plans, according to OpenAI. Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Education subscribers do not see ads, and OpenAI does not show ads to users it knows or predicts are under 18, or next to sensitive topics such as health, mental health or politics.

Q: Do ChatGPT ads change ChatGPT's answers?
A: No, according to OpenAI. Ads are labelled, shown separately from the answer and run on separate systems, and advertisers cannot shape, rank or alter what ChatGPT says. Being cited inside an answer is organic visibility, a separate discipline from paid ads.

Q: Do I need a product feed to run ads on ChatGPT?
A: No. A chat card needs only a title, a body, a square image and a destination URL, so it works for shops and service businesses alike. A product feed is only needed for product ads, and feeds are a capability OpenAI enables per account.

Q: Can I choose which questions my ad appears for?
A: Not directly. There are no keywords and no query report: you describe the situations your offer fits in up to 2,000 context hints per ad group, and OpenAI matches them to the meaning of the conversation. Results are reported per campaign, ad group and ad, never per prompt.

Q: Can I run ChatGPT ads in Europe?
A: Yes, where OpenAI has opened advertising for your market; campaigns target locations by region, market or DMA. The main European difference is audiences: custom audiences cannot be used in campaigns that target the EEA or Switzerland, so hints, locations and platforms do all the targeting there.

Q: How long before a ChatGPT ads campaign shows results?
A: Impressions and clicks show within minutes of an ad going live, spend a little later, and conversions need at least a day to appear. Judge a first campaign on at least a full week of daily data, so weekdays and weekends both count, before you change bids, hints or creative.