How to Advertise in ChatGPT: A Walkthrough of OpenAI Ads Manager Beta

ChatGPT Ads has moved beyond early testing: advertisers can now run campaigns through OpenAI Ads Manager Beta, and access is gradually expanding to new markets.

Evido by Aitarget has been working with ChatGPT Ads since May 2026 and runs client campaigns as an OpenAI API partner. In this guide, we break down how the ad account is structured, what each setting does, and how to build a strong campaign.

ChatGPT Ads at a glance

Where ads appear: below relevant ChatGPT conversations.

Who sees them: Free and Go users aged 18+.

Platform: OpenAI Ads Manager Beta, at ads.openai.com.

Campaign objectives: Views/CPM, Clicks/CPC, and Conversions — optimized for conversions and billed per click (oCPC).

Targeting: location, platforms, custom audiences and context hints. Context hints help the system understand which conversations your ad is relevant to, but they are not exact keyword targeting.

Formats: an ad with a headline, copy and an image (chat card), and a product catalog.

Availability: self-serve sign-up in Ads Manager is open to companies in 63 countries; everyone else can launch through OpenAI partners.

What ads in ChatGPT look like

An ad appears below a ChatGPT response when the user is researching something, comparing options or making a decision. The format is familiar: the advertiser's name and logo, a headline, short copy, an image and a link.

The difference is that the system looks not only at the ad copy itself, but also at the landing page, context hints and other relevance signals. That's why ChatGPT Ads isn't just another keyword-based channel. What matters here is explaining to the system what your offer is, when it's useful and who it's for.

Who sees your ads?

Your addressable audience in ChatGPT Ads consists of adult users on the Free and Go plans. Employees using corporate plans do not see ads. This is an important consideration when planning B2B media campaigns.

Free users can opt out of ads, but doing so means receiving fewer messages and losing access to some tools, such as image generation and deep research. As a result, most users who stay on the Free plan continue to see ads.

Some areas are completely ad-free:

• Temporary Chats.
• Conversations about health, mental health, and politics.
• The ChatGPT Atlas browser, during the testing period.

OpenAI’s advertising policies also restrict ads in certain topics and scenarios. Campaign settings cannot override these restrictions.

What Advertisers Can and Cannot See

Advertisers do not have access to users’ conversations. OpenAI does not share users’ chats, conversation history, memory, names, email addresses, precise locations, or IP addresses with advertisers. Reports contain aggregated performance data only, such as impressions, clicks, spend, and conversions.

Advertising and ChatGPT responses operate independently. Advertisers cannot influence ChatGPT’s answers, how it ranks options, or which brands and services it mentions.

Users also have several controls available. They can hide an ad, report it, find out why it was shown, or ask ChatGPT about it. Ad history and personalization settings are available in the Ad Controls section.

Meet the ad account: OpenAI Ads Manager

Every ChatGPT ad campaign is created and managed in one place — OpenAI Ads Manager Beta, at ads.openai.com.

In the account, you can set up campaigns, manage ad groups and creatives, control billing and track results.

Note: Ads Manager is still in beta, so the interface, available settings and platform capabilities keep evolving.

Setting up your account

You can set up an OpenAI Ads Manager account in a few minutes. Sign in with your OpenAI account, enter your company details, country, currency, and time zone, upload a logo, and add a card. You can then start building a campaign right away, and your ads will begin serving once they pass review.

❗️ We walk through every step, with screenshots and limitations, in our guide to creating a ChatGPT Ads account.

3 levels: campaign, ad group, ad

Once you have access, setup feels familiar. Every campaign has three levels.

Campaign.

This is where you set the objective, budget, schedule and targeting. There are three objectives, and your choice determines how you buy:

• Reach — you pay per thousand impressions (CPM).
• Clicks — you pay per click (CPC).
• Conversions — the system optimizes delivery toward a target action (a lead, purchase or sign-up), but you're still billed per click.

Ad group.

A set of ads built around a single theme or user intent. Context hints are set at the ad group level — a description of the conversations where your ad should be relevant.

Ad.

What the user sees: a headline, short copy, an image and a link to the landing page.

Find more about ChatGPT Ads creatives in this article.

Once set up, the campaign is submitted for review. After it's approved, your ads start serving.

If an ad shows a not serving status, hover over the status to see why. In many cases, the issue is a quick fix: edit the ad and resubmit it for review.

Key settings: location, objectives, budget

Location.

You can target countries, regions, cities and postal codes, and exclude specific locations. How granular you can go depends on the market.

Find more about targeting in ChatGPT Ads in this article.

Objectives.

Three objectives are available: reach, clicks and conversions. Conversions use oCPC: the system optimizes delivery toward users who are more likely to complete the target action.

Budget and bids.

You can set a daily or lifetime budget; the minimum daily budget for USD accounts is $25. You can set bids manually or choose Maximize results to let the system optimize them for clicks or conversions automatically. For CPC, OpenAI recommends starting at $3–5 per click.

The auction considers not only the bid but also ad relevance. This means a more relevant ad can win an impression even over an ad with a higher bid.

Context hints: the most important part

Context hints remain one of the defining features of ChatGPT Ads. They're added at the ad group level and help the system understand what your offer is, who it's for and in which situations it can be useful.

That said, context hints are not keywords or delivery rules. The user doesn't have to use the same words as your hint in the conversation, and a hint doesn't guarantee your ad will appear in any particular conversation.

So the advertiser's job isn't to compile a list of search queries, but to give the system extra context that helps it see the real connection between your product and the user's need.

In our article “ChatGPT Ads Context Hints: What They Are and How to Write Them,” we take a closer look at how context hints work, how to write them, and which mistakes to avoid.

Measuring results

Reporting in Ads Manager covers the metrics you'd expect: impressions, clicks, spend, CTR, average CPC, average CPM and conversions — if you've set up conversion tracking.

💡 Read more about how to set up pixel and Conversions API in the «ChatGPT Ads conversion tracking» article.
Learn more about bidding & budgets in this article.

With tracking in place, reports also show cost per conversion (CPA) and post-click conversion rate, plus revenue and ROAS for orders. You can break data down by country, device and platform; post-click and view-through conversions are reported separately.

You can view the data in three formats:

• a table by campaign, ad group and ad;
• charts to see trends over time;
• CSV exports for your own analysis.

(Find more about reporting in the "ChatGPT Ads reporting" article.)

You can also add standard tracking parameters, such as UTM tags, to landing page links. That way, traffic from ChatGPT Ads shows up correctly in the analytics tools you already use.

In this article we answer the most common questions about advertising in ChatGPT.

What's next

ChatGPT Ads is changing almost every week: new markets are opening, and new formats, bidding strategies and analytics tools keep appearing. At Evido, we keep a finger on the pulse — we constantly test the platform in our own and client campaigns and share what we learn on our blog.

Want to launch ChatGPT Ads with Evido — even if self-serve access isn't open in your country yet? Learn more about launching ChatGPT Ads with Evido.