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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.
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't launch a campaign until your account is fully set up. The process takes five steps.
1) Create your account. Ads Manager is tied to an OpenAI account — ideally use your work email. If you don't have one yet, you can create it during sign-up.
2) Complete onboarding and review. Enter your business details (name, website, logo, industry) and account details (country, currency, time zone), then answer a short set of verification questions. Your application then enters a review queue, where OpenAI also checks whether the product you advertise complies with its ad policies. You'll get an email once access is approved.
3) Complete your account information. Once you have access, set your account name and logo exactly as you want them to appear in the ad unit. This matters: ads won't start serving until this step is done.
4) Set up billing. Add a billing profile and a payment method.
5) Invite your team. You can add colleagues in the account settings.
Key things to know:
- only one owner can create an advertiser account. If you manage several brands, you'll need several accounts;
- the account's country, currency and time zone can't be changed after creation — double-check them before you sign up;
- you can sign up self-serve only if your legal entity is based in one of the 63 available countries. (If your country isn't on the list, you can launch through an OpenAI partner — for example, Evido.)
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.
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.
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.
The most common mistake is describing only the product instead of the user's situation.
When we write context hints at Evido, we describe four things:
- Who the person is — their role or situation.
- The situation they're in — what triggered it, where the problem is, what they want to achieve.
- The choice they're trying to make — what they want to understand, compare or choose.
- The signals they might give — the questions and phrasing they would actually type into ChatGPT.
Weak context hint:
"Project management software with Gantt charts, time tracking and team dashboards."
It describes the product but tells the system almost nothing about which conversations to look for.
Stronger context hint:
"People planning a product launch or coordinating a team across time zones, struggling with chaos in spreadsheets and chats, and looking for a clearer way to see who owns what and by when. They often ask how to keep a project on schedule or how to put together a launch checklist."
Same product. But this one describes the conversation in which it becomes relevant.
Context hint template
Our [product] helps [audience] who are in [description of situation]. Show the ad in conversations where the user is [researching / comparing / choosing] [topic], for example when they ask: "[example question]" or "[example question]".
Two more rules matter.
First: one type of intent, one ad group. Do not mix a user who is only exploring the problem with a user who is already ready to choose a solution. It is better to separate them into different ad groups and write a more precise hint for each one.
Second: write in the user's language, not the brand's language. Do not try to force in positioning, internal terminology, or polished marketing phrases. Describe how a real person would formulate the task.
Finally, treat context hints as a draft. Launch the campaign, look at the reporting, and refine the wording. The first version is rarely the strongest one.
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.
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.
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.
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