Platforms Insights

"Recommend trail running shoes under $100." More and more people ask ChatGPT questions like this instead of a search engine. In return, they get a selection of products with prices, and below the answer there may be an ad from a store. An online store has two ways into that conversation. The first is ChatGPT shopping results, which are free and cannot be influenced with money. The second is product ads: you upload your catalog, and the system picks a product that fits the conversation and shows it in an ad card. Below, we cover how product ads work, what to prepare, how to launch a campaign step by step, and the most common mistakes.

For the first six months, every ad in ChatGPT looked the same: a card below the answer with a headline, a short description, an image, and a link. By October 2026, there are five formats, and two of them look very little like traditional advertising. Below, we walk through each format, where it is available, and which one fits your goal.

Three hours after launch, your report shows 2,000 impressions, 15 clicks, and $0 in spend. The campaign isn't broken: in ChatGPT Ads, impressions and clicks update almost immediately, while spend appears with a delay of up to 7–8 hours.Reporting here looks familiar, but it has its own rules: delays, attribution windows, and view-through conversions. Below, we cover which metrics are available, how to read them, and how to evaluate your first test step by step.

You set a daily budget of $100, and Tuesday's report shows $180 in spend. That's not an error: in ChatGPT Ads, the daily budget is an average, not a hard cap for each day.This is one of several rules that set ChatGPT Ads bidding and budgets apart from familiar platforms. Below, we cover how the auction works, which strategy to choose, and how to budget your first test.

A ChatGPT ad consists of a title of up to 50 characters, copy of up to 100 characters, an image of at least 640×640 px, and a landing page link. The brand name and logo are pulled from your account settings. Below are all the requirements, the rules for product ads, and a checklist to run through before you submit ads for review.

You can launch a ChatGPT Ads campaign without conversion tracking, but then your reports will show only impressions and clicks. The Conversions objective isn't available at all without it, and conversions are only counted from the moment an event is linked to a campaign.That's why it's best to set up tracking before launch. Below, we cover what OpenAI counts as a conversion, which tools are available, and how to set them up.