OpenAI Ads Agency For Campaigns Inside ChatGPT
An OpenAI ads agency plans, launches and runs your paid campaigns inside OpenAI Ads Manager. That’s the platform placing sponsored cards under ChatGPT answers. We run that account for you, and we earn the citation above the card too.
What An OpenAI Ads Agency Does
An OpenAI ads agency does three jobs, and the first one surprises most marketing teams.
Access comes first, because ChatGPT Ads has no agency manager account. You create and verify the advertiser account, then invite us in.
Structure and measurement follow. Campaigns get built around the prompts your buyers type, and tracking has to fire before the first impression.
Account Access Done Right
You own the advertiser account and the data. We work inside it as a user on your account, a role you can revoke whenever you want.
Context Hints, Not Keywords
Context hints are plain-language descriptions of the conversations you want to sit beside. There’s no keyword list and no match type, so the brief looks nothing like a Google Ads plan.
Two Surfaces, One Team
The card sits below the answer and the citation sits inside it. Those are separate wins, and one prompt map earns both.
How A Sponsored Card Reaches A Buyer
A ChatGPT ad is one sponsored card rendered below the assistant’s answer, labelled and visually separated from it.
The card carries an advertiser name, a favicon, a title, body copy, an image and a landing URL.
Titles run to 50 characters and body copy to 100, but roughly 16 and 32 survive before truncation. That gap is where most display copy fails.
What Fits Inside A Sponsored Card
A sponsored card gives you six elements and almost no room.
Self-serve carries no video, no carousel and no interactive format today.
Product feed ads with prices and star ratings arrived on 24 July 2026, so a retail catalogue has a second route in.
| Card element | Specification | What we write to |
|---|---|---|
| Advertiser name | Your business name, shown on the card | The name buyers recognise, not the legal entity |
| Favicon | Your logo, required at account setup | A mark that still reads at 16 pixels |
| Title | Up to 50 characters | About 16, because that is what survives truncation |
| Body copy | Up to 100 characters | About 32, for the same reason |
| Image | PNG or JPG, square, at least 256 by 256 | One subject, legible at card size |
| Landing URL | Tagged, and open to OAI-AdsBot | A page that answers the prompt it sat under |
How We Run Your ChatGPT Ad Account
Every ChatGPT account we run follows the same six steps, and each one has a fixed output you sign off on.
Prompt And Intent Mapping
Prompt mapping lists what your buyers type before they pick a vendor. That list drives the hints, the creative and the landing pages.
Account Access And Verification
You create the advertiser account and complete verification in your own name. You then invite our team under the role you choose.
Campaign And Bid Structure
Campaign structure splits by objective before anything goes live. Reach, Clicks and Conversions each need their own campaign, because the objective locks at creation.
Creative Built For The Card
Creative covers the advertiser name, favicon, title, body copy, image and landing URL. We write to the truncation point, not to the character cap.
Tracking Before Spend
The OAIQ pixel goes on before the first impression, never after it. We wire the Conversions API and carry the oppref click reference through every redirect.
Reporting And Optimization
Reporting maps spend and conversions back to the prompt clusters that produced them. Bids, hints and creative get revised on that evidence, not on a dashboard screenshot. Paid share sits alongside the organic picture in advertising share of voice.
How Context Hints Replace Keywords
Context hints are plain-text descriptions of the conversations you want your card to sit beside.
They live at ad group level, and they aren’t exact-match keywords, so delivery is never guaranteed.
We write 5 to 15 hints per ad group as variants of one audience, intent and topic combination.
No Match Types To Fence With
You can’t fence off a term the way you would in Google Ads. Presence in the conversation is the defence, so brand coverage has to be bought rather than blocked.
Geo Down To A ZIP Code
Country targeting works worldwide, and the United States adds state, DMA and ZIP. Reporting still rolls up to country level.
Custom Audiences From Your Own Data
You can upload email or phone lists, raw or SHA-256 hashed, up to 5,000,000 identifiers. A list needs 25,000 matched users before it’s usable.
Tracking Goes Live Before The First Impression
A conversational surface hides its own performance until you instrument it.
Two layers do the work. The OAIQ pixel records browser events, and the Conversions API carries server-side and offline ones.
Attributed conversions surface 24 to 48 hours later, so this channel reads on a weekly rhythm rather than a daily one.
| Measurement piece | What it does | What breaks without it |
|---|---|---|
| OAIQ pixel | Records on-site events and stores the click reference in a first-party __oppref cookie for 30 days | Your first two weeks of spend teach you nothing |
| oppref click reference | Lands on your landing URL and identifies the click that produced a conversion | Revenue never reconciles back to a campaign |
| Conversions API | Posts server-side and offline events to bzr.openai.com in batches of up to 1,000 | CRM and phone conversions stay invisible |
| Event id deduplication | Matches a pixel event to its server twin on pixel ID, event name and event id | The same conversion gets counted twice |
| OAI-AdsBot in robots.txt | Lets OpenAI crawl the landing page it is about to send traffic to | Your ads do not serve at all |
| View-through window | Fixed at one day, reported separately, excluded from billing and bidding | View-through credit gets read as click credit |
The Conversions API accepts 13 standard event types, from page viewed through to order created, and one bad event fails the whole batch. Timestamps have to land inside the last 7 days.
Who Never Sees Your Sponsored Card
Your sponsored card reaches ChatGPT users on the Free and Go tiers only.
OpenAI shows no ads to Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise or Edu accounts, or to anyone it identifies as under 18.
That’s a real ceiling on paid reach, and it’s the reason the earned citation still matters. Measuring the earned half needs its own method, which we set out in tracking brand mentions in AI search.
| ChatGPT plan | Sees your sponsored card | Sees an earned citation |
|---|---|---|
| Free | Yes, unless the user switches ads off | Yes |
| Go | Yes | Yes |
| Plus | No | Yes |
| Pro | No | Yes |
| Business | No | Yes |
| Enterprise and Edu | No | Yes |
The Paid Card And The Earned Citation Do Different Jobs
The sponsored card buys the slot under the answer. It doesn’t put your brand inside the answer, and those are two different jobs.
| Factor | Sponsored card | Earned citation |
|---|---|---|
| Where it sits | Below the answer, labelled Sponsored | Inside the answer, as a named source |
| What it costs | CPM, CPC or oCPC, billed per campaign | Editorial and authority work, no media spend |
| Who sees it | Free and Go tiers only | Every plan, Enterprise included |
| How fast | Impressions within days of approval | Weeks to months, depending on the topic |
| When you stop | Delivery ends the same day | Coverage holds until the model reweights |
| What it needs | Budget, creative and context hints | Cited sources and topical authority |
Paid coverage is the fastest way in. Earned coverage is what still shows up on a Pro account with ads switched off. We run both, which is why the AI Brand Mentions flagship programme sits beside this service rather than under a different vendor.
Not Sure Which Half You Need?
Tell us your category and your markets. We’ll show you the prompts that matter, what the card costs, and where you already get cited.
Where ChatGPT Ads Fit, And Where They Don’t
You can only advertise inside ChatGPT if your category sits on OpenAI’s permitted list.
ChatGPT Ads runs a permitted list rather than a banned one, so fit matters more here than it does on other platforms.
A rejected account costs you a month, which is why we check your category during scoping rather than at submission.
Permitted At Launch
Permitted categories are consumer verticals: lifestyle and household goods, local services, travel and experiences, and digital products or education.
Reviewed Case By Case
Financial services and healthcare go to manual review, in the United States only. Expect to show proof of licensure.
Disallowed At Launch
Dating and sexual content, alcohol, tobacco, gambling and political content are out. So are health and financial services outside the United States.
| If this is your situation | Then this is the move |
|---|---|
| You sell household goods, travel or local services | You’re in the permitted set. Start here. |
| You sell digital products or education | Permitted at launch. Check the creative against ad policy. |
| You are a US financial or healthcare advertiser | Case-by-case review. Expect to show proof of licensure. |
| You sell legal services | Excluded. Legal education can qualify where no service is offered. |
| Your buyers sit on Plus, Pro or Business | They never see ads. Work the citation instead. |
| Your category is not on the permitted list | Assume disallowed at launch, and plan earned coverage. |
| You sell outside the nine self-serve markets | Partner access covers 31 European countries today. |
Not sure which row you’re in? That’s the first thing we work out on the call. It’s also the fastest way to learn whether the LLM Visibility Programme is the better spend.
What The Numbers Have To Clear
The numbers have to clear a bar you set before launch, which is a different question from what the platform charges.
| Step | What it assumes | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly media budget | What you pay OpenAI, separate from any fee | $5,000 |
| At a $4 CPC | Inside the $3 to $5 range OpenAI suggests | 1,250 clicks |
| At a 3% landing page conversion rate | Your rate, not a platform benchmark | 37 leads |
| At a 20% lead to opportunity rate | Your rate, from your own CRM | 7 opportunities |
| Your close rate and deal size | The two inputs only you can supply | Your call |
Only the bid range in that ladder comes from OpenAI. Every other rate is yours to supply from your own data. It is arithmetic, not a forecast, and we run it with your real figures before anyone commits budget.
What Other Advertisers Have Published
Two independent tests give you a range to plan against. Both are other people’s numbers rather than ours.
| Published test | Impressions | Clicks | CTR |
|---|---|---|---|
| Choice OMG, June 2026 | 8,940 | 58 | 0.65% |
| SE Ranking, 48 ads | 97,000 plus | 1,263 | 1.30% |
Your First 90 Days
Your first 90 days split into three phases with fixed outputs. The clock on the last two starts when OpenAI approves your account, not when you sign.
Before Day One: Account Approval
Account approval is OpenAI’s call, and it runs in a rolling queue no agency can expedite. We build the prompt map, the creative and the landing pages while it runs.
Days 1 To 30: Launch And Instrument
Launch starts the day your account clears, with tracking already live. Reach and Clicks campaigns go up by objective, and a rejected ad gets edited and resubmitted.
Days 31 To 90: Read, Then Scale
Read on conversion volume rather than clicks, which is why this phase runs 60 days. Losing hints get cut, winning clusters widen, and a Conversions campaign gets built rather than switched.
What Your Investment Covers
Your investment splits into three parts, and only one of them is our fee.
Media Budget, Paid To OpenAI
Media budget is what you pay OpenAI, and the minimum moves with your campaign objective and billing currency. Since late July 2026 a daily budget is a seven day average, not a hard daily cap. A single day can run hot and the week still holds.
Setup Work, One Time
Setup covers access, verification, tracking and the first creative set. Nothing queues behind anything else, so your first impressions follow account approval.
Monthly Fee, Scoped On A Call
We publish prices on every other programme. This one is scoped instead, because the fee moves with market count, tracking maturity and how much creative you already own, and a flat number would be fiction. You get it before you commit.
Included In Every Engagement
Every engagement includes the same seven things, whatever the budget.
- Prompt and intent map for your category
- Campaign, ad group and bid structure by objective
- Card creative written to the truncation point
- OAIQ pixel and Conversions API setup
- Weekly delivery notes and monthly written analysis
- Category eligibility check before we build
- Account, pixel and data in your name
Running It In-House Or With Us
In-house teams can run this channel, and some should.
The difference is who carries the tracking work, and how fast you get a signal you can read.
Both of those decide whether your first 90 days produce evidence, or only spend.
| Factor | In-house | With us |
|---|---|---|
| Account setup | Teams stall on business verification and role permissions | We walk your team through verification, then work under a revocable role |
| Targeting brief | Keyword habits carry over and the hints stay too broad | Hints written from mapped buying prompts, then tightened on delivery data |
| Creative | Display copy gets reused and truncates inside the card | Card copy written to the 16 and 32 character truncation points |
| Tracking | Pixel work slips until after launch, so early spend teaches nothing | Pixel, Conversions API and the oppref reference live before first serve |
| Category check | Restricted categories surface at rejection, after weeks of work | Policy check happens during scoping, before anyone builds a campaign |
| Organic overlap | Paid and organic run as separate projects with separate research | One prompt map drives the sponsored card and the earned citation |
ChatGPT Ads opened to everyone in 2026, so no agency has a long record on it, including us. What we can show you is the earned half: our published case studies and the 255-publication citation network behind them.
Want The Prompt Map Before You Commit?
We will map the buying prompts in your category and show you which ones you already get cited in, before any budget moves.
Is This Right For Your Business?
Two questions decide it. What a qualified opportunity is worth to you, and whether your tracking can see one when it arrives.
A Strong Fit
You sell in a permitted category, inside one of the nine self-serve markets, and you know your own lead to opportunity rate.
Also A Strong Fit
You already earn citations and want the card below the answer as well, so one prompt map pays for two surfaces.
Start With The Citation
Your buyers sit on Plus, Pro or Business plans, so a card never renders for them. The earned half reaches them anyway.
Check Your Category First
Your category needs case-by-case review, or it sits outside the permitted list at launch. A rejected account costs you a month.
Platform details on this page were verified on 28 August 2026 against OpenAI’s published documentation and ad policies. ChatGPT Ads is still in beta and its specifics move, so we re-check them before every engagement rather than quoting a number that has since changed.
Frequently Asked Questions
Straight answers on access, cost, targeting and who sees these ads.
Comparing this with the earned side? See the five brand mention programmes.
What does an OpenAI ads agency do?
An OpenAI ads agency runs your paid campaigns inside OpenAI Ads Manager, the platform that places sponsored cards under ChatGPT answers. That covers prompt research, context hints, creative, bidding, tracking and reporting.
We also work the organic citation above your card, because both surfaces come out of the same prompt research.
How much do ChatGPT ads cost?
There is no single published floor, because the minimum moves with your campaign objective and billing currency. What OpenAI does publish is bid guidance: opening CPC bids of $3 to $5, and a default CPM max bid of $60.
Budget pacing changed in late July 2026. A daily budget is now an average across seven days rather than a hard cap, so the week is capped at seven times the figure you set. Our management fee gets scoped on a call, because it moves with market count and how much tracking you already have.
Who sees ads inside ChatGPT?
Ads inside ChatGPT reach people on the Free and Go tiers only. OpenAI shows no ads to Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise or Edu accounts, or to anyone it identifies as under 18.
Free users can switch ads off as well. That ceiling is worth planning around if your buyers sit inside a large enterprise.
Can you create the ad account for me?
No, and no agency can create that account for you. OpenAI asks that one account owner at your business creates the advertiser account at ads.openai.com, with your legal business name, your Tax ID and your payment method.
There’s no agency manager account, so you set it up and then invite our team as a user.
How is ChatGPT ads targeting different from Google Ads?
ChatGPT ads targeting has no keyword list and no match type. You write context hints in plain language at ad group level, describing the conversations your card should sit beside.
The system pairs those hints with live intent. Geo targeting and custom audience matching still work the way you’d expect.
Which countries can run ChatGPT ads?
Nine countries have self-serve access to Ads Manager: the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Korea, Brazil and Mexico.
ChatGPT Ads also opened across 31 European countries from 24 August 2026, through OpenAI’s ads team, agency partners or technology partners. We check your markets before scoping.
What are the three campaign objectives?
The three objectives are Reach, Clicks and Conversions. Reach bills on CPM, Clicks bills on CPC, and Conversions runs on oCPC, which means optimized cost per click.
You set a Bid Cap per ad group and get charged per valid click rather than per conversion. A Conversions campaign takes one standard event, locked at creation.
What is oppref and why does it matter?
The oppref value is OpenAI’s click reference. It lands on your landing page URL, identifies the click that produced a conversion, and gets stored in a first-party __oppref cookie for 30 days.
It has to survive every redirect. The Conversions API won’t capture it for you, so you pass it yourself on server events.
Do I need to change robots.txt before running ads?
You need to allow OAI-AdsBot in robots.txt before your ads can serve. OpenAI crawls the landing page you submit to check it against ad policy, and a disallow stops that crawl immediately. Which agents already reach your pages, and what each one is for, is set out in reading your own server logs.
OAI-SearchBot is the separate organic crawler, and AdsBot data isn’t used to train OpenAI’s models.
Do ChatGPT ads change the answers people get?
No, ChatGPT answers stay separate from paid placement. OpenAI keeps sponsored cards labelled and visually apart from the answer above them, and advertisers don’t receive user conversations.
That separation is exactly why the earned citation matters as much as the card does.
Which businesses can’t advertise on ChatGPT?
Businesses outside the permitted categories can’t advertise yet, and that’s most of them at launch. OpenAI currently allows consumer verticals such as lifestyle and household goods, local services, travel and experiences, and digital products or education.
Financial services and healthcare get case-by-case approval in the United States only. Legal services ads are excluded, though legal education can qualify where no service is offered. Dating, alcohol, tobacco, gambling and political content stay out.
What is the difference between ChatGPT ads and GEO?
The difference is which half of the ChatGPT result you’re buying. Ads buy the sponsored card below the answer. Generative engine optimization, or GEO, works on the answer itself, so your brand gets named and cited inside it. The organic half of that work is covered in AI search optimization.
Ads deliver in days and stop when you stop paying, while the organic half takes longer and persists.
How quickly can a campaign go live?
A campaign goes live once your account clears verification and your ads clear review. OpenAI reviews advertiser accounts in a rolling queue and doesn’t expedite them, so that step sets the date rather than we do.
We run prompt research, hint drafting and pixel work in parallel so nothing waits on anything else.
What CTR should I expect?
Nobody has enough history on this channel to promise you a CTR, and we won’t. Two published tests give you a range to plan against.
Choice OMG reported 0.65% across 8,940 impressions in June 2026. SE Ranking reported 1.30% across 97,000 impressions and 48 ads. Both are other people’s numbers, and your category will move them.
Do I keep ownership of the account and the data?
You keep the advertiser account, the pixel and the conversion data, in your own name. We work as a user on your account, under a role you set and can revoke at any point.
If the engagement ends, nothing has to be migrated, because none of it was ever ours.
Can a competitor bid on conversations about my brand?
A competitor can write context hints describing conversations where your name comes up. You can’t block them the way you’d use a negative keyword, because context hints aren’t exact match.
There’s no term to fence off. Presence is the defence, which is one reason the earned citation sits alongside the paid card.
Run Ads Where Your Buyers Are Already Asking
Buyers are asking ChatGPT which vendor to pick, right now. We’ll show you the prompts that matter, what the card costs, and where you already get cited.
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