You run ads on ChatGPT through OpenAI Ads Manager at ads.openai.com. You’ll need a verified business, a campaign built in three levels, and context hints in place of keywords.
The setup sits closer to Meta than to Google. The biggest adjustment is that you never pick a search term at all. You describe a situation, and the platform decides where that fits.
Here’s the whole path, from documents to a live ad.
What You Need Before You Start
Gather these first, because the sign-up flow asks for all of them and stalls without them.
- Legal business name: as registered, not your trading name.
- Business tax number: a federal employer number or local equivalent.
- Company details: website, logo, favicon and industry.
- Account settings: country, currency and time zone.
- Payment method: added during billing setup.
The favicon matters more than it looks. It renders beside your brand name on the card, so a blurry one is visible to everyone who sees the ad.
Check your category before anything else
Some categories are restricted, including dating, politics, mental health and anything aimed at under-18s. Financial services, healthcare and legal services sit in a middle band, where approved advertisers are cleared case by case.
If you’re in one of those, settle eligibility before you spend time on creative. The permitted ground is concentrated in lifestyle and household goods, local services, travel, and digital products or education.
The agency rule that catches people out
An agency can’t create the account for you. The advertiser has to open it, and the agency gets added as a user afterwards.
So if you plan to hand this over, you still have to clear verification yourself first. One person can hold access to more than one account, but a single user can’t open multiple accounts of their own.
Setting Up the Account
Four steps, and only one of them is slow.
- Business details: company name, website, logo and industry.
- Account configuration: country, currency and time zone.
- Identity verification: handled by Persona, the vendor fintech firms use.
- Account review: a manual pass by OpenAI’s team.
That last step runs into business days rather than minutes, and it’s separate from verification. Clearing Persona doesn’t mean your account can run campaigns yet.
That catches out anyone expecting the instant approval other ad platforms give. Start the process before you need it, because a week of review sitting between you and your first impression is what breaks a launch date.
How a Campaign Is Structured
Three levels, and knowing what lives where saves a great deal of hunting.
Campaign
The campaign holds your objective, which is Reach, Clicks or Conversions. It also holds geographic targeting, custom audiences, budget, and your start and end dates.
Geography runs to country level everywhere ads are available. In the United States you can go further, down to state, metro area and postal code.
Ad group
The ad group holds your maximum bid, a default destination link, and your context hints. Targeting happens here, so most of your thinking belongs at this level.
Ad
The ad holds the destination link, headline, description and image. It’s a small unit with little room to manoeuvre.
Writing Context Hints
There are no keywords, no demographics and no in-market audiences. Context hints are the whole targeting layer, and they sit in a freeform text field at ad group level.
A hint describes the conversations where your product belongs. The platform’s own framing is that hints guide matching rather than acting as exact-match rules, so you’re steering delivery rather than fencing it.
Short and concrete beat conversational
One advertiser writing in Search Engine Land tested three styles against each other: a keyword-like list, a set of conversational questions, and a long narrative describing the customer.
In that test the keyword-like list won on impressions, click-through rate and average cost per click.
That’s a single advertiser’s split rather than a rule, and it points the opposite way from the usual instruction to write hints as natural questions. Worth running both against each other in your own account rather than assuming either.
Your landing page is part of the targeting
Matching reads your landing page as well as your hints, your headline and your description. A page that’s vague about what you sell weakens delivery however good the hints are.
Building the Creative
The fields are larger than the space, which is the trap.
- Headline: the field takes 50 characters, but display truncates.
- Description: the field takes 100, and truncates for the same reason.
- Image: a square file, at least 256 by 256 pixels.
Guidance lands near 16 characters of headline and 32 of description, which is roughly two words and a short phrase. Anything past that risks being cut mid-word.
Logos are discouraged as the main subject of the image, so the safest default is unavailable. Show the product or the outcome instead.
Setting Budget and Bids
Budgets are daily or total, set at campaign level, with a $25 daily minimum.
A daily budget is an average, not a cap
Since late July 2026 the daily budget field has been a seven-day average rather than a hard per-day limit. OpenAI announced the change on 24 July and switched it the following week, one of many entries in our dated record of every change.
A single day can run above the number you typed, as long as the week reconciles. Reported single-day headroom runs to twice the daily figure, though OpenAI publishes no maximum.
Plan against the week rather than the day. Anyone checking one day’s spend against the box they filled in will think something has broken.
Bidding depends on your objective. Reach buys impressions, Clicks is a manual cost per click, and Conversions asks for a bid cap and optimises toward a conversion event.
Setting a maximum cost per click below $3 trips a warning that your ads may not deliver. That warning is fixed rather than calculated from your account, so read it as a floor the interface believes in rather than a verdict on your campaign.
We’ve set out the full pricing picture, including what a first test should cost, in how much ChatGPT ads cost.
Conversions isn’t a starting objective
Conversion campaigns need conversion data already flowing through the pixel or the conversions API. There’s nothing to optimise toward on day one, so it’s where a working campaign goes next.
Wire Up Tracking Before You Launch
Install the OpenAI pixel first. It works the way Google’s and Meta’s do: a base code on the site, custom events for the actions you care about, and dynamic values where revenue matters.
It also does one thing those don’t. Every ad click lands carrying a reference called oppref on the destination link.
The pixel captures that value and stores it in a first-party cookie, so later page views on the same visit can reuse it.
The conversions API won’t capture it for you. If you send events server-side, you have to read oppref yourself and pass it along, or click matching breaks.
Add tracking parameters to every destination link as well. Platform reporting covers impressions, clicks, spend, click-through rate, average costs and conversions, but you’ll want that traffic visible in your own analytics too.
There’s a hard limit to plan around: no conversation data reaches advertisers. You won’t see which questions triggered your ad, so there’s no query report to mine and no search terms to add. You iterate on hints instead.
Getting Through Review
OpenAI reviews the advertiser, the creative, the image, the landing page and the placement context.
Compliant ads typically clear within a few hours. Restricted categories and complex campaigns can take a day or two.
Build that into a launch date rather than discovering it on the morning you wanted to go live.
The landing page being part of review is worth repeating. A page that’s thin or mismatched can hold up an otherwise fine ad.
What to Expect From the First Campaign
Set expectations against the channel rather than against paid search, and be ready for engagement to look worse than you’re used to.
The same Search Engine Land advertiser routed roughly 1,500 users to one site from both channels. Google Ads visitors averaged 41 seconds of engagement and converted at 3.71%. ChatGPT Ads visitors averaged 17 seconds and converted at 0.21%.
That’s one advertiser, one site, one period, so don’t plan a budget around it. It’s still the most honest published comparison available, and the direction it points deserves attention before you move spend across.
The fair reading isn’t that the channel fails. It reaches people who weren’t searching at all, at a stage further from buying.
So judge it on what it adds, rather than on parity with search.
Deciding Whether to Run It Yourself
You should keep this in-house when your category is clearly permitted, your landing pages are already sharp, and somebody owns the account week to week.
It makes less sense when eligibility is uncertain, or when hints need rewriting against results nobody has time to read. The same applies when the account has to sit alongside search and social budgets.
Our OpenAI ads agency page covers what that engagement includes.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where do I buy ChatGPT ads
You buy them through OpenAI Ads Manager at ads.openai.com. You create an account, verify your business through Persona, wait for a manual account review, then build campaigns yourself.
Can my agency set up the ChatGPT ads account for me
No. The advertiser has to create the account, and an agency can then be added as a user. You’ll need to clear verification yourself before handing over access.
How long does approval take
Account review runs into business days and is separate from identity verification. Individual ads usually clear within a few hours, though restricted categories can take a day or two.
What is the minimum budget for ChatGPT ads
There’s no account minimum, but a campaign needs a daily budget of at least $25. Setting a maximum cost per click below $3 also triggers a delivery warning.
How do I target ChatGPT ads without keywords
You write context hints, a freeform description of the conversations where your product fits, at ad group level. Geography and custom audiences are the only other levers.
Can I see which conversations triggered my ads
No. Conversation data isn’t shared with advertisers, so there’s no query report. You optimise by rewriting hints and watching aggregate performance.
Start the Verification Now
The slow part is account review, and it’s the one step you can begin before anything else is ready.
Get verification moving, then spend the waiting time sharpening the landing page. That page is a targeting input here, so it’s the work that pays twice.