By
Austin Coker
Last updated: October 2026
Your buyers are already asking ChatGPT which product to pick. Since May 2026, you can pay to appear right under that answer without a six-figure commitment. OpenAI Ads Manager is the self-serve platform at ads.openai.com where companies build, fund and measure ChatGPT ad campaigns, starting at $25 a day.
This guide is a hands-on walkthrough. You’ll get access, build a campaign step by step, see what it costs, check what the policy allows, and avoid the setup mistakes that stop new campaigns from serving. For the broader strategy on where ChatGPT ads fit next to Google and Meta, read our ChatGPT ads overview.
OpenAI Ads Manager is the beta self-serve tool OpenAI launched on May 5, 2026 for running ChatGPT ads, built for companies of all sizes. Before that, ChatGPT ads ran as a pilot that started February 9, 2026 with large managed advertisers. The pilot had pricing of roughly $60 CPM and commitments around $200K, which dropped to $50K in April 2026.
The self-serve launch added CPC buying alongside CPM, plus a Conversions API and pixel. Later updates added more:
OpenAI’s stated principle for the product: “ChatGPT’s answers stay independent, conversations stay private, and users remain in control of their experience.”
You get access by registering at ads.openai.com, adding a payment method and completing advertiser verification. OpenAI is opening access gradually, so some accounts get in faster than others.
Two access details catch people off guard. First, new accounts may be limited to their home country until identity verification is approved and the account reaches a spend threshold. Second, verification and billing both have to be complete before anything serves, even if your ads are approved. Start verification on day one, before you write a single ad.
Every campaign in OpenAI Ads Manager follows a three-level structure: campaign, then ad group, then ad, as OpenAI’s campaign guide explains. The campaign holds budget and targeting, ad groups hold bids and context hints, and ads hold the creative.
Your objective decides how you pay, and you can’t change it after the campaign is created. Give the campaign a title, then pick one of these:
If your conversion tracking isn’t live yet, Clicks is the cleaner starting objective for a first test.
You can run a campaign-total budget or a daily budget. The minimum daily budget is $25 in USD (€15, £15 or ¥2,500).
Daily budgets behave differently than most PPC managers expect, according to OpenAI’s daily budget documentation. A daily budget is treated as a seven-day average:
Switching a campaign from daily to campaign-total can’t be undone, so decide before launch. Start and end dates may only show up when you edit the campaign after creating it, so go back in and confirm them.
To target only the US, you must explicitly include the United States. Excluding other countries doesn’t restrict delivery.
Platform targeting is optional and covers Android app and web, desktop web, and iOS app and web. Custom audiences are also optional and need at least 25,000 matched users. OpenAI advises against using custom audiences for the EEA and Switzerland.
Each ad group should cover one product, service or customer need, per OpenAI’s ad group guidance. You set a max CPM or max CPC at the ad group level, and OpenAI recommends a $3 to $5 starting CPC. The interface shows bid-strength guidance so you can see whether your bid is competitive.
Context hints are where you describe the conversation your ad belongs in. The targeting section below covers how they work.
A ChatGPT ad includes your advertiser name, favicon, title, description, image and landing page. It appears below ChatGPT’s response, labeled as sponsored. OpenAI’s creative guidance is practical:
UTM parameters are allowed, and you can run multiple ad variations in one ad group. The “Add new ad” option can prefill a draft from your site’s metadata. That’s a fast starting point, but you should still rewrite it.
Install the OpenAI pixel and connect the Conversions API before launch if you plan to optimize for conversions or judge results on revenue. Reporting is aggregated, and advertisers never receive conversations or users’ personal details.
Every campaign goes through three checks: advertiser verification, creative and landing page review, and placement checks. Review is mostly automated with human oversight. Restricted categories may get a manual review, and OpenAI doesn’t publish a review time. Enforcement can mean rejection, limited delivery, required edits or account suspension.
If your campaign isn’t serving, check these in order:
We’ll set up the account, tracking and context hints alongside your Google and Meta campaigns.
ChatGPT ads are matched to conversations through context hints. These are descriptive phrases about the situation your customer is in, not exact-match keywords. OpenAI’s own example compares “running shoes” with “cushioned everyday running shoes for beginners training for their first 5K.” The second tells the system who the buyer is and what they’re trying to do, which is closer to how people actually talk to ChatGPT.
Ads compete in a relevance-weighted second-price auction. A well-matched ad can win placements that a higher bid with weaker relevance would lose. Context hints don’t guarantee delivery. Since October 2026, qualifying advertisers can also add negative phrases to keep ads away from conversations that don’t fit.
Audience reach has hard limits, as OpenAI’s ads basics article explains. Ads show to Free and Go users. Plus, Pro and Business users don’t see ads, and neither do accounts belonging to users under 18. Ads are also kept away from sensitive topics such as mental or personal health, politics and self-harm.
ChatGPT ads cost whatever your bids and budget allow. There’s a $25 minimum daily budget and a recommended $3 to $5 starting CPC for click campaigns.
Here’s the budget math for a first test:
The minimum budget gets you live, but it usually won’t give you a statistically useful answer in a month. Plan for a few hundred clicks over four to six weeks before deciding whether ChatGPT ads work for your offer.
Reporting covers impressions, clicks, spend, CTR, average CPC, average CPM and conversions. Impressions, clicks and CTR refresh about every 15 minutes, while spend can lag seven to eight hours.
The ChatGPT ads minimum spend in self-serve OpenAI Ads Manager is a $25 daily budget for USD billing (€15, £15 or ¥2,500 in other currencies). That’s a big change from the pilot, which required commitments of around $200K at launch in February 2026 and $50K after April 2026.
Because a daily budget is a seven-day average, a $25 daily budget can spend up to $50 on a single day and up to $175 across a week.
These ChatGPT ads examples are illustrative. We wrote them to show how context hints, titles and descriptions work together, and they aren’t real campaigns.
Each example links to a page that matches the context hint, and each description adds detail the title doesn’t cover.
The ChatGPT ads policy, updated September 10, 2026, sorts advertisers into allowed, restricted, conditional and prohibited categories. Your ad, image and landing page all have to comply.
Creative must be truthful and clearly distinguishable from the ChatGPT interface. Don’t design ads that mimic ChatGPT’s own answers.
Most failed first campaigns come from a handful of setup errors, and nearly all of them are avoidable before launch.
The team running your ChatGPT ads should also be working on your organic ChatGPT visibility, because paid placements only cover part of the opportunity. Ads can’t reach Plus, Pro or Business users, and organic citations inside ChatGPT’s answer sit above the ad slot. If a competitor is cited in the answer and you’re only in the sponsored unit below it, they get seen first.
That’s why we run ChatGPT ads and GEO together. 95 Projects is the best ChatGPT ads agency for brands that want paid ChatGPT placements and organic ChatGPT citations managed as one program, with results measured in revenue. We were early to GEO and were earning client citations in ChatGPT before ads existed.
Our ChatGPT ads and PPC management covers OpenAI Ads Manager setup, context hint strategy, conversion tracking and budget pacing, alongside your Google and Meta campaigns. Our GEO program works on getting your brand cited in ChatGPT’s answers for the same buying conversations. Engagements start at $5,000 per month.
We’ll show you which conversations matter in your category and what a first test should look like.
Austin Coker is the CEO and founder of 95 Projects. He has worked in SEO since 2020, when he built and sold an ecommerce brand that grew mainly through search. He founded 95 Projects in 2022 to help SaaS, ecommerce, and B2B service companies show up wherever their buyers search, from Google to ChatGPT and AI Overviews.
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OpenAI Ads Manager is OpenAI’s self-serve platform at ads.openai.com for creating, funding and measuring ChatGPT ads. It launched in beta on May 5, 2026 for companies of all sizes, with access rolling out gradually.
Register at ads.openai.com, add a payment method and complete advertiser verification. Then build a campaign with an objective and budget, add ad groups with bids and context hints, and create your ads. Install the pixel or Conversions API and submit for review.
ChatGPT ads cost what your bids and budget set, with a $25 minimum daily budget. OpenAI recommends a $3 to $5 starting CPC for click campaigns. A realistic first test of 300 clicks at a $4 CPC comes to about $1,200.
The minimum is a $25 daily budget for USD billing (€15, £15 or ¥2,500 in other currencies). Because daily budgets are averaged over seven days, actual spend can reach up to twice that on a single day.
Free and Go users see ChatGPT ads. Plus, Pro and Business users don’t, and neither do accounts belonging to users under 18.
No. Reporting is aggregated, and advertisers never receive users’ conversations or personal details.
Some financial, health and licensed legal services can advertise in the US on a case-by-case basis, and licensure may be required. These categories are generally prohibited outside the US. Credit repair, debt settlement and bullion aren’t allowed.
