Checked 8 September 2026
What ChatGPT ads cost
Campaign budgets start at $25 a day on self-serve. That is lower than most people expect, and it is the single most misreported number about this platform.
$25
Minimum daily budget
Campaign level, self-serve accounts.
0.5-1.2%
Click-through rate
Below Google Search. The clicks are worth more.
+54%
Conversion lift
Adobe, on AI-referred retail traffic.
Pricing models
You choose how
you are billed
Set at campaign level, tied to the objective.
| Model | You pay for | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| CPM | Per 1,000 impressions | Brand awareness, launches, category education |
| CPC | Per click | Traffic to a landing page or product |
| oCPC | Optimised per click, against a target action | Purchases, leads, sign-ups |
About that $50,000 figure
You will find sources saying the minimum to advertise on ChatGPT is $50,000. You will find others saying $25 a day. Both numbers are real and they describe different things.
ChatGPT Ads started in January 2026 as a managed sales product, sold by OpenAI’s ads team and the big agency groups, with a spend commitment attached. The reported $50,000 minimum belongs to that world.
Self-serve Ads Manager, which opened in May and expanded to 52 countries in August, is the one with the $25 daily campaign floor. That is the door most businesses walk through.
If someone quotes you a 5 figure minimum, ask which product they mean.
What a real test costs
At the $25 floor, a 30-day test is $750 in media. At a 1% CTR and a typical answer-surface CPM, most advertisers are looking at a few hundred clicks for that. Enough to see whether the traffic converts, not enough to optimise on.
Budget for $1,500 to $3,000 across a month if you want a result you can act on rather than a signal you have to squint at.
Why the CTR looks low
0.5% to 1.2% is below Google Search. That is expected. An ad inside an answer competes with the answer itself.
The offset is quality. Over 90% of ChatGPT-sourced visitors are new, the highest new-user share of any channel, and Adobe found AI-referred retail traffic converts around 54% better than ordinary sources.
Judge it on cost per conversion
Comparing CTR against Google will make this channel look bad. Comparing cost per acquisition is the only fair test.
Next
Cost is only half of it. The other half is that you cannot buy keywords.
Keep this page useful
OpenAI changes this platform most weeks. We re-check these pages and write down what actually moved, once a month.