Checked 19 October 2026
How to advertise on ChatGPT
How to advertise on ChatGPT in 8 steps, from nothing to a live ad. The order matters: 2 of these steps can only be fixed before you spend money.
01
Check you can buy from where you are
Self-serve accounts are open in 63 countries. The account carries your own legal entity, so it has to be registered in an eligible market. If it is not, this is where the process stops.
Check your country02
Apply for an Ads Manager account
Eligibility gets you to the application, not past it. Approval also depends on your category clearing OpenAI's ad policy. Restricted categories are refused regardless of country.
03
Add billing and install measurement
Set up billing, then install the measurement pixel (tracking code on your site) and the conversions API (the same signal sent from your server) before you spend anything. Launching without them means steering a channel you cannot see. It is a common early mistake, and a costly one.
04
Create a campaign and pick an objective
Views bills per thousand impressions (CPM). Clicks bills per click (CPC). Conversions uses oCPC or oCPM: you set a target cost per sale or sign-up, and the system bids per click or per thousand views to hit it. Set a daily budget of at least $25, then pick a date range or let it run.
How pricing works05
Build an ad group and write context hints
Bids and targeting live here. There are no keywords. You write context hints instead: short descriptions of the conversations you want your ad to appear in. Cover 3 related situations rather than one narrow one, or the group will starve for volume.
Writing context hints06
Write the ad
Brand name, logo, title of 16 to 24 characters, description of 32 to 48, an image and a destination URL. Build 3 title variants now so you have something to test in week 2.
Open the tool07
Submit and wait for review
Review is usually quick when the creative and the landing page follow policy. A rejection is usually fixable: edit the field that failed and resubmit.
08
Judge it on cost per conversion
There are no public click-through benchmarks yet, and the ad sits next to an answer that competes with it, so do not hold it to Google Search numbers. Judge the channel on cost per conversion: what you pay for each sale or sign-up. A month is long enough to know whether the account is producing numbers you can act on.
The 2 mistakes that cost real money
Launching without measurement. The pixel and conversions API are step 3 for a reason. Retrofitting them after 2 weeks of spend means 2 weeks of data you cannot trust.
Porting your Google keyword list. Context hints are not keywords. A list of category terms produces a group that matches the wrong conversations and delivers badly.
What a sensible first month looks like
1 campaign, 2 or 3 ad groups covering distinct situations, 3 title variants each. $25 to $100 a day. Change one thing at a time and give each change 4 or 5 days before judging it.
Bulk
OpenAI supports bulk upload using a campaign schema template, which creates campaigns, ad groups and ads at scale. Useful once you know what works. Not on day one.
Reporting
Ads Manager exports CSV, and the Insights API returns performance at account, campaign, ad group and ad level. There is no manager account, so multiple clients means multiple exports.
Next
If you run more than one account, the API is the next thing to understand.
Keep reading
How to open a ChatGPT Ads account
What to have ready, the 8 steps to approval, and where to log in.
Read the guideChatGPT Ads conversion tracking
Pixel, Conversions API, the 13 events, and which attribution window your numbers use.
Read the guideChatGPT Ads policy: what you can advertise
Banned categories, the US-only finance and health lists, and how review works.
Read the guideHave us do it
We do these 8 steps for a fixed fee and have you live in 14 days. After that it is month to month.