Dialogue AdsDialogue Ads

Checked 8 September 2026

Setting up your first campaign

8 steps from nothing to a live ad. The order matters: 2 of these are only fixable before you spend money.

  1. 01

    Check you can buy from where you are

    Self-serve accounts are open in 52 countries. The account carries your own legal entity, and no agency can lend you its eligibility. If your business is not registered in an eligible market, this is where the process stops.

    Check your country

  2. 02

    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.

  3. 03

    Add billing and install measurement

    Set up billing, then install the measurement pixel and the conversions API before you spend anything. Launching without them means optimising a channel you cannot see, which is the most common and most expensive early mistake.

  4. 04

    Create a campaign and pick an objective

    Reach bills on CPM, Clicks bills on CPC, Conversions bills on oCPC against a target action. Set a daily budget, minimum $25, and either a date range or run continuously.

    How pricing works

  5. 05

    Build an ad group and write context hints

    Bids and targeting live here. Describe the conversations your buyers have, not the keywords they might type. Cover 3 related situations rather than one narrow one, or the group will starve for volume.

    Writing context hints

  6. 06

    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.

    Try the ad writer

  7. 07

    Submit and wait for review

    Most ads clear within 24 hours when the creative and the landing page follow policy. A rejection is usually fixable: edit the field that failed and resubmit.

  8. 08

    Read the numbers, not the CTR

    Expect click-through between 0.5% and 1.2%, which will look poor next to Google Search. Judge the channel on cost per conversion. Over 90% of the visitors will be new to you, and that is the point.

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 would rather not learn this on your own budget, we run the first 30 days and hand you the numbers.

See the sprintRead about the API