For most of advertising history, a genuinely new channel arrived about once a decade. Search. Social. Retail media. Each one rewrote the playbook. The newest one is already live — and most marketers have not seen it yet: you can now run ads inside ChatGPT.
Evido secured an invite to OpenAI Ads Manager Beta — the platform where these campaigns are built and managed — and we have spent real time inside the cabinet. This is the walkthrough we wished existed: what the channel is, how the account works, what each setting does, and the one skill that separates a good campaign from wasted budget.
ChatGPT Ads at a glance
- Where ads appear: below relevant ChatGPT conversations.
- Who sees them: Free and Go users, 18+, in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
- Platform: OpenAI Ads Manager Beta, at ads.openai.com.
- Objectives: Reach (buys on CPM) or Clicks (buys on CPC).
- Targeting: context hints — a plain-language description, not keywords.
- Status: an evolving beta. All details accurate as of May 2026.
What "ads in ChatGPT" actually means
An ad in ChatGPT appears below a relevant conversation — at the point where someone is exploring, comparing or deciding. The unit itself is familiar: an advertiser name, a logo, a headline, a line of descriptive copy, an image, and a landing page. What is different is the context. Instead of matching a search query or a demographic profile, the system places ads based on how relevant your message is to the intent of the conversation in front of the user.
There are firm limits worth knowing before you plan anything. Ads currently reach people on the Free and Go tiers, in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. They are not shown to anyone on Plus, Pro or Business plans, and not to anyone the platform identifies as under 18. If your audience lives entirely outside those four markets, this channel is something to prepare for rather than buy today.
Meet the cabinet — OpenAI Ads Manager Beta
Every ChatGPT ad campaign is created and managed in one place: OpenAI Ads Manager Beta, at ads.openai.com. It is a self-serve platform, and in its current form it does three things. It lets you build and manage campaigns — one at a time in a guided flow, or in bulk by uploading a campaign template. It lets you monitor performance across campaigns, ad groups and ads, in tables, charts and CSV exports. And it holds your account settings: team members and permissions, billing, API keys and a change log.
It is, openly, a beta. Some capabilities are still limited and the platform will keep evolving. That is the trade for being early — and being early is the entire point.
Setting up your account
You cannot spend a cent until the account is fully set up, and setup runs through five steps.
- Create your account. Ads Manager Beta is tied to an OpenAI account — ideally one on your work email. If you do not have one, you can create it during sign-up.
- Complete onboarding and verification. You enter your business details (name, website, logo, industry) and account details (country, currency, time zone), then answer a short set of verification questions. Your application then enters a review queue, where OpenAI also checks that what you advertise is eligible under its ad policies. The queue is rolling — it can take time, and you are emailed when access is granted.
- Complete your account information. Once you are in, set your account name and logo exactly as you want them to appear in the ad unit. This matters: ads will not serve until it is done.
- Set up billing and payment. Add a billing profile and a payment method.
- Invite your team. Add colleagues from the account settings.
Two things to plan around. Only one account owner should create the advertiser account, and each advertiser needs its own account — if you manage several brands, that is several accounts. And because verification takes time, the practical advice is simple: if ChatGPT Ads is anywhere on your roadmap, start the account now, so the queue is behind you when you are ready to launch.
The three-level structure: campaign, ad group, ad
Once you are in, the build is reassuringly familiar. Every campaign has three levels.
- Campaign. Holds your objective, your budget, your dates and your targeting. You choose one of two objectives — and that choice sets how you buy. A Reach objective buys on a cost-per-thousand-impressions basis (CPM). A Clicks objective buys on a cost-per-click basis (CPC).
- Ad group. A set of ads organised around a single theme or intent. Crucially, the ad group is where you add context hints — the description of the conversations you want to appear in.
- Ad. The creative the user sees: a headline, a line of copy, an image and a landing page.
Build them, submit the campaign for review, and once it is approved your ads begin serving. If an ad shows as "not serving," the platform tells you why when you hover over the status — many issues are a quick edit and resubmit.
The settings that matter — location, goals, budget
- Location. Geographic targeting is more granular than you might expect. Within the available countries you are not limited to "the United States" as a single blob — in our hands-on testing, you can narrow down to specific, surprisingly small areas. For local and regional advertisers, that precision is genuinely useful.
- Goals. Today there are two: Reach and Clicks. Conversions exist as something you can measure — you can set up conversion tracking and see conversions in your reports — but conversion as an optimisation objective is not something the platform offers yet. It is a reasonable thing to expect next; it is not a thing to build a campaign around today.
- Budget and bids. You set a daily budget, and you set max bids. As of May 2026, OpenAI suggests a starting max bid in the region of a few dollars per click for CPC campaigns, and CPM campaigns carry their own default ceiling. Winners are decided in a relevance-weighted, second-price auction — meaning a more relevant ad can win over a higher bid.
The real skill — writing context hints
Here is the line that matters most in this whole walkthrough: ChatGPT Ads has no keyword field.
Instead, at the ad-group level, you provide context hints — a plain-language description of the conversations, topics and situations where your product or service is relevant. They guide how the system matches your ads. They are not exact-match keywords, and they do not guarantee that your ad appears in any particular conversation. They are a brief, and the system reads them as one.
That reframes the job. You are not assembling a keyword list. You are writing a short, sharp description of a moment. And the most common mistake is to describe your product instead of the moment.
When we write context hints at Evido, we describe four things:
- Who the person is — their role or situation.
- The situation they are in — the trigger, the friction, the goal.
- The decision they are working through — what they are trying to figure out or choose.
- The signals — the kinds of questions and phrases they would actually bring to ChatGPT.
Weak hint: "Project management software with Gantt charts, time tracking and team dashboards." It describes a product. It gives the system almost nothing about which conversations to look for.
Stronger hint: "People planning a product launch or coordinating a team across time zones, frustrated that work is scattered across spreadsheets and chat, who want a clearer way to see who owns what and by when — often asking how to keep a project on track or how to run a launch checklist." Same product. This one describes the conversation.
A template you can reuse:
"Our [product] helps [who] who are [situation]. Show our ad in conversations where someone is [exploring / comparing / deciding] about [topic] — for example, when they ask things like '[example question]' or '[example question]'."
Two more rules. One intent per ad group: do not blend someone still researching the problem with someone ready to buy — split them into separate ad groups, each with its own, sharper hint. And write in the user's language, not your brand's.
Finally, treat the hints as a draft. Launch, watch what the reporting tells you, and refine. The first version is rarely the best one.
Measuring what happens
Reporting in Ads Manager Beta covers the metrics you would expect: impressions, clicks, spend, click-through rate, average CPC, average CPM, and conversions where you have set up conversion measurement. You can read them three ways — a table view across campaigns, ad groups and ads; charts for trends over time; and CSV exports for your own analysis. You can also add standard tracking parameters such as UTMs to your landing-page URLs, so traffic from ChatGPT Ads shows up cleanly in the analytics tools you already use.
Where this is available — and what is next
For now, the map is four English-speaking markets: the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. If that includes your audience, you can run real campaigns today. If it does not, the smart move is to get the account verified and your context hints drafted, so launch day is a click and not a project.
The beta is expanding. We are not going to put a date or a country in OpenAI's mouth — but Evido is inside Ads Manager now, testing as it changes, and we will flag new markets as they open.
Frequently asked questions
Can any business advertise in ChatGPT?
Almost — but not automatically. You create an account, and OpenAI reviews it, including whether what you advertise is eligible under its ad policies. Plan for a review queue rather than a same-day launch.
Does ChatGPT Ads use keywords?
No. There is no keyword field. You describe the conversations where your product belongs using context hints — plain-language descriptions that guide matching but do not guarantee placement in any specific conversation.
How much does it cost to advertise in ChatGPT?
You set a daily budget and max bids. You buy on CPM if your objective is Reach, or CPC if your objective is Clicks, settled in a relevance-weighted, second-price auction. You can test on a modest budget — the bigger lever on cost is how relevant your ad is.
Who actually sees these ads?
Free and Go users, aged 18 and over, in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. People on Plus, Pro and Business plans do not see ads.
Is it available in my country?
Today, only in those four markets. The beta is expanding — join the watch-list to be told when a new market opens.
Be first when your market opens
ChatGPT advertising is the rare thing in this industry: a brand-new surface, still quiet, still cheap to learn. Evido is already inside the platform — running tests, tracking changes, and getting ready to launch the moment new markets open.
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