The short answer.
Advertising on ChatGPT is open to ordinary businesses, not only large brands. You create an account at ads.openai.com, pass a business review, add a card, and build campaigns in a tool OpenAI still labels “Ads Manager Beta”. OpenAI’s help centre lists self-serve access as available in 89 countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom.
What you buy is a labelled placement beneath an answer, matched to the conversation by OpenAI’s system. You do not buy keywords, and you cannot pay to change what ChatGPT says. Every fact in the table below comes from a page published by OpenAI, read on 12 November 2026.
| Question | What OpenAI’s pages say |
|---|---|
| Who can buy | Businesses whose billed legal entity is based in one of 89 listed countries, through self-serve Ads Manager; larger advertisers can also buy through OpenAI’s ads team or partners |
| Who sees ads | Adults on the Free and Go plans. Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Edu accounts have no ads |
| Where ads appear | Below a ChatGPT response, clearly labelled; a multi-image format is being tested during image generation |
| Formats | Single image, multiple images (open beta), product-feed ads; Sponsored Agents in a limited alpha |
| Targeting | Location, platform, your own customer lists, and “context hints”. No keyword targeting |
| How you pay | Per 1,000 impressions or per valid click. Never per conversion |
| Measurement | A website pixel, a server-side Conversions API, UTM tags and reports by campaign, ad group and ad |
| Maturity | Beta. OpenAI says it has no performance benchmarks yet |
Where things stand on 12 November 2026.
ChatGPT ads went from an announcement to a self-serve platform in 89 countries in under ten months. OpenAI announced its plan on 16 January 2026, saying it was “not launching ads yet”, and began testing in the United States on 9 February. By 21 October 2026 it said that more than 100,000 advertisers had run campaigns.
The pace matters for planning. Bidding options changed on 9 November 2026, three days before this guide was published. We keep a dated change log on our ChatGPT Ads desk for B2B teams for when a detail here goes out of date.
Who can buy ChatGPT ads.
Any business can apply. Access then depends on three things: where your legal entity is based, whether your account passes review, and whether your product falls in a category OpenAI allows.
Country
OpenAI’s availability page lists 89 countries where self-serve access is marked “Available”. The rule is about the advertiser, not the audience: “the legal entity that will advertise and be billed must be based in a country listed as available”.
New accounts may start with a narrower reach than that list suggests. The campaign setup page says some new self-serve accounts “can initially advertise only in their home country”, with wider access as the account builds history. A UK firm planning to reach US buyers should check this in its own account before it promises anyone a launch date.
Review
OpenAI’s ad policies describe review at three levels: the advertiser, the ad with its landing page, and the placement. Ads may not serve until billing is set up and the account is verified.
Category
This is the part B2B firms should read twice. The ad policies, updated 10 September 2026, say that ads are “primarily limited to consumer verticals such as lifestyle and household goods, local services, travel and experiences, and digital products or education”. Financial and health services are restricted: approved case by case in the United States and generally prohibited elsewhere. Legal services are permitted in the United States only for licensed advertisers and are currently prohibited elsewhere. Individual job listings are prohibited.
The policy does not mention B2B software or professional services by name. Software plausibly sits under “digital products”, but OpenAI has not said so in the pages we read, which makes it not confirmed. The practical test is to submit an ad and see whether it passes review. Our ChatGPT ads service checks eligibility before any media commitment, and sits alongside our paid search management service.
Who sees ads, and where they appear.
Ads are shown to adults on ChatGPT’s Free and Go plans, below the answer, with a label. People on Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Edu plans see no ads at all.
For B2B this matters most. A buyer who uses ChatGPT through a company workspace on a Business or Enterprise plan will never see your ad there. You may reach the same person on a personal Free account, but OpenAI publishes no breakdown of its ad audience by job, seniority or company size.
The help centre adds these limits:
- Under-18s are excluded, using stated age and age prediction.
- One ad unit at a time, below the response.
- No ads near sensitive topics, “including personal health, mental health, or politics”.
- No ads in Temporary Chats.
- Less personalisation in Europe. Personalised ads are “not initially available” in the European Economic Area or Switzerland.
Ads do not change the answer
OpenAI is categorical here: “Ads do not influence ChatGPT’s answers. Ads run on separate systems from our chat model, and advertisers have no ability to shape, rank, or alter ChatGPT’s responses.” So a paid placement and an organic recommendation are separate things. How the unpaid side works is covered in our guide to how ChatGPT picks companies to recommend. Before you pay for a placement under the answer, it is worth knowing whether you are already named inside it: the free AI visibility report checks that for a sample of your buyers’ questions.
Buyer: We are a 40-person logistics firm. What should we look for in route-planning software, and what does a sensible shortlist look like?
ChatGPT: An answer with criteria and several named options, written independently of any advertiser.
Example Routing Co. · logo
Route planning for fleets of 10 to 200 vehicles. Imports your existing orders, plans multi-stop routes and shows the cost per drop. Image and a link to one landing page.
Invented for illustration; not a real conversation or advertiser. The parts of the ad unit (advertiser name, logo, title, copy, image, landing page) are the ones OpenAI’s help centre lists.
Ad formats you can buy today.
Two formats are open to every self-serve advertiser: a single-image ad and a multi-image ad. Each has a title, a description, your brand name and logo, and one destination URL. OpenAI’s help pages describe no text-only, search-style ad and no video format.
| Format | What it is | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Single image | One image, title, description and one landing page, shown below a response | Available in Ads Manager |
| Multiple images | Four to six square images that all link to the same URL; “Learn more” is the only button | Open beta since 26 October 2026 |
| Product feed | Ads built from an uploaded product catalogue; country-level targeting only for new campaigns | Available; aimed at retailers |
| Visual ads during image generation | A multi-image ad shown while ChatGPT creates an image, removed when the image is ready | In testing, US first |
| Sponsored Agents | An ad that opens a chat with an AI representative of the business | Limited alpha; no requests accepted |
For most B2B advertisers this leaves the single-image ad as the working format. OpenAI asks for “clear, specific, and benefit-focused copy”, several distinct title and description variations per offer, and the most relevant landing page, not the homepage.
One technical requirement: landing pages “must not block OpenAI user agents (OAI-AdsBot and OAI-SearchBot)”, and the ad policies say pages that cannot be reviewed are not eligible to run.
Targeting: what exists and what does not.
You can target by place, by device platform and by your own customer lists, and you can describe your offer in context hints. You cannot target keywords, job titles, industries or company sizes: none of these appears in OpenAI’s help centre or its developer documentation.
| Control | Documented? | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| Country | Yes | Set at campaign level. Include your target country explicitly |
| Region, city, postcode | Yes | “Where available”; not for new product-feed campaigns |
| Platform | Yes | Android app, Android web, desktop web, iOS app, iOS web |
| Customer lists | Yes | Emails, phone numbers or hashed versions; at least 25,000 matched users to include, 100,000 recommended; smaller lists can only exclude |
| Context hints | Yes | Phrases describing your offer and who it helps. Not keywords |
| Negative Phrases | Partly | For “qualifying advertisers” only |
| Keywords | No | Not offered |
| Job title, industry, company size | No | Not documented anywhere we read |
Context hints are a description, not a bid
OpenAI’s wording is exact: context hints “inform relevance. They are not exact-match keywords or targeting rules”. Its own example contrasts “running shoes” with “cushioned everyday running shoes for beginners training for their first 5K”. A B2B hint should say who the product is for and what job it does.
The list threshold is the real B2B constraint
Uploading an account list is how B2B advertisers narrow other platforms. Here an inclusion list needs 25,000 matched users, counted after duplicates and unmatched records are removed. Most B2B customer lists are far smaller. They will show as “Ready” with an “Exclusion only” note, which is still useful for keeping existing customers out of a prospecting campaign. OpenAI also advises against custom audiences in campaigns aimed at the EEA or Switzerland.
If named-account or job-title targeting is central to your plan, this channel does not offer it today. Our comparison of Google Ads and LinkedIn Ads for B2B lead generation covers the two channels that do.
Buying, bidding and budgets.
You choose an objective, a billing event and a budget, and an auction sets the price. You are billed for impressions or for valid clicks, and OpenAI states plainly that “you do not pay per conversion”.
| Objective | Best for | You are billed |
|---|---|---|
| Views | Visibility | Per 1,000 impressions served |
| Clicks | Visits to your site | Per valid click |
| Conversions | A chosen event such as a lead or sign-up | Per valid click or per 1,000 impressions, your choice at creation |
Bidding changed on 9 November 2026
The bidding page describes three strategies. Intelligent bidding adjusts bids automatically within your budget. Target CPA lets you state the average cost you would like per conversion, and Target CPC does the same per click. From 9 November 2026 the two target strategies replace the older Max Bid and Max CPC controls for new campaigns, and the older controls “will retire on January 1, 2027 for existing campaigns”.
A target is a goal, not a ceiling. OpenAI says actual average costs “may be higher or lower than your target”, and that a target set below recent performance “may restrict delivery”. OpenAI’s help pages have not all caught up. Its introductory page, “Ads in ChatGPT: The Basics”, read on 12 November 2026, still describes a maximum bid per ad group and says “we recommend starting with a maximum bid of $3–$5 USD per click”, while its conversion-campaign page says “there is no recommended bid amount at this time”. The first is older guidance on a control being withdrawn, not a forecast of what you will pay.
Budgets
OpenAI publishes a minimum daily budget by billing currency: 25 USD, 15 GBP and 15 EUR among them. A daily budget is an average. On any one day spend can reach twice the figure, and across a Sunday-to-Saturday week it will not exceed seven times it.
What a click will cost in your category is not confirmed by any OpenAI source, and its FAQ says the platform “does not yet have performance benchmarks across advertisers, industries, or campaign types”. If you need a reference point for paid search, our analysis of why B2B Google Ads costs keep rising gives the sourced figures for that channel. We compare the two channels in ChatGPT ads vs Google Ads for B2B.
Measurement: what you can and cannot see.
You can measure clicks, spend and website conversions, and you can tag every ad with UTM parameters. You cannot see the conversations your ad appeared beside: OpenAI says advertisers receive only “aggregated, non-identifying information” about performance.
What the reports contain
Ads Manager reports impressions, clicks, spend, click-through rate, average cost per click, average cost per thousand impressions and conversions, at campaign, ad group and ad level. Results can be segmented by device, country and platform. No report listing the prompts or topics that triggered an ad is documented.
How conversions are tracked
There are two tools, and OpenAI recommends using both. The pixel is a script on your website. The Conversions API sends the same events from your server. A click from an ad arrives with an identifier called oppref on the URL, which the pixel stores in a first-party cookie that lasts 30 days. Send the same event ID through both routes and OpenAI counts the conversion once.
- Attribution windows: 7, 14 or 30 days after a click, and either none or 1 day after a view.
- Attribution model: last-touch. OpenAI says it “is not multi-touch attribution”.
- Delay: allow 24 to 48 hours for conversions to appear; spend figures lag by roughly 7 to 8 hours.
- Modelling: reported totals “may include modeled conversions where available”.
What B2B teams must add themselves
Ads Manager stops at the form. It counts a “lead created” event and knows nothing about whether that lead was a buyer or a student. Put UTM tags on every ad, capture them with the enquiry, and carry them into your CRM, as our guide to tracking which pages create real opportunities describes. Then judge the test on cost per qualified opportunity, not cost per lead. Sending pipeline stages back to an ad platform is covered in our offline conversion tracking guide.
What is still not confirmed.
Several things a B2B budget holder would want to know are not stated in any OpenAI source we read. Where that is so, we say “not confirmed” and do not fill the gap with estimates.
| Question | What OpenAI’s pages say | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Are B2B software and services an allowed category? | Ads are “primarily limited to consumer verticals”; “digital products” are listed; B2B is not mentioned | Not confirmed |
| What will a click or a lead cost? | No benchmarks published; price is set by auction | Not confirmed |
| How many business buyers see ads? | No audience breakdown by job or company; Business and Enterprise plans are ad-free | Not confirmed |
| Can we see which prompts showed our ad? | Aggregate reporting only; no prompt-level report documented | Not offered |
| When will Sponsored Agents open up? | “We’re not accepting early access requests at this time” | Not confirmed |
| Does it work for B2B? | The three early results OpenAI cited on 5 October 2026 were all consumer brands | No B2B evidence from OpenAI |
None of this rules the channel out. It means treating the first campaign as a paid experiment with a fixed cost, and writing down beforehand what result would make you continue.
How to advertise on ChatGPT: steps for a B2B advertiser.
The setup itself is short. Whether your offer, landing page and follow-up are ready at all is a separate question, and our ChatGPT ads readiness checklist answers it, so we do not repeat it here.
- 01 · ELIGIBILITYCountry, category and landing page access
- 02 · ACCOUNTSign up, billing, names and review
- 03 · MEASUREMENTPixel, Conversions API and UTM tags
- 04 · CAMPAIGNObjective, budget, hints and ad variations
- 05 · READINGJudge on qualified opportunities
- Confirm eligibility. Check that your billed legal entity is in a listed country and that nothing in your offer touches a restricted category. Allow OAI-AdsBot and OAI-SearchBot.
- Create the account once. Have one person sign up at ads.openai.com and invite colleagues as Admin, Member or Viewer. Choose country, currency and time zone carefully, because they are permanent.
- Do not publish the suggested campaign by accident. Signup offers to build a first ad from your website, and OpenAI warns that such ads “will go live once they pass review”. Skip that step, or pause the campaign, until measurement is ready.
- Install measurement first. Add the pixel, set up the Conversions API if you can, and choose one standard event such as a lead. Confirm that real events arrive before you spend.
- Tag every destination URL with UTM parameters and the documented ID macros, so each enquiry can be traced.
- Start with a Clicks campaign and a daily budget. OpenAI recommends a daily budget for new advertisers. A Conversions campaign needs an event that happens often enough to learn from, which few B2B forms provide in the first weeks.
- Build ad groups around buyer problems, each with specific context hints and several distinct ad variations.
- Exclude existing customers with a customer list, even a small one.
- Read the result in your CRM after a fixed period, not day by day in Ads Manager.
If your landing pages are the weak link, fix those first: our B2B landing page trust audit shows what a cautious buyer looks for. If you want help with eligibility, measurement and a test plan, that is the scope of our OpenAI ads readiness and strategy work. If the search campaigns you already run are the weaker link, start with managed Google Ads campaigns.
The test planner.
Enter your own assumptions to see what a first test is likely to produce, and whether it is big enough to learn from. OpenAI publishes no benchmarks, so replace the starting values with your own. Nothing you enter is sent anywhere.
Planned test spend: 0
Enter your figures to see the result.
The planner applies two documented figures: OpenAI’s minimum daily budget for each currency, and the rule that one day’s spend can reach twice the daily budget. The rest is your own arithmetic.
Questions owners ask.
Can you advertise on ChatGPT?
Yes. As of 12 November 2026, OpenAI’s self-serve Ads Manager is listed as available to businesses based in 89 countries, including the US and the UK. After billing and review, your ads can appear below ChatGPT responses for Free and Go users.
How much does it cost to advertise on ChatGPT?
There is no fixed price. Ads are sold by auction and billed per 1,000 impressions or per valid click. OpenAI publishes a minimum daily budget by currency, such as 25 USD or 15 GBP, and says it has no performance benchmarks yet. What a click costs in your category is not confirmed.
Can I target keywords in ChatGPT ads?
No. OpenAI matches ads to conversations using the ad, its landing page and the context hints you write. It says hints are not exact-match keywords or targeting rules. You control location, platform and your own customer lists.
Do ChatGPT ads affect what ChatGPT recommends?
No. OpenAI states that ads do not influence answers, run on separate systems from the chat model, and are clearly labelled. Paying for ads does not get your company named in an answer.
Should a B2B company pause Google Ads to pay for a ChatGPT test?
We would not. ChatGPT ads are in beta with no published benchmarks and no evidence from OpenAI on B2B results, so fund the test as a separate, fixed learning budget and leave campaigns that already produce qualified enquiries alone. If those campaigns are underperforming, sort that out first: our guide to Google Ads leads that do not convert shows where to look.
Sources: all published by OpenAI, read 12 November 2026. Announcements: 16 Jan 2026; 9 Feb 2026, updated to 11 Aug; 5 May 2026; 23 Sep 2026; 5 Oct 2026; 21 Oct 2026. Policy: ad policies, 10 Sep 2026. Help centre: Ads in ChatGPT; The basics; availability; Account setup; Creating campaigns; ad groups; Creating ads; bidding; conversion campaigns; Custom audiences; Conversion measurement; Measure results; Sponsored Agents; FAQ. Developer docs: targeting; pixel; Conversion tracking.