How to use this glossary.
Each entry gives a short definition, why it matters for a B2B advertiser, and a source label. “OpenAI” means the term appears in OpenAI’s help centre, Ads API documentation or announcements. “Third-party” means it is used by guides and tools but not, as far as we can find, by OpenAI. That distinction matters: if you ask OpenAI’s support team about a third-party term, they may not recognise it.
The terms are grouped in the order you meet them when you set up a campaign: audiences, targeting, structure, bidding, budgets, tracking, reporting, formats and policy. If you want the wider picture first, including who can see ChatGPT ads at all, read our ChatGPT and OpenAI Ads management service page or the ChatGPT Ads readiness checklist. To jump straight to a term, use the finder in chapter 12.
Audience readiness.
1. Audience readiness
Definition: the state a custom audience reaches once ChatGPT Ads has finished processing the list you uploaded, so it can be used in a campaign. AirOps defines it as “the processed state a custom audience reaches in ChatGPT Ads”.
Where the term comes from: third-party. OpenAI’s own Ads API documentation does not use the phrase “audience readiness”. What it does have is an audience status of Ready. OpenAI’s help centre says Ready means the audience “has been processed and can be used”, and that audiences under 25,000 matched users show as Ready with an “Exclusion only” note.
Why it matters: an audience can be “ready” and still be too small to target. OpenAI’s help centre says inclusion audiences and bid adjustments need at least 25,000 matched users, and recommends 100,000 (see matched users, below). So check two things before launch: that the status is Ready without an “Exclusion only” note, and that the matched size clears the threshold. For campaigns targeting the EEA or Switzerland, OpenAI says to avoid custom audiences while ads personalisation is unavailable there.
Audiences.
2. Custom audience
Definition: a list of people you upload, such as customers or CRM contacts, that ChatGPT Ads matches to its users. You can use it to include people, exclude them, or change your bid for them. Source: OpenAI Ads API documentation. For B2B: excluding existing customers is often the most useful first use, and exclusion audiences have no minimum size.
3. Matched users
Definition: the number of people in your uploaded list that ChatGPT Ads could match to its users. OpenAI’s help centre says inclusion audiences and audience bid adjustments “require at least 25,000 matched users” and recommends “audiences of at least 100,000 users”. Invalid, duplicate and unmatched rows do not count, so uploading 25,000 identifiers does not mean 25,000 will match. Earlier conflict: Jon Loomer reported on 7 July 2026 that a beta interface tooltip asked for “at least 100,000 identifiers”. OpenAI now treats 100,000 as a recommendation and 25,000 matched users as the minimum. Source: OpenAI help centre and Ads API documentation; the earlier figure reported by a third party.
4. Exclusion audience
Definition: a custom audience used to stop ads showing to the people on it. OpenAI’s documentation says exclusion audiences have no minimum size, “including empty audiences”. Source: OpenAI. For B2B: exclude current customers and open opportunities so the test budget is spent on new buyers.
5. Audience bid multiplier
Definition: a setting that raises or lowers your bid when the person seeing the ad is in a given custom audience, instead of limiting the campaign to that audience. It is set at ad group level. Source: OpenAI Ads API documentation. For B2B: useful when a target-account list is too small to run on its own but you want to bid harder when you do reach it.
Targeting.
6. Contextual matching
Definition: showing an ad because it fits the conversation taking place, rather than because of who the user is. When a user turns personalisation off, OpenAI’s help centre says ads are based only on the current chat. Source: OpenAI. For B2B: your ad competes on relevance to the question being asked, so the landing page should answer that question directly.
7. Context hints
Definition: words or topics you give an ad group to steer which conversations it is matched to. OpenAI’s documentation says context hints “are not exact-match keywords”. Source: OpenAI Ads API documentation. For B2B: do not treat them like a Google Ads keyword list; expect broader matching and judge results on what the enquiries look like.
8. Geographic targeting
Definition: limiting ads to countries or locations, set by country code or location ID. Ads were available in 89 countries as of OpenAI’s 21 October 2026 announcement. Source: OpenAI. For B2B: start with the two or three markets where your sales team can actually follow up.
9. Platform targeting
Definition: choosing which ChatGPT surfaces your ads can appear on. Source: OpenAI Ads API documentation. For B2B: leave it broad at first and review results by device before narrowing.
Account structure.
10. Ads Manager
Definition: OpenAI’s self-serve tool for creating and running ChatGPT ads. A beta opened to US advertisers on 5 May 2026, and self-serve reached India, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa on 31 August 2026. Source: OpenAI; Search Engine Journal, 5 May 2026. Some markets are served through OpenAI’s sales team and agency partners instead.
11. Ad account, campaign, ad group, ad
Definition: the four levels of a ChatGPT Ads account. The ad account holds branding, currency and spend limits. The campaign holds the objective, budget, schedule, targeting and conversion events. The ad group holds the bid strategy, context hints, audience multipliers and any product set. The ad holds the creative and destination URL. Source: OpenAI Ads API overview.
12. Campaign objective
Definition: what the campaign is trying to get. Ads Manager offers Reach, Clicks and Conversions; the API calls them impressions, clicks and conversions. The objective decides what is optimised. Billing (per impression or per click) is a separate choice, and a Conversions campaign can use either. Source: OpenAI help centre. For B2B: start with clicks until your tracking is proven, then move to conversions.
Bidding.
13. CPM
Definition: cost per thousand impressions. Reach campaigns are billed on impressions, and Conversions campaigns can be too. Tubefilter, citing The Information, reported launch prices of about $60 CPM on 26 January 2026, in the managed phase before self-serve. Source: OpenAI help centre; launch price reported by third parties. Today the auction sets the price.
14. CPC
Definition: cost per click. Clicks campaigns are billed per valid click, and Conversions campaigns can be too. OpenAI’s 5 May 2026 announcement said it would “continue to support CPM and CPC buying”. Source: OpenAI help centre and announcement; Search Engine Journal, 5 May 2026.
15. Conversion optimisation (impression or click billing)
Definition: a Conversions campaign aims for one standard conversion event, but you choose to be billed per impression or per valid click. Asked whether this means paying per conversion, OpenAI’s help centre answers “No.” Impression billing lets the system count conversions after views as well as clicks; click billing optimises for conversions that follow a click. Neither the objective nor the billing option can be changed after creation. Custom events cannot be the goal. Source: OpenAI help centre. Some guides call these “optimised CPC” and “optimised CPM”; OpenAI’s current help centre does not.
16. Target CPA and Target CPC
Definition: the average cost per conversion (Target CPA) or per click (Target CPC) you want the system to work towards. From 9 November 2026, Target CPA replaces Max Bid for new conversion campaigns, and Target CPC becomes available for new click campaigns. Max Bid and Max CPC retire for existing campaigns on 1 January 2027. A target is not a cap: OpenAI says actual average costs can be higher or lower, and you are still billed per impression or click. Source: OpenAI help centre, bidding strategies (read 8 November 2026). For B2B: set it from what a qualified opportunity is worth to you, not from a guess at cost per lead.
17. Bid strategy
Definition: how the system bids for you. From 9 November 2026 Ads Manager offers Intelligent bidding (formerly Maximize Results, or Autobid), Target CPA and Target CPC. On 8 November 2026 the Ads API documentation still listed fixed_bid, maximize_clicks and maximize_conversions. OpenAI says API partners get Target CPA and Target CPC fields from 18 November 2026, and the old Max Bid and Max CPC fields are deprecated from 1 January 2027. Source: OpenAI help centre and Ads API documentation. Check the current list in Ads Manager before you plan.
Budgets and the auction.
18. Daily budget and minimum spend
Definition: the amount you set a campaign to spend per day. OpenAI’s Ads API documentation says “daily minimums depend on the account currency”. Launch advertisers faced a $200,000 minimum commitment, reported by Adweek at the end of January 2026; that applied before self-serve existed. Source: OpenAI; launch minimum reported by a third party. Check the current minimum for your currency in Ads Manager.
19. Ad auction
Definition: how ChatGPT decides which ad to show. OpenAI’s 21 October 2026 post on its ad stack says the auction includes “auction admission (passing a minimum threshold of relevance and value)”, pacing and quality-adjusted ranking. Source: OpenAI. For B2B: an ad that does not fit the conversation may not show at any bid.
Conversion tracking.
20. Measurement Pixel
Definition: OpenAI’s browser tag for recording conversions on your site. Standard events include lead_created, registration_completed, appointment_scheduled, order_created and trial_started; custom events are allowed. Source: OpenAI Ads API documentation. For B2B: fire lead_created only on a real enquiry, the same event you mark as a GA4 key event.
21. Conversions API
Definition: a server-side way to send conversions to OpenAI, deduplicated against the pixel using a shared event_id. Events must be from the last seven days, in batches of up to 1,000. Source: OpenAI Ads API documentation. For B2B: lets you send events from your CRM, such as an accepted opportunity, within the seven-day limit.
22. oppref
Definition: the click identifier ChatGPT Ads adds to a landing URL, stored by the pixel in a first-party cookie (__oppref) for 30 days so a later conversion can be linked to the click. Source: OpenAI Ads API documentation. For B2B: make sure redirects and consent tools do not strip it.
Attribution and reporting.
23. Click-through and view-through conversions
Definition: a click-through conversion follows a click on the ad within the attribution window, which is configurable (OpenAI’s setup example uses 30 days). A view-through conversion follows a view without a click. OpenAI’s help centre says the Conversions column in Ads Manager includes eligible view-through conversions when the view-through window is one day, and counts click-through only with a zero-day window, so check the setting before comparing reports. Attributed conversions can take about 24 to 48 hours to appear. Source: OpenAI help centre and Ads API documentation. Ads Manager reports impressions, clicks, spend, CTR, CPC, CPM, conversions, CPA, post-click conversion rate, attributed sales and ROAS, broken down by country, device and product.
Formats.
24. Sponsored Agents and product-feed ads
Definition: two formats beyond the standard single-image ad (which also has a multi-image version, in open beta in Ads Manager since 26 October 2026). Product-feed ads show a single product card or a carousel built from a feed. Sponsored Agents are a conversational unit tested with selected US advertisers from 16 September 2026, reported by TechRepublic not to support purchases. Source: OpenAI help centre; The Next Web and TechRepublic. “Conversational ads” is not an OpenAI product name we could find.
Privacy and policy.
25. Answer independence and ad controls
Definition: answer independence is OpenAI’s principle that “advertisers have no ability to shape, rank, or alter ChatGPT’s responses”. Ad controls are the user settings that let people turn off personalisation, dismiss ads, see why an ad was shown and clear ads data. OpenAI says ads appear only for Free and Go users (and in logged-out use), never in Temporary Chats, never near sensitive topics such as health or politics, and not for accounts identified as under 18. Personalised ads are not initially available in the EEA or Switzerland. Source: OpenAI. For B2B: buying ads does not buy a place in the answer; that remains organic.
Find a term.
Type part of a term, such as “audience”, “pixel” or “CPM”. Entries that do not match are hidden; clear the box to show them all.
Showing all 25 terms.
Missing a term you have seen elsewhere? It may be a third-party label rather than an OpenAI one. Check it against OpenAI’s help centre before you rely on it.
Questions owners ask.
What is audience readiness in ChatGPT Ads?
It is the state a custom audience reaches once ChatGPT Ads has processed your uploaded list and it can be used. The phrase comes from third-party glossaries; OpenAI shows the status as “Ready”, and an audience under 25,000 matched users shows as Ready for exclusion only. Also check the matched size: OpenAI requires 25,000 matched users for inclusion and recommends 100,000.
What is the minimum audience size for ChatGPT Ads?
OpenAI’s help centre says inclusion audiences and bid adjustments require at least 25,000 matched users, and recommends at least 100,000. Smaller audiences can be used only as exclusions. A beta interface reported in July 2026 asked for 100,000 identifiers as a minimum; OpenAI now gives that figure as a recommendation.
Are context hints the same as keywords?
No. OpenAI’s documentation says context hints “are not exact-match keywords”. They steer which conversations an ad group is matched to, but matching stays contextual and broader than a keyword list.
Do you pay per conversion in ChatGPT Ads?
No. A Conversions campaign aims for conversions but is billed per impression or per valid click, whichever you choose. A Target CPA, available from 9 November 2026, is an average-cost goal for the system, not a price per conversion.
Who can see ChatGPT ads?
According to OpenAI, users on the Free and Go plans in countries where ads run, and logged-out users, but not accounts identified as under 18. Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Edu accounts see no ads, and ads do not appear in Temporary Chats or near sensitive topics.
Sources (accessed 8 November 2026): OpenAI Ads API documentation (API overview, campaign targeting, custom audiences, bidding and budgets, conversion campaigns, Measurement Pixel, Conversions API, conversion tracking, reporting); OpenAI help centre articles on ads in ChatGPT, Ads Manager availability, creating ads, product-feed campaigns, custom audiences, bidding strategies, conversion-optimised campaigns and troubleshooting conversion tracking; OpenAI announcements of 5 May, 31 Aug and 21 Oct 2026 and on the ad stack (21 Oct 2026); AirOps glossary, “audience readiness” (undated); Jon Loomer, 7 Jul 2026; Adweek, Jan 2026; Tubefilter, 26 Jan 2026; Search Engine Journal, 5 May 2026; The Next Web and TechRepublic, Sep 2026. The openai.com and help.openai.com pages were read in a browser on 8 November 2026.