How do you advertise on ChatGPT?

How do you advertise on ChatGPT?

This page walks the whole route in order, because the order matters, three of the choices you make in the first five minutes are very hard to undo, and one of them decides which currency you are billed in and therefore the smallest amount you can spend.

Everything below comes from OpenAI’s own advertiser documentation, linked at the foot and read on 4 October 2026.

Can I open an account from my country?

The list runs alphabetically from Algeria and Australia to Vietnam. It includes the United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, India, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and several Middle Eastern and North African markets, and it covers every EU country plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

That is a recent change and a large one. Europe was closed to self-service until 31 August 2026, when OpenAI added a line to its own announcement: “Update on August 31, 2026: Self-service access to ChatGPT Ads through Ads Manager is now available across the 31 European markets announced below.”

One caution. OpenAI stamps that table with a relative note rather than a date, so it can change without anything visibly changing. The date above is the day we read it.

Where your customers are is a separate question from where your business is registered, and the two moved independently through 2026. A business in an open country can advertise to customers in other countries where OpenAI serves ads, though not always at first. OpenAI’s article on creating campaigns says “Some new self-serve ad accounts can initially advertise only in their home country”, and that such an account becomes eligible for other countries automatically once identity verification is approved and it has spent enough on campaigns at home. A business registered outside the list cannot buy self-service even if its customers are inside it.

What are the steps to set up an account?

You need an OpenAI account first, and you can make one during sign-up. Next you can give your website address and let Ads Manager help create your first ad and campaign from it, or skip that and build a campaign later. Either way, you then enter your advertiser name and the other required account details, which is where the hard-to-change choices live.

Your business is checked, not just your ads. OpenAI says verification can fail “when we could not verify the accuracy of your business identity, ownership, or affiliations”. Passing that check does not mean what you sell is allowed, because OpenAI judges that separately: “A registered or licensed business is not automatically eligible for every advertising category or market.”

Then it waits. For business verification, OpenAI says “The review may take up to 7 Business days to complete, please reach out to Ads Support if it takes longer.” It also says “Account verification, account approval, ad review, and ad delivery are separate checks. Completing one does not mean all the others are complete.”

One account per advertiser: “Create a separate account for each advertiser.” That is a floor rather than a ceiling, OpenAI says “Eligible self-serve advertisers can also create additional accounts for their business.” You can use the same OpenAI login for all of them and switch between them. Once you belong to ten accounts, counting any you were invited to, you cannot create another yourself.

What can you never change afterwards?

This is the reason to slow down for five minutes at sign-up rather than at any other point in the process.

The currency choice is not cosmetic. It sets which row of OpenAI’s minimum daily budget table applies to you, so it decides the smallest amount you can spend, 25 dollars, 15 pounds or 15 euros are not the same number.

If your business trades through more than one company, decide which one is doing the advertising before anybody fills in a form. OpenAI’s billing article explains why: “Billing country, currency, and legal entity details are tied to account setup and billing records. They may not be self-serve editable after account creation.” To bill under a different legal entity later, the same article says “you may need to create a separate advertiser account using the correct business and billing information.”

There is one more step people miss. The name you type at sign-up fills three fields: account name, brand name and legal name. OpenAI defines the brand name as “The public name shown alongside your ads in ChatGPT.” Check it and your logo before your first ad runs, and if you trade under a different name from your registered company, this is where that name goes. Changing it later costs you: “Brand Name changes trigger brand review and pause ad serving until the new name is approved.”

What do you actually build?

The objective is the fork in the road. OpenAI’s article on creating campaigns lists three: Views, where you pay per thousand times your ad is shown; Clicks, where you pay per click; and Conversions, which aims delivery at people likely to do the thing you want, like buy, sign up or send an enquiry, and is billed either per click or per thousand times your ad is shown. OpenAI is plain about it: “You do not pay per conversion.” The bid is a maximum rather than a price, because the auction is second-price.

The creative limits are published, which they were not earlier in 2026. OpenAI gives an ad title 16 to 24 characters recommended and 50 maximum, and ad copy 32 to 48 recommended and 100 maximum. Images must be square and no larger than 1200 by 1200 pixels, in PNG or JPG.

Sixteen to 24 characters is short, shorter than this sentence’s first four words. Write for that constraint from the start rather than trimming a paragraph down to it.

Why has my ad not started running?

If the status says “Not serving”, hover over the ad for the reason. OpenAI names the usual causes: “ad copy or landing pages that do not align with our Ad Policies, or landing pages that block OpenAI user agents or IP addresses.”

That second cause is the one nobody checks and the one that costs money quietly, because the page opens perfectly in your own browser. It has its own page here: what is OAI-AdsBot.

Reporting lags delivery, and the money figures lag most. OpenAI says views and clicks “typically refresh approximately every 15 minutes”, but “Spend insights may be delayed approximately 7–8 hours”, so a dashboard showing no spend in the first afternoon is not evidence of anything.

Do you have to do this yourself?

OpenAI names its partners rather than hinting at them: “We have been collaborating with leading agency partners including Dentsu, Omnicom, Publicis, and WPP to support businesses purchasing ChatGPT ads. We’ve also added technology partners such as Adobe, Criteo, Kargo, Pacvue, and StackAdapt, and will continue to invest in and expand our partner ecosystem.”

Crawl Nine is not one of them, and does not hold its own advertiser account. Because OpenAI fixes an account to one registered company and one permanent country, the practical arrangement is that the account is yours and you give us access to it. That is normal, and it means you keep the account and its history if we ever part ways.

Before any of that, the useful first move costs nothing: check whether ChatGPT can read the page you would be sending people to. Our free site check needs no email.