How to Advertise on ChatGPT: From Ads Manager Account to First Campaign, Step by Step

<p><strong>Advertising on ChatGPT takes five steps: open a business account at ads.openai.com and complete verification, create a campaign with an objective and budget, write ad groups with context hints, add ads made of a title, copy, image and landing page, and measure conversions with the OpenAI pixel.</strong> Self-serve access is open to businesses in 56 countries as of 18 September 2026. This guide walks through a first campaign using OpenAI's help centre and developer documentation. How the platform works, who sees ads and which industries are excluded is covered in <a href="/en/academy/blog/chatgpt-ads-explained-2026">ChatGPT Ads explained</a>; this article is only about setup.</p>

<h2>Step 1: How do you open an Ads Manager account?</h2>

<p>The account is created at ads.openai.com with an OpenAI login tied to your work email. OpenAI's quickstart lists the sequence: sign in or create an account, add your brand logo in Settings, set up a billing profile and payment method, complete account verification, and invite the team members who need access. Setup can also begin inside ChatGPT through the ChatGPT Ads Manager app, though billing, tax and verification are still finished in the panel.</p>

<p>Three rules are worth knowing before you start. First, only businesses are accepted: there is no individual advertiser onboarding, and an agency cannot create an account on a client's behalf, though the client can invite the agency afterwards. Second, country, currency and time zone cannot be changed once the account exists; a wrong entry means a new account. Open it with the legal name, website and country of the entity that will be billed. Third, completing the verification flow does not make the account ready to serve. Account review is a separate step, and OpenAI says plainly that it cannot expedite review and that duplicate applications slow it down.</p>

<p>A company can hold several advertiser accounts for different brands or legal entities, and one OpenAI login can be attached to all of them. Some new self-serve accounts can initially advertise only in their home country; other markets unlock once identity verification is approved and the account reaches a required spend at home. Creating a campaign or setting a budget does not count toward that threshold.</p>

<h2>Step 2: How do you choose a campaign objective and budget?</h2>

<p>The campaign is the top layer of OpenAI's structure and holds the title, objective, conversion event where relevant, budget, start and end dates, target countries, optional platforms and optional custom audiences. There are three objectives. Views bills per thousand impressions (CPM). Clicks bills per valid click (CPC). Conversions optimises toward a chosen event and bills per valid click (oCPC) or per thousand impressions (oCPM); nothing bills per conversion.</p>

<p>The objective and billing model are locked once the campaign is created; a different objective means a new campaign. Budget type has a one-way door too: you can move from a campaign-total budget to a daily budget but not back. OpenAI recommends that new advertisers begin with a daily budget, watch delivery and performance, and only then commit to a total.</p>

<p>Prices verified 18 September 2026. The minimum daily budget depends on billing currency: $25 on a USD account, 15 EUR, 15 GBP, 725 INR, 2,500 JPY, 25,000 KRW. A daily budget is a seven-day average: spend on one day can reach twice the figure, and a Sunday-to-Saturday week can reach seven times it. If the weekly allowance is used early, the campaign can pause until the next budget week while still showing as active. Budgets renew at midnight in the account's time zone, which is one reason to set the time zone correctly.</p>

<p>A practical first campaign is a Clicks objective, a daily budget and a two-week date range. OpenAI suggests a starting maximum CPC of $3 to $5 and shows a bid-strength indicator that tells you whether the bid is likely to be competitive. A Conversions objective cannot be chosen until the pixel is installed and at least one standard event is flowing, so make conversion optimisation your second campaign.</p>

<h2>Step 3: How does targeting work?</h2>

<p>Targeting is set at the campaign level on three axes: country and sub-national location, platform, and custom audience. Country is mandatory. Below country, OpenAI offers states or regions, cities, markets and postal codes where available, and the list varies by country; search for a location during setup to see what exists for yours. Product-feed shopping campaigns target by country only.</p>

<p>Platform targeting offers five options: Android app, Android web, desktop web, iOS app and iOS web, and reports break out the same five. A local service business might lean toward the mobile apps and a B2B tool toward desktop web, but on a first campaign it is more instructive to leave all five on and read which one produces clicks.</p>

<p>Custom audiences let you upload your own customer list for inclusion or exclusion. Inclusion needs at least 25,000 matched users; exclusion works with smaller lists. For a small business the practical use is to exclude existing customers so the budget goes to new ones. Members can be added or removed without rebuilding the audience. OpenAI advises against custom audiences for campaigns targeting the EEA or Switzerland while ad personalisation is unavailable there.</p>

<h2>Step 4: How do you write ad groups and context hints?</h2>

<p>An ad group is a set of ads built around one product, service or customer need. OpenAI's example is a plumber: emergency repairs and preventive maintenance are two needs of one business, want different messages and different landing pages, and so become two ad groups. Within a group you place several treatments of the same theme, and the system learns which fits which conversation.</p>

<p>Context hints are the heart of the group. Rather than repeating what the ad and landing page already say, you write phrases describing who the product is for, in what situation and when. OpenAI's single official example replaces "running shoes" with "cushioned everyday running shoes for beginners training for their first 5K". Hints are not exact-match keywords, not targeting rules, and they do not guarantee delivery in a given conversation.</p>

<p>A few examples in that style, written by us rather than by OpenAI:</p>

<ul>

<li><strong>Florist:</strong> "someone who needs a hospital-visit or birthday bouquet delivered in Brooklyn or Queens today, with a 3pm same-day cut-off."</li>

<li><strong>Restaurant:</strong> "someone booking a Mediterranean restaurant in Manchester for a work dinner of eight with gluten-free options."</li>

<li><strong>Ecommerce:</strong> "someone researching lightweight, folding, rain-resistant furniture for a small balcony and wanting delivery within two days."</li>

<li><strong>Software:</strong> "a one-person online shop comparing invoicing tools that connect to marketplaces and file tax returns."</li>

<li><strong>Home services:</strong> "someone in Austin whose boiler failed and who needs a same-day weekend engineer."</li>

</ul>

<p>These sentences are also the questions your customers ask ChatGPT organically. The list you write for context hints is the starting list for the organic work described in <a href="/en/academy/blog/how-to-get-mentioned-by-chatgpt">how to get mentioned by ChatGPT</a>; keep both jobs in one document.</p>

<h2>Step 5: Ad copy, image and landing page</h2>

<p>An ad unit is the advertiser name, favicon, title, copy, image and landing page. The central idea of OpenAI's creative guidance is coverage rather than a single message: several title and copy variations for the same offer, each from a different angle, let the system find more conversations where the ad is relevant. Each variation should introduce a new angle rather than rephrase the last one.</p>

<p>The title should state the value plainly: what you offer and why it is useful. The copy should add information the title does not carry, such as a benefit, a feature or a use case. Images should be simple and match the message; OpenAI's developer documentation requires at least 640 by 640 pixels. Because the relevance calculation reads the text, a title carrying information, such as "same-day delivery in Brooklyn on orders before 3pm", tends to do better than a slogan.</p>

<p>Three rules for the landing page. Send people to the most relevant destination: a product, collection or service page rather than the homepage. Add your own UTM parameters to each creative's destination URL; they persist on click and let you separate ChatGPT traffic in your existing analytics. Make sure the page is reachable and does not block OpenAI's OAI-AdsBot and OAI-SearchBot user agents, because a page the review system cannot read is not eligible to run. Check your robots.txt and bot-protection settings before launch.</p>

<p>Ads Manager also offers suggested ad drafts, which prefill an image, title and description from your site's existing metadata. OpenAI notes that this does not generate new copy with AI; the draft shows whatever your page already says, so poor title and description tags produce a poor draft.</p>

<h2>Step 6: The OpenAI pixel and conversion measurement</h2>

<p>Conversions are measured two ways: the OpenAI pixel in the browser and the Conversions API from your server. The pixel is a short script added to the head of your site with the pixel ID from Ads Manager; it defines a function called oaiq and loads the SDK from OpenAI's CDN. You then fire standard events on the relevant pages: page view, content view, items added, checkout started, order created, lead created, registration, appointment scheduled, subscription created, trial started, plus custom events.</p>

<p>A conversion-optimised campaign needs at least one standard event; custom events are not supported for optimisation. Each such campaign optimises toward exactly one event, and the event cannot be changed afterwards. An appointment business picks appointment scheduled, a shop picks order created, a B2B tool picks lead created. OpenAI advises choosing an event with enough volume, since a rare event slows learning.</p>

<p>When the same event arrives from both the pixel and the server, duplicates are removed by matching event_id. The pixel hashes identifiers such as email with SHA-256 in the browser, and OpenAI says raw customer information is not sent. There is a consent switch on oaiq and a per-event opt-out flag. None of that replaces your own privacy compliance: consent banners, notices and data-transfer questions are yours to settle with your adviser, and this article is not legal advice. Starting with UTM parameters and adding the pixel in week two is a valid order; UTM shows clicks, the pixel shows conversions. OpenAI also lists a HubSpot integration for advertisers who manage leads there.</p>

<h2>Step 7: Review, launch and what to read in the first two weeks</h2>

<p>Once submitted, ads enter review. Review is mostly automated with human oversight and covers the creative, the image and the landing page together. If an ad shows "Not serving", hovering over the status reveals the reason. OpenAI's checklist is short: verification and billing complete, campaign and ads active, dates including today, review passed. Ads rejected for policy reasons can be edited and resubmitted.</p>

<p>Reporting shows impressions, clicks, spend, click-through rate, average CPC, average CPM and conversions. Impressions, clicks and CTR appear within minutes; spend lags, so a zero spend alongside impressions does not mean nothing has been charged. There are table, chart and CSV views. A sensible reading order for the first fortnight: first, which ad groups are getting impressions (are the context hints working); second, which variations have the best click-through rate (the message); third, which landing pages convert in your UTM-tagged analytics (the page).</p>

<p>One thing sets this channel apart from the ones you already run: the context hints and ad text are what the system reads. So what you learn in two weeks is not only which offer works but which sentence customers use to describe the need. That is equally valuable for organic visibility, and running both from one plan is covered in <a href="/en/academy/blog/chatgpt-ads-vs-organic-ai-visibility">ChatGPT Ads versus organic AI visibility</a>. Product-page rules for online shops are in <a href="/en/academy/blog/chatgpt-shopping-for-small-ecommerce-brands">ChatGPT shopping for small ecommerce brands</a>.</p>

<h2>How Markty helps</h2>

<p><strong>Markty AI does not run the ad panel; it builds the landing page, the customer-question list that feeds context hints, and the organic visibility that runs alongside paid.</strong> The SEO and GEO Specialist writes landing pages, service and product descriptions and FAQs in the plain sentences assistants can quote, so one page serves the ad's relevance score and organic answers at once. The Social Media Specialist carries the campaign message into an Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Reddit calendar.</p>

<p>The Manager package's AI Visibility engine asks your customers' real questions of ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Google AI Mode, Google AI Overviews and Perplexity every week and reports whether your name appears and which competitors do; the question list you wrote for context hints is its input. Every package includes a single-answer check, enough to see where you stand organically on a question before you launch. Everything publishes after you approve it.</p>

<p><em>This article is based on OpenAI's help centre and developer documentation as read on 18 September 2026; the panel and its rules change. It is not legal advice; consult your own adviser on privacy and advertising regulation.</em></p>