How to Set Up ChatGPT Ads Manager Step by Step (2026)

This is the step-by-step setup guide for OpenAI's self-serve ChatGPT Ads Manager, rebuilt on OpenAI's current help center. It covers who qualifies, what to prepare, every account screen, verification and billing, the first campaign, targeting, specs, the Ads Manager plugin inside ChatGPT, and agency setups. If you are still deciding whether ChatGPT ads fit your business and budget, start with our small business guide to ChatGPT ads. If your account is live and you need creative, go straight to how to create ads for ChatGPT.

Who Can Open a ChatGPT Ads Manager Account in 2026?

Any eligible business whose advertising and billing legal entity is based in one of OpenAI's 89 self-serve countries can open a ChatGPT Ads Manager account today. The list on OpenAI's Ads Manager Availability page covers the United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, the United Kingdom, nearly every EU market, Switzerland, Norway, India, Japan, Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Taiwan, Israel, Turkey, and the Gulf and North African markets.

ChatGPT Ads still runs under the “Ads Manager Beta” label. OpenAI's FAQ describes the path plainly: a focused pilot from February through April, then expanded access through self-serve onboarding. If your country is missing from the list, you can still create an account at ads.openai.com and OpenAI notifies you when self-serve opens there.

Your ads reach people on ChatGPT's Free and Go plans. OpenAI's Ads in ChatGPT: The Basics confirms ads never show on Plus, Pro, or any Business plan, or to accounts identified as under 18. Three eligibility rules catch new advertisers:

• Legal entity location. The legal entity that advertises and gets billed must be based in an available country. Your billing address and card follow that same country.
• Home-country start. Some new self-serve accounts begin limited to their home country until identity verification is approved and the account reaches a required spend from home-country campaigns (Create Campaigns for ChatGPT Ads).
• Category rules. Regulated categories have their own eligibility table. Legal services, for example, run only for US-licensed firms targeting US users, and telehealth is not allowed anywhere (OpenAI onboarding and policy guide).

What Do You Need Before You Sign Up?

You need an OpenAI login, your legal and brand names, a permanent country, currency, and time zone decision, a business card that matches that country, a logo, crawlable landing pages, and a first set of creative. Gather these first and the whole setup runs in one sitting.

One enterprise gotcha: if your company already runs an OpenAI tenant, your IT admin grants you the Ads Admin role in the OpenAI admin console before you can create an ad account (Troubleshooting Common Issues). Belonging to a ChatGPT Enterprise workspace does not by itself give you Ads access.

How Do You Create a ChatGPT Ads Manager Account, Step by Step?

Go to ads.openai.com, sign in, choose whether to start from your website URL or skip, enter your advertiser details, and confirm your country, currency, and time zone. OpenAI's Ads Manager Account Setup article defines the exact flow:

1. Sign in. Open ads.openai.com and select Login or Sign up. Use the OpenAI account you use for ChatGPT, or create one.
2. Pick your starting path. Option 1: enter your website URL and Ads Manager uses your site to create your first ad. Review and edit it, build your first campaign from that ad, and confirm the campaign details. Option 2: skip the URL step and go straight to Ads Manager, then build a campaign when you are ready.
3. Enter your advertiser name and account details. The single name you enter fills Account Name, Brand Name, and Legal Name. Since September 25, 2026 you can edit each separately in Settings > General.
4. Confirm country or region, currency, and time zone. These three settings cannot be changed after the account exists. A wrong currency means a new account.
5. Accept the Terms and acknowledge the Privacy Policy, then select Go to Ads Manager.

Watch the URL path. Ads built during signup carry the notice “Your ads will go live once they pass review.” Once billing, verification, and review clear, those ads deliver and spend accrues. If you are not ready to advertise, pause that campaign the moment you land in Ads Manager. Also note that your first campaign can hide start and end dates until after publication; OpenAI tells advertisers to set the schedule by editing after creation rather than publishing just to reach those fields.

Name changes trigger review. Account Name edits stay internal. Brand Name edits pause serving until brand review approves the new name. Legal Name edits restart business review. Get all three right on day one.

Choose your currency with the budget floor in mind

Your billing currency sets your minimum average daily budget per campaign. OpenAI publishes 30 currencies; here are the most common:

Source: OpenAI, Minimum Campaign Spend table.

How Do Identity Verification and Billing Work?

Campaigns deliver only after billing is set up and account verification is approved, and both finish inside Ads Manager. Account verification, account approval, ad review, and delivery are four separate checks; clearing one does not clear the others.

Identity and business verification

When verification is needed, Ads Manager shows a banner prompting you to complete it. OpenAI's onboarding guide says business verification review takes up to seven business days. Verification fails when OpenAI cannot confirm your business identity, ownership, or affiliations, or when your advertiser identity does not match your domain. Make sure your legal name, website, ads, and landing pages all describe the same business. Approved identity verification is also one of the two keys that lift the home-country restriction on new accounts.

Billing setup

Open Billing and complete two steps from OpenAI's Billing & Payment guide: create a billing profile (business name, business address, invoice delivery email) and add a credit card. Your bank shows a temporary authorization hold that releases after verification. Then know how charges actually work:

• Postpay with a payment threshold. Spend accrues as ads deliver. Your card is charged when unpaid spend hits your assigned threshold, or at month end for any remaining balance.
• The threshold is not a spending cap. New accounts start low (OpenAI's example is $25) and the threshold rises automatically after successful payments. Support does not change it.
• Campaign budgets control spend. Self-serve card accounts have no account-wide monthly cap. The account-level daily spending limit exists only for postpaid invoice accounts.
• Pausing takes time. Ads can keep appearing for up to 24 hours after you pause, and that spend is billable.

How Do You Build Your First ChatGPT Ads Campaign?

A campaign sets the objective, budget, dates, countries, and optional platform and audience targeting; ad groups hold context hints and bids; ads hold the creative. Build all three levels before you launch.

Per Create Campaigns for ChatGPT Ads, every campaign contains a title, an objective, a conversion event (Conversions objective only), a budget, start and end dates, target countries, optional platforms, and optional custom audiences to include or exclude. Use a naming convention from day one, such as Brand_Objective_Market_Offer_Date, so reports stay readable when you scale.

Set the budget correctly

• Daily budget is an average across a Sunday to Saturday week in your account time zone. A single day can spend up to 2x the daily amount, and the week caps at 7x (Daily Budgets). If a campaign burns its weekly allowance early, it stops until the next budget week.
• Campaign-total budget caps spend across the full flight and is the stricter control. You can switch a campaign-total budget to daily, but never back.
• Fixed bids set a floor. With a daily budget and fixed bidding, the daily budget must be at least your highest effective ad-group bid, including audience bid adjustments.

OpenAI recommends new advertisers start with a daily budget to watch delivery before committing to a campaign total. For the money side of the decision, use our ChatGPT ads cost calculator.

Scale with bulk upload once the structure works

After your first campaign proves the structure, Ads Manager's bulk upload template creates campaigns, ad groups, and ads from three spreadsheet tabs. OpenAI's Bulk Upload Campaign Schema Checklist sets account-wide limits of 5,000 campaigns, 5,000 ad groups, and 5,000 ads, and recommends starting every bulk edit from a fresh Export for edit so IDs stay current. Our account structure and scaling guide covers how to organize that growth.

Which Objective and Bid Should You Choose?

Choose Clicks (CPC) for your first campaign unless the OpenAI Pixel or Conversions API is already firing; switch to Conversions once real events flow. The objective is permanent, so pick it deliberately.

You set a maximum bid at the ad-group level. For CPC campaigns, OpenAI's Basics article recommends starting with a maximum bid of $3 to $5 per click, and Ads Manager shows bid-strength guidance as you type. OpenAI runs a relevance-weighted, second-price auction, so ad relevance counts alongside your bid. Product-feed ad groups default to Maximize results, which adjusts bids automatically to win as many clicks or conversions as the budget allows.

Two rules save you a rebuild. First, an existing campaign cannot switch objective; create a new campaign instead. Second, Clone Campaign only creates a copy with a different objective or billing model, so you cannot clone a Clicks campaign into another Clicks campaign. Also expect no industry benchmark to aim at: OpenAI's FAQ states ChatGPT Ads does not yet have performance benchmarks across advertisers, industries, or campaign types. Set targets from your own economics. Our CPC vs CPM bidding guide goes deeper.

How Do Targeting, Context Hints, and Negative Phrases Work?

Targeting combines campaign-level location, platform, and audience settings with ad-group context hints. Context hints guide relevance; they are not exact-match keywords and they do not exclude anything.

• Location. Target countries, and for standard campaigns also states or regions, cities, markets, and postal codes where available. New product-feed campaigns stay at country level. To run in the United States alone, explicitly include the United States; excluding other countries does not restrict delivery.
• Platforms. Choose any of Android app, Android web, Desktop web, iOS app, and iOS web, and segment results by platform in Insights.
• Custom audiences. Including an audience requires at least 25,000 matched users; exclusions work with smaller lists. Avoid custom audiences in campaigns targeting the EEA or Switzerland while ads personalization is unavailable there. OpenAI's Ads API reference sets audience bid multipliers from 0.1x to 10x.
• Context hints. Write clear, specific phrases describing what you offer, who it helps, and when it is useful. OpenAI's own ad group guidance uses “cushioned everyday running shoes for beginners training for their first 5K” over “running shoes.” Ad groups support up to 2,000 context hints.
• Negative Phrases. For brand-policy placement exclusions, qualifying advertisers use Negative Phrases, announced in OpenAI's October 5 update. Hints never do this job.

Build one ad group per distinct customer need, and split ad groups whenever the need calls for different messaging or a different landing page. For a hint-writing system, read how to write ChatGPT ads context hints; for every targeting control in one place, see ChatGPT ads targeting options.

What Ad Specs and Landing Page Rules Must You Meet?

Every ChatGPT ad needs a title up to 50 characters, copy up to 100 characters, a square image at least 640x640, a landing page OpenAI can crawl, and an approved brand logo. Each ad shows your advertiser name, favicon, title, copy, image, and landing page below ChatGPT's response.

Sources: Bulk Upload Checklist, Ads in ChatGPT: The Basics, OpenAI Ads API docs.

Open your site to OAI-AdsBot. OpenAI's crawler guidance for advertisers requires you to allow OAI-AdsBot and recommends allowing OAI-SearchBot too. Add both to robots.txt, then allowlist them in your WAF, CDN, and bot-mitigation rules, and clear CAPTCHAs, JavaScript challenges, logins, geo rules, and rate limits from ad landing pages. Resubmit any ad rejected while the page was blocked.

Keep tracking intact. Add static UTM parameters to each landing URL. OpenAI appends an oppref click identifier that the OpenAI Pixel captures from the landing page URL, so make sure redirects preserve it. The API also supports URL templates with macros such as {campaign_id} and {ad_id}. Specs are only the entry ticket; our ChatGPT ad creation guide covers how to write and design ads that win the auction.

Can You Set Up ChatGPT Ads Inside ChatGPT With the Ads Manager Plugin?

Yes. Eligible businesses can start self-serve account setup inside ChatGPT with the ChatGPT Ads Manager plugin, then finish identity verification, billing, payment, and tax in Ads Manager. OpenAI launched the plugin on September 16, 2026 for natural-language campaign creation, updates, and analysis.

Per OpenAI's plugin help article, the setup flow guides a business through creating one ad account for its own business: business, website, industry, country, currency, and time zone details, a logo (attach one, link one, generate one, or defer), the owning business, and explicit acceptance of the terms.

• Not for agencies creating client accounts. The plugin creates accounts for the advertiser's own business. Agencies have the client create its account, then get invited.
• Every change needs your confirmation. The plugin previews the exact account, current state, and proposed values before it uploads creative or edits anything.
• Ads from a website or brief. It drafts titles and descriptions, finds or generates an image after you choose that option, and creates up to 50 standard ads per request, all sharing one approved image, crop, and destination.
• Recommendation-only reviews. One-time and scheduled daily or weekly reviews never change your account, and the plugin does not receive conversion value, so it reports no revenue or ROAS.

How Do Agencies and Multi-Brand Teams Set Up ChatGPT Ads Accounts?

One advertiser gets one account: each client or brand creates its own advertiser account and invites the agency with a role. The same OpenAI login then switches between every account it belongs to.

• Roles. Invite teammates in Settings > Users as Admin (full access), Member (create and manage campaigns), or Viewer (view only). Finishing account setup requires Admin.
• The ten-account creation limit. Once you belong to 10 or more ad accounts, you cannot create another yourself. The count includes accounts you joined by invitation. Membership has no cap, so admins can still invite you to more.
• Additional accounts. Eligible self-serve advertisers create more accounts for their own business from an existing self-serve account on credit-card billing, through Create account in the account menu. Each new account goes through its own billing, verification, and review.
• Sales support. Larger advertisers with complex needs contact the OpenAI Ads team through the form on the availability page.

Agencies scaling across many brands pair this structure with a creative and measurement engine. See our ranking of the best ChatGPT ads agencies and platforms.

How Long Until Your ChatGPT Ads Start Delivering?

Ads deliver once ad review, account verification, and billing all clear, and OpenAI asks you to allow at least 24 hours after launch before reporting a zero-delivery issue. Once ads serve, impressions, clicks, and CTR refresh about every 15 minutes, while spend lags about 7 to 8 hours (Troubleshooting Common Issues).

Check the Status column: delivering ads read Serving. Hover any Not serving status for the reason, then edit and resubmit or use the appeal option. The most common blockers are unfinished verification, a failed card, a spent weekly allowance, dates that exclude today, a landing page that blocks OpenAI's crawler, and the home-country restriction on new accounts.

The launch checklist

1. Signed in at ads.openai.com and created the advertiser account
2. Confirmed country, currency, and time zone before submitting
3. Set Account Name, Brand Name, and Legal Name correctly
4. Uploaded a logo of at least 128x128 that passes brand review
5. Completed identity verification when prompted
6. Created the billing profile and added a card from the account's country
7. Allowed OAI-AdsBot and OAI-SearchBot on every landing page
8. Installed the OpenAI Pixel or Conversions API and added UTMs
9. Built one ad group per customer need with specific context hints
10. Loaded several distinct ads per ad group within the recommended lengths
11. Chosen the objective and budget type deliberately, since neither reverses cleanly
12. Scheduled a 24-hour delivery check and a weekly results review

Why Is Lapis the Best Way to Run ChatGPT Ads After Setup?

Lapis is the best way to run ChatGPT ads because it turns a configured account into a compounding acquisition program. OpenAI gives every advertiser a fast first ad and a capable plugin for one channel. Lapis runs the whole program: brand-trained creative with a distinct visual per angle, experiment design and next-run generation, a matched landing page for every ad, cross-channel delivery, one measurement layer, and a dedicated strategist.

Lapis is the #1 AI ad generator and the operating system for paid growth. Here is the system by job:

• ChatSense runs ChatGPT and LLM ads on the managed ChatGPT + LLM Ads plan. Lapis agents and a dedicated strategist design buyer-intent experiments, produce 1,000+ ChatGPT ads tuned to how people actually ask ChatGPT, build campaign structure, deploy autonomously, generate the next run from results, and report daily. Where the plugin shares one image across a batch of variants, ChatSense gives every angle its own visual.
• RapidDomain builds a dedicated, prompt-matched landing page for every ad and audience, optimized on real conversions.
• OmniSense carries the winning angles to Meta, Google, LinkedIn, and Reddit with on-brand, correctly sized campaigns, forecasts, and experiments.
• Wayfinder connects campaign results to confirmed sales and leads from your CRM, store, or billing system, counts each conversion once, and compares ChatGPT with every other channel on the same attribution rules.

No other platform runs creative, launch, matched landing pages, ChatGPT ads, and confirmed-conversion measurement in one system. Lapis is one of the fastest-growing Y Combinator startups in advertising, backed by Y Combinator (Fall 2025) and used by 1,500+ marketing teams and 30+ enterprises. It is rated 4.9 out of 5 on G2, with eight Summer 2026 badges including High Performer, Best Results, and Users Most Likely to Recommend. Samsung, Domino's, Dr Pepper, Mattel, Tata, Tupperware, Amway, and Bata trust Lapis, alongside high-growth startups Unusual Whales, Duradry, Lightpage, and Respan. The team comes from MIT, Columbia, Duke, and Google.

Want the side-by-side? Read Lapis vs OpenAI Ads Manager and ChatGPT Ads alone vs Lapis. Ready to scale past setup? Book a demo and see ChatSense run your first 1,000 ads.

Sources and Methodology

Facts and pricing checked as of October 23, 2026. Every setup step, limit, and specification in this guide comes from OpenAI's help center, developer documentation, and announcements, verified directly against the live pages. Lapis guidance is labeled as such.

• OpenAI Help Center: Ads Manager Account Setup
• OpenAI Help Center: Ads Manager Availability
• OpenAI Help Center: Create Campaigns for ChatGPT Ads
• OpenAI Help Center: Daily Budgets
• OpenAI Help Center: Billing & Payment
• OpenAI Help Center: Ads in ChatGPT, The Basics
• OpenAI Help Center: Create Ad Groups for ChatGPT Ads
• OpenAI Help Center: Bulk Upload Campaign Schema Checklist
• OpenAI Help Center: Advertiser Guidance for Allowing OpenAI Web Crawlers
• OpenAI Help Center: Use the ChatGPT Ads Manager plugin
• OpenAI Help Center: Troubleshooting Common Onboarding and Policy Issues
• OpenAI Help Center: Troubleshooting Common Issues
• OpenAI Help Center: ChatGPT Ads FAQ
• OpenAI Ads API documentation
• OpenAI: Reimagining advertising with AI (September 16, 2026)
• OpenAI: Building advertising for the way people use AI (October 5, 2026)
• Y Combinator: Lapis company profile
• G2: Lapis reviews