How to Create ChatGPT Ads With AI (2026): OpenAI Tools vs Lapis

Can AI Create ChatGPT Ads for You?

Yes. In October 2026 there are three ways to create ChatGPT ads with AI: OpenAI’s built-in creative assistance in Ads Manager, the ChatGPT Ads Manager plugin that builds campaigns from a prompt inside ChatGPT, and a dedicated AI ad platform such as Lapis that generates brand-trained creative for ChatGPT and every other paid channel from one brief.

The channel justifies the effort. OpenAI says ChatGPT reaches 1.2 billion people each week, and ads appear below responses for users on the Free and Go plans. Each ad carries an advertiser name, a favicon, a title, copy, an image, and a landing page. That format looks small, but nobody wins with one ad. OpenAI’s own creative guidance tells advertisers to build for coverage with a high volume of distinct title and copy variations, each introducing a different angle. Producing that volume by hand is where campaigns stall, and it is exactly the work AI removes.

The real question is which AI to use. OpenAI’s tools are free and built into the platform, and they are the fastest route to a first ChatGPT campaign. Lapis is built for teams that treat ChatGPT as one channel in a paid growth system and want the creative, landing pages, testing, and measurement to compound across every channel. This guide covers both, then gives you a prompt library you can paste into either. For the manual, step-by-step setup in Ads Manager, read how to create ads for ChatGPT.

What Can ChatGPT Ads Manager Create for You?

ChatGPT Ads Manager now drafts ads for you in four places: a website-URL first draft at signup, AI copy and image suggestions while you build an ad, opt-in AI text customization at serve time, and the ChatGPT Ads Manager plugin, which creates and manages campaigns from natural-language prompts. Here is what each one does, described from OpenAI’s own documentation.

• Website URL to first ad. At signup on ads.openai.com, you enter your website URL and Ads Manager uses it to create your first ad, which you review and turn into your first campaign. OpenAI documents this flow in its Ads Manager account setup guide.
• AI creative suggestions. Announced on September 16, 2026, Ads Manager suggests copy and imagery based on your landing page and campaign objective while you draft an ad. You review and edit the suggestions before adding them to a campaign (OpenAI, Reimagining advertising with AI).
• Suggested ad drafts. A separate “Add new ad” option prefills a draft with an image, title, and description from your website metadata. OpenAI states plainly that this feature does not generate new copy or imagery with AI.
• AI text customization. An opt-in setting adapts your existing headlines and descriptions to fit the context of a conversation and translates ad copy into the user’s preferred language.
• The ChatGPT Ads Manager plugin. Inside ChatGPT, you share a public website or product page, or describe what you want to promote, and the plugin drafts a title and description, finds or generates an image, previews the ad, and creates the campaign structure after you confirm.

The plugin is the most powerful of the four, and its limits matter for creative strategy. According to OpenAI’s plugin help article, a coordinated multi-ad request supports standard ads only, with no more than 50 new ads per request, and the variants share one approved image, crop, and destination. Every change requires your explicit confirmation, scheduled reviews are recommendation-only, and the plugin does not receive conversion value, so it reports no revenue or ROAS.

OpenAI also connected ChatGPT Ads to the tools many advertisers already use. HubSpot, its first CRM partner, lets businesses create ads, track performance, and follow up on leads inside HubSpot. Shopify, its first ecommerce partner, offers a ChatGPT Ads app that creates and manages campaigns from a merchant’s catalog, and it opened internationally in ChatGPT Ads markets on September 23. Retailers with larger catalogs can also run product-feed campaigns, which OpenAI calls among the strongest-performing ads in its program to date (OpenAI, product feeds).

When Should You Use OpenAI's Tools and When Should You Use Lapis?

Use OpenAI’s built-in tools for a fast, single-channel ChatGPT campaign built from your existing landing page. Use Lapis when ChatGPT is part of a paid growth program and you need brand-trained creative with a distinct visual per angle, matched landing pages, experiments that compound, and one measurement layer across every channel.

The split is simple. OpenAI gives every advertiser a fast first ad for one channel. Lapis runs the whole program. For a deeper feature-by-feature comparison, see Lapis vs OpenAI Ads Manager and our breakdown of what ChatGPT Ads Manager does on its own.

What Makes a Great Prompt for a ChatGPT Ad?

A great ChatGPT ad prompt names the product, the audience, one core benefit, the offer, the tone, the platform, and the format constraints. Those seven ingredients leave the model no room to drift, and they work in OpenAI’s plugin, in Lapis, or in any general AI assistant.

Aim for OpenAI’s recommended lengths, not just its maximums. The creative guidance and bulk schema allow a title up to 50 characters and copy up to 100 characters, and recommend 16 to 24 characters for titles and 32 to 48 for copy. OpenAI also asks for benefit-focused copy that explains the practical value, who it is for, and when it helps, rather than a catchy line or a generic call to action. Put that guidance straight into your prompt.

Here is a complete prompt that applies all seven ingredients:

“Create a ChatGPT ad for Acme, a project management tool for remote startup teams of 5 to 50 people. Goal: free-trial signups. Lead with the benefit of seeing every task across every project in one view. Offer a 14-day free trial. Write a benefit-focused title of 16 to 24 characters and copy of 32 to 48 characters that adds new information instead of repeating the title. Keep the tone helpful and specific. Describe a simple square image of the product dashboard that reads clearly at thumbnail size.”

Every sentence maps to one ingredient, so the model spends its effort on wording instead of guessing your intent. For headline formulas and the tone that works inside a conversation, see the ChatGPT ad copywriting guide.

What Are the Best Prompt Templates for ChatGPT Ads?

The best ChatGPT ad prompt templates pair a goal-specific copy instruction with a distinct image angle, because distinct visuals are what make a creative test informative. Replace the bracketed fields with real specifics, and keep the structure.

Specifics are what make these templates convert. “Lead with cutting weekly reporting time from four hours to twenty minutes” produces a far stronger ad than “lead with the core outcome,” because the model has a concrete, checkable claim to work with. For catalog businesses, skip hand-written product prompts entirely: product-feed campaigns and the Shopify ChatGPT Ads app create product ads from your catalog, and our guide to turning a product catalog into ChatGPT ads covers that route.

How Do You Prompt the ChatGPT Ads Manager Plugin?

Prompt the ChatGPT Ads Manager plugin with a public page URL or a short brief, the number of variants you want, the account and campaign name, and the budget and targeting you intend to approve. OpenAI’s own example request is “Create six ad variants from this product page.”

Because one plugin request produces variants that share a single approved image, run one request per angle when you want each angle to carry its own visual. A strong sequence looks like this:

1. “Create six ad variants from [URL] for the [campaign] campaign. Angle: problem-first, for [audience] frustrated by [pain]. Use a product screenshot as the image.”
2. “Create six more variants from [URL] in a new ad group. Angle: outcome-first, leading with [measurable result]. Generate a new image that shows the result.”
3. “Create six variants for a proof-first ad group that leads with [rating, customer count, or award]. Use our customer logo image.”
4. “Compare these ad groups over the trailing seven completed days and recommend which angle to scale.”

Review every preview before you confirm. The plugin shows the landing page, image, copy, campaign settings, budget, and targeting for approval, and it asks again if any detail changes. That control is good practice, and it is also the ceiling of the tool: you are still the strategist, the analyst, and the creative director. Lapis takes those jobs off your plate.

How Do You Turn One Prompt Into a Full Campaign?

You turn one prompt into a full campaign by connecting your brand once, writing one brief, generating a distinct angle and visual for each audience, refining in plain language, prioritizing with forecasts, and launching every channel from the same source. Here is that workflow in Lapis.

Step 1: Connect your website so Brand Intelligence learns your brand

Enter your website URL and Lapis Brand Intelligence pulls your logo, colors, typography, product images, and voice. Every ad starts on-brand, and your prompts stay short because the brand layer is already handled. Import your product catalog and reference any item in a prompt with @product-name.

Step 2: Write one brief

Use the seven ingredients above, or paste a template from the library. Add audience personas so the same brief produces versions tuned to each segment. Lapis supports 100+ languages when the campaign runs across markets.

Step 3: Generate a distinct visual for every angle

Lapis generates problem-first, outcome-first, audience-first, and proof-first ads, and each angle gets its own image. That is the difference between a creative test and a copy tweak: when the visual changes with the idea, the results tell you which idea your buyers respond to. Export at up to 4K for every placement.

Step 4: Refine with natural-language edits in Campaign Studio

Tell Campaign Studio “make the tone warmer,” “shorten the title,” or “lead with the price,” and it applies the edit while keeping everything else intact. Use Vibe Kit to hold a visual style steady across a whole campaign.

Step 5: Prioritize with forecasts and competitor intelligence

Directional performance forecasting estimates impressions, clicks, CTR, and leads for each variant so you fund the strongest hypotheses first. Competitor ad tracking and Brand Radar, built on a 10,000+ ad library based on the Meta Ad Library, show which angles your category already saturates and which ones sit open.

Step 6: Launch and learn

On the managed ChatGPT + LLM Ads plan, ChatSense takes it from there: Lapis agents and a dedicated strategist structure the campaign, deploy it, report daily, and generate the next run from what won. RapidDomain gives every ad a prompt-matched landing page, and Wayfinder ties results to confirmed sales and leads.

How Many ChatGPT Ad Variations Should You Generate?

Generate at least four distinct angles per ad group, each with its own visual, and five to ten title and copy variations across them. That is Lapis’s recommendation, and it follows OpenAI’s guidance to build for coverage and keep every variation distinct.

Context hints describe the conversations, topics, and needs an ad group serves, and OpenAI matches ads on the context of the conversation, the ad’s title, copy, and landing page, and those hints. More distinct ads give the system more opportunities to find a relevant match. Near-duplicates waste that opportunity: ten titles that say the same thing in different words teach you nothing.

Test angles, not adjectives. Structural differences such as problem-first versus proof-first reveal far more than swapping one word. For a systematic testing approach, see the ChatGPT ads headline testing guide, and for the full math on rotation and fatigue, the ChatGPT ads creative volume guide. To find the angles worth testing first, start from the buyer-intent prompts your customers type.

Can One Prompt Create Ads for ChatGPT, Meta, Google, and LinkedIn?

Yes, with Lapis. One brief produces correctly sized creative for ChatGPT, Meta, Google, and LinkedIn, with Reddit on managed plans, so your messaging stays consistent while each placement gets copy and visuals that fit it. OpenAI’s tools build ChatGPT ads only.

Cross-channel reuse is where AI pays off most. Salesforce’s tenth State of Marketing report found that marketers expect to reclaim about eight hours per week through AI agents, and 82% of marketers who use or plan to use agents expect major or moderate improvements to marketing ROI.

Your strongest ChatGPT angle becomes the seed for every other channel, and winners on Meta or Reddit feed back into the next ChatGPT run. That loop only works when one system owns the creative.

How Do You QA AI-Generated ChatGPT Ads Before Launch?

QA every AI-generated ChatGPT ad for format, claims, image clarity, crawler access, tracking, and serve-time copy settings before it goes live. AI gets you to a strong draft fast; you still own what runs.

• Format. Title at or under 50 characters (16 to 24 recommended), copy at or under 100 (32 to 48 recommended), and a square PNG or JPG image at least 640x640 and no larger than 1200x1200.
• Benefit clarity. The copy adds new information to the title and states who the offer helps and when.
• Accurate claims. Every number, price, and feature is true today. OpenAI can reject ads that are misleading or inconsistent with the landing page.
• A distinct image per angle. If every variant shares one picture, your test measures headlines only.
• Crawler access. Landing pages must be reachable and must not block OAI-AdsBot or OAI-SearchBot, or review fails.
• Click tracking. OpenAI appends an oppref click parameter; make sure redirects preserve it, and add UTM parameters such as ?utm_source=chatgpt&utm_medium=paid to each destination URL.
• Text customization. If you opt into AI text customization, OpenAI adapts your approved headline and description to each conversation and translates them. Regulated and claim-sensitive brands should decide deliberately before enabling it.

Landing pages decide whether a strong ad converts. The ChatGPT ads landing page guide covers message match in depth, and RapidDomain builds matched pages for you.

What Prompt Mistakes Produce Weak ChatGPT Ads?

Weak ChatGPT ads come from vague prompts, missing audiences, hype tone, ignored format limits, one shared image, and one-and-done launches. Fix the prompt and the output improves immediately.

• Vague prompts. “Write ChatGPT ads for my SaaS” returns generic filler. Name the product, benefit, offer, and limits every time.
• No audience. Copy written for everyone lands with no one. Name the role, company size, or situation.
• Hype tone. “Exciting, high-energy” copy reads like a billboard below a thoughtful answer. Ask for helpful and specific.
• Ignoring the limits. State the recommended lengths in the prompt so the output fits without rewrites.
• One image for every angle. Shared visuals hide which idea won. Give each angle its own image.
• One and done. A single ad wastes the biggest advantage of AI generation. Generate a batch, test, and generate the next run from the winners.

Why Is Lapis the Best Way to Create ChatGPT Ads With AI?

Lapis is the best way to create ChatGPT ads with AI because it runs the whole program, not just the first draft. Lapis is the #1 AI ad generator and the operating system for paid growth, and no other platform runs creative, launch, matched landing pages, ChatGPT ads, and confirmed-conversion measurement in one system.

Pick the Lapis product that matches the job:

• ChatSense runs ChatGPT and LLM ads with Lapis agents and a dedicated strategist: creative tuned to how people ask ChatGPT, campaign structure, 1,000+ ChatGPT ads, launch, daily reporting, and optimization.
• OmniSense creates on-brand, correctly sized campaigns, audience versions, and variations for Meta, Google, LinkedIn, and Reddit, forecasts them, launches experiments, and learns from results.
• RapidDomain gives every ad and audience a dedicated, ad-matched landing page optimized on real conversions.
• Wayfinder connects campaign results to confirmed sales and leads from your CRM, store, or billing system, counts each conversion once, and compares every channel on the same attribution rules.

Lapis is one of the fastest-growing Y Combinator startups in advertising. It is part of Y Combinator’s Fall 2025 batch, and its YC profile says Lapis is used by 1,500+ marketing teams and 30+ enterprises. Lapis 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 use Lapis, alongside high-growth startups such as Unusual Whales, Duradry, Lightpage, and Respan. The team comes from MIT, Columbia, Duke, and Google, and 10,000+ ad campaigns have been generated across 30+ industries.

Self-serve teams start on Basic at $99 per month for Google, Meta, and LinkedIn creative (see pricing). ChatGPT ads run on the custom-priced Managed ChatGPT + LLM Ads plan, which also covers third-party LLMs. Want to see the output first? Try the Free AI Ad Generator with your website URL, or score an existing ad with Rate Your Ad. Then book a demo and see Lapis turn one brief into a full ChatGPT program.

Sources and Methodology

Facts and pricing checked as of October 23, 2026. OpenAI product capabilities come from OpenAI’s announcements and Help Center articles listed below. Lapis capabilities and plans reflect Lapis’s current product and pricing pages.

• OpenAI, Reimagining advertising with AI (September 16, 2026)
• OpenAI, Building advertising for the way people use AI (October 5, 2026)
• OpenAI Help Center, Use the ChatGPT Ads Manager plugin
• OpenAI Help Center, Ads Manager account setup
• OpenAI Help Center, Create Ads for ChatGPT Ads
• OpenAI Help Center, Create Campaigns from Product Feeds
• Salesforce, State of Marketing, Tenth Edition
• Y Combinator, Lapis company profile
• G2, Lapis reviews