10 Ways to Advertise on ChatGPT in 2026

Can You Advertise on ChatGPT in 2026?

Yes. As of October 12, 2026, any eligible business with a legal entity in one of 63 countries can open a self-serve ChatGPT Ads account, launch from a $25 daily budget in the US, and reach Free and Go users on a platform OpenAI says reaches 1.2 billion people each week. Self-serve onboarding is available through Ads Manager Beta.

The channel went from invitation-only to self-serve in seven months. OpenAI began testing ads in the US on February 9, 2026. Digiday reported on April 17 that the pilot's minimum spend had fallen from $250,000 to $50,000, and on April 21 that OpenAI had switched on CPC bids of $3 to $5. OpenAI's August 31 post says Ads Manager arrived in May 2026, opened the platform to small and midsize businesses, and helped ChatGPT Ads reach a $1 billion annualized revenue run rate in under 200 days. On September 23, seven Southeast Asian markets and Taiwan took self-serve to 63 countries. New Street Research analyst Dan Salmon wrote in an October 8 investor note that an OpenAI and AppsFlyer presentation showed more than 60,000 advertisers, up from more than 20,000 at the end of August.

Most categories qualify. OpenAI's Ad Policies, updated September 10, 2026, focus on consumer goods, local services, travel and entertainment, and digital products and education. Financial services, health, and legal services run in the US only, approved case by case. Alcohol, gambling, dating, political ads, and individual job or housing listings are disallowed. The best industries for ChatGPT Ads breakdown scores each vertical, and the complete guide to ChatGPT ads covers the mechanics.

Which Ways to Advertise on ChatGPT Can You Run Yourself?

Six of the 10 ways put you in the auction directly: self-serve Ads Manager, the Ads Manager plugin, AI creative suggestions, product feed campaigns, the Shopify app, and bulk upload. All six feed the same relevance-weighted, second-price auction, start from OpenAI's $3 to $5 CPC guidance, and measure through the OpenAI Pixel and Conversions API.

1. Self-Serve Ads Manager: The Direct Auction

Ads Manager is the foundation every other way sits on. You build campaigns (objective, budget, dates, countries, platforms, audiences), ad groups (one product, theme, or customer need, with context hints and a bid), and ads (a title up to 50 characters, copy up to 100, a square image, and a landing page).

Views bills per 1,000 impressions, Clicks bills per valid click, and Conversions optimizes toward one standard event while billing per click (oCPC) or per 1,000 impressions (oCPM). You never pay per conversion. Search Engine Journal reported on September 8, 2026 that Maximize results became the default bid strategy for eligible new ad groups in August, so switch to a manual cap when you need a hard ceiling. Targeting covers countries down to postal codes, five platforms, and custom audiences that need 25,000 matched users for inclusion. The Ads Manager setup guide walks every screen, and the ChatGPT Ads targeting options guide covers each control.

2. The ChatGPT Ads Manager Plugin Inside ChatGPT

OpenAI launched the Ads Manager plugin on September 16, 2026. You describe what you want in plain language inside ChatGPT, and the plugin turns a website or brief into a campaign, updates settings, analyzes performance, and recommends next steps, confirming every change before it saves.

Know the ceiling. OpenAI's plugin documentation states a multi-ad request creates up to 50 standard ad variants, and every variant shares one approved image, crop, and destination. Fifty headlines on one picture and one URL are one experiment, not fifty. Use the plugin for drafts, edits, and questions like "compare my ad groups over the last seven days." The guide to creating ChatGPT ads with AI compares plugin output with brand-trained creative, and the guide to analyzing ad performance with ChatGPT has the reporting prompts.

3. AI Creative Suggestions in Ads Manager

Since September 16, Ads Manager suggests copy and imagery from your landing page and campaign objective while you draft, and you approve every suggestion. OpenAI's email to advertisers, reported by Search Engine Roundtable that day, said the feature was in testing with broader availability in the following weeks. The opt-in text customization setting goes further: it adapts your headlines and descriptions to the conversation and translates them into the user's preferred language.

Suggestions summarize your page. They do not know your margins, your best buyer situations, or which claims you can prove. Use them for coverage, then write the winning angles with the ChatGPT ad copywriting guide and the specs in how to create ads for ChatGPT.

4. Product Feed Campaigns

OpenAI's product feed guide says ads created from product feeds have been among the strongest-performing ads in its program to date. Product ads show images, titles, star ratings, prices, sale prices, and your brand, and ad groups pick products with filters and custom labels.

Create the feed under the Tools tab and import it by CSV or TXT, a hosted URL, or SFTP. Uploaded items expire after two weeks, so production catalogs belong on a hosted URL or scheduled SFTP. During the beta, feed products appear in ads only, not in organic ChatGPT conversations. The product catalog to ChatGPT ads guide covers field mapping and how to split a catalog into ad groups.

5. The ChatGPT Ads App for Shopify

OpenAI named Shopify its first ecommerce partner on September 16, 2026. The free ChatGPT Ads app connects or creates an ad account, syncs your catalog to Ads Manager, builds ads from product data, installs the OpenAI Pixel for Shopify, and reports performance inside Shopify. It launched for US merchants, and eMarketer reported that OpenAI planned international availability in live markets from September 23.

It is the fastest ecommerce start on the platform. The trade-off is creative depth: synced product data produces product ads, not the situation-specific angles that win comparison conversations. Pair the app with standard ads for your top three buyer situations, using the ChatGPT ads playbook for Shopify and DTC brands.

6. Bulk Upload for Scale

Bulk upload turns a spreadsheet with campaigns, ad groups, and ads tabs into a live account. OpenAI's checklist recommends titles of 16 to 24 characters (50 maximum) and copy of 32 to 48 characters (100 maximum), requires square PNG or JPG images no larger than 1200 x 1200 at public URLs, and takes context hints as a JSON list.

Two rules catch teams out. An uploaded hint list replaces the ad group's existing list, and each account holds at most 5,000 campaigns, 5,000 ad groups, and 5,000 ads. Start every edit from Export for edit so the file carries current IDs. Move to bulk upload once you pass about 50 ads or two markets, using the high-volume ChatGPT ads batch system and the ChatGPT ad image specs guide.

Which Ways to Advertise on ChatGPT Hand the Work to Someone Else?

Four ways put someone else's hands on the account: OpenAI's Ads Solutions team, agency and technology partners, a managed AI partner, and Sponsored Agents. OpenAI's September 23 post names the routes: the Ads Solutions team, agency partners including dentsu, Havas Media, Omnicom Media, Publicis Groupe, and WPP, technology partners, and self-serve Ads Manager.

7. OpenAI's Ads Solutions Team for Large Advertisers

ChatGPT Ads began as a managed-sales, agency, and partner-led business, in OpenAI's words, and on August 31 OpenAI said the product was available in more than 40 countries through the Ads Solutions team and its partners. CNBC reported on September 10, 2026 that the first placements in February ran with retailers such as Best Buy and Williams-Sonoma.

This route suits national brands committing six figures, launching several markets at once, or chasing early formats. Digiday's April reporting put the pilot entry point at $50,000. The limit is scope: OpenAI's team optimizes ChatGPT, not your Google, Meta, and LinkedIn spend.

8. Agency and Technology Partners

OpenAI counted more than 50 technology and measurement partners on August 31, and three change how you buy:

• HubSpot. OpenAI's first CRM partner since September 16. You connect or create a ChatGPT Ads account, create ads, track performance, and follow up on leads inside HubSpot.
• Amazon DSP. Amazon Ads announced on September 10, 2026 a US pilot selling ChatGPT inventory through Amazon DSP as a managed service, on CPC or CPM, with product feed ads built from catalogs. OpenAI still controls delivery, and Delta Vacations is among the first brands testing it.
• Measurement partners. OpenAI's October 5 announcement added Hightouch, Tealium, and LiveRamp for conversion data, attribution partners such as Triple Whale, Northbeam, and DV Rockerbox, and geo incrementality tests with Haus, Measured, and WorkMagic.

Holding-company agencies make sense if you already pay one. Most port Google Search keyword playbooks onto a channel that buys situations, which is why best ChatGPT ads agencies and AI-native platforms ranks AI-native operators first. B2B teams get the HubSpot lead workflow in the ChatGPT ads guide for B2B SaaS.

9. A Managed AI Partner: Lapis Managed ChatGPT + LLM Ads

A managed AI partner runs the program, not just the account. Lapis Managed ChatGPT + LLM Ads runs ChatGPT Ads end to end with Lapis agents and a dedicated strategist. ChatSense builds situation-based ad groups and creative tuned to how people ask ChatGPT, RapidDomain builds a dedicated landing page for every ad, and Wayfinder ties results to confirmed sales and leads, counting each conversion once.

The same plan runs Google AI Overviews and AI Mode placements through the Google campaigns Lapis manages and buys AI app inventory through networks such as Koah and Gravity. Where the plugin's 50 variants share one image and destination, Lapis ships distinct angles, each with its own visual and matched page, and optimizes daily on what converts. The ChatGPT Ads Manager vs Lapis comparison shows exactly what the native tools leave to you.

10. Sponsored Agents (Limited US Alpha)

Sponsored Agents turn an ad click into a conversation. OpenAI announced on September 16, 2026 that after seeing a relevant ad, a user can start a clearly labeled conversation with a business-sponsored agent, ask follow-up questions, and follow a link to the business's website. That conversation is separate from ChatGPT's answers and from the user's original chat.

OpenAI's help center states the format is open only to selected advertisers in a limited alpha test. Angi is piloting it for home services, guiding homeowners into its service request flow, and Wayfair confirmed to Digiday on September 14 that it is testing at limited scale. Lapis runs Sponsored Agents for clients in OpenAI's limited US alpha. The agentic ads guide explains where agent formats fit.

The next format is scheduled. OpenAI announced on October 5, 2026 a multi-image visual ad format during image generation for Free and Go users, labeled and separate from the image, with US testing starting later in October. Build square, product-in-use imagery now.

How Do You Advertise on ChatGPT Step by Step?

Advertise on ChatGPT in nine steps: create an Ads Manager account, verify and add billing, install the Pixel and Conversions API, create a campaign, build one ad group per buyer situation, set the bid from your economics, write 8 to 12 distinct ads, match each ad group to a landing page, and launch after review.

1. Create the account. Sign in to OpenAI Ads Manager with your OpenAI account. Your advertiser name fills three fields you edit separately later: Account Name (internal), Brand Name (shown beside your ads), and Legal Name (billing and verification). Country, currency, and time zone are permanent.
2. Verify and add billing. Billing is postpaid on a card. Some new self-serve accounts deliver only in their home country until identity verification is approved and a required spend is reached there.
3. Install measurement before the first dollar. Fire the OpenAI Pixel on your real conversion, send it through the Conversions API with a matching event ID, keep the oppref parameter through every redirect, and allow OAI-AdsBot and OAI-SearchBot. The Pixel and Conversions API tracking guide has the code.
4. Create the campaign. Pick Clicks unless your conversion event already fires dozens of times a week, set a daily budget, and explicitly include every target country. Objectives are locked at creation.
5. Build one ad group per buyer situation. Give each 3 to 6 context hints written as What, Who, and When, using the context hints guide.
6. Set the bid. Maximum CPC equals target cost per conversion times landing page conversion rate. A $150 target at a 3% rate gives a $4.50 cap.
7. Write 8 to 12 distinct ads per ad group. Aim for 16 to 24 character titles, 32 to 48 character copy, a square image of at least 640 x 640, and a different angle in every ad.
8. Match every ad group to a landing page. The headline restates the ad's promise, per the landing page requirements guide.
9. Launch, then wait 24 hours. Impressions, clicks, and CTR refresh about every 15 minutes, while spend lags 7 to 8 hours. Change nothing until every ad reads Serving.

How Much Does It Cost to Advertise on ChatGPT?

ChatGPT Ads charges no setup fee. The minimum daily budget is $25 in the US (EUR 15, GBP 15, CAD 25, INR 725), OpenAI recommends starting CPC bids at $3 to $5, and advertiser tests published by Search Engine Journal on September 8, 2026 show average CPCs from $4.41 to $22.89 by advertiser and market.

A daily budget is a seven-day average: one day can spend 2x, and each Sunday to Saturday week caps at 7x. Burn the allowance by Wednesday and delivery stops until Sunday. Digiday reported CPMs dropping from $60 at launch to as low as $25 by April. By September, the published tests looked like this:

Same platform, a 5x CPC spread, and the winners ran specific use cases with downstream measurement.

Most guides tell you to test ChatGPT ads with a few hundred dollars. That is how you get zero conversions. A test needs about 30 conversions to judge. At a 3% landing page conversion rate that is 1,000 clicks, and at a $5 CPC that is $5,000 over three to four weeks. A $25 daily budget at $5 buys five clicks a day.

The six self-serve ways cost media only. Agencies add fees, detailed in how much an ad agency costs in 2026, and Lapis managed plans carry custom pricing. The ChatGPT ads cost calculator lists minimums in every currency, and the ChatGPT ads budget guide has 21 to 30 day test plans.

Who Can See ChatGPT Ads?

ChatGPT ads reach adults on the Free and Go plans in markets where ads run. Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Edu accounts see no ads, and ads never show to accounts identified as under 18 or inside Temporary Chats. OpenAI's help center states ads stay away from sensitive topics such as personal health, mental health, and politics.

Each ad appears below a response as one labeled unit with your advertiser name, favicon, title, copy, image, and landing page. Selection weighs the conversation's context and intent, your landing page, creative, context hints, and targeting, plus select signals from the user's broader ChatGPT history when ads personalization is on.

• Users control personalization. Personalized ads are unavailable in the EEA and Switzerland, so OpenAI tells advertisers to skip custom audiences there.
• Advertisers never see chats. You get aggregated reporting, never conversations, memories, or identities.
• Exclusions are narrow. Customer list exclusions work at any size. Negative Phrases are open to qualifying advertisers, and Adthena reported on August 21, 2026 that the field takes up to 100 phrases.

OpenAI calls ChatGPT the world's largest AI-native consumer platform, but it is not the only assistant selling ads. The comparison of which AI assistants have ads covers Google AI Mode, Microsoft Copilot, and the ad-free assistants.

What Do You Need Before You Launch ChatGPT Ads?

Before you launch ChatGPT ads you need a legal entity in an available country, an approved favicon and Brand Name, a matched landing page per ad group that OpenAI's crawlers can reach, the Pixel and Conversions API on your real conversion, 3 to 6 context hints per ad group, 8 to 12 distinct ads, and a budget that buys data.

Add two numbers, your target cost per conversion and your landing page conversion rate, because together they set your bid. Small businesses get a tighter version of this list in the small business ChatGPT ads guide.

The ChatGPT Advertising Options Matrix

The ChatGPT Advertising Options Matrix compares all 10 ways on who each is for, minimum budget, setup time, control, creative workload, measurement, and best use. Read across your row, then run the launch checklist below it. The strongest programs combine Ways 1, 4 or 6, and 9.

The Sponsored Agents row comes from OpenAI's interest form for Sponsored Agents with HubSpot, which lists creative automation, automatic bidding, and a minimum daily ad spend for 28 days, with the amount confirmed before onboarding.

First-Campaign Launch Checklist

1. Your legal entity's country is on the 63-country list and matches billing.
2. Your Brand Name and favicon match your website.
3. robots.txt and your firewall allow OAI-AdsBot and OAI-SearchBot.
4. Every landing URL keeps query strings, so oppref survives redirects.
5. The Pixel fires on form submit or purchase, and the Conversions API sends the same event with the same event ID.
6. Every ad URL carries UTM parameters.
7. The campaign explicitly includes each target country, home country first on a new account.
8. Each ad group covers one buyer situation with 3 to 6 context hints.
9. Each ad group holds 8 to 12 ads across at least four distinct angles.
10. Each ad group points to a page whose headline restates the ad's promise.
11. Maximum CPC sits at break-even, and the budget buys at least 10 clicks per ad group per day.
12. Your customer list is uploaded as an exclusion audience.
13. Your decision rule is written down before launch.

Which Way to Advertise on ChatGPT Is Best for Your Business?

Pick your way in from three inputs: monthly budget, catalog size, and how much control you want. One offer under $3,000 a month runs on self-serve Ads Manager plus the plugin. Retailers start with the Shopify app or a product feed. HubSpot teams connect there. Above $10,000 a month, a managed operator earns its fee.

The 12 best ChatGPT ads strategies covers planning, and the ranking of ad channels for mid-funnel marketing shows where ChatGPT sits against Google, Meta, and LinkedIn.

Worked Scenario: Three Businesses Choose Their Way In

A Denver plumbing company, a Shopify skincare brand, and a B2B SaaS company each pick a different door. The inputs are each company's own planning numbers.

The plumber runs two ad groups, emergency repair and water heater replacement, with ZIP code targeting; the local service ChatGPT ads guide covers call tracking. The skincare brand puts $4,200 behind the Shopify feed campaign and $1,800 behind standard ads for situations like "retinol alternatives for sensitive skin." First-order ROAS is 0.65x and six-month value is 1.8x, so judge it on new customers: Triple Whale found 93% of Portland Leather's ChatGPT Ads visitors were new, per OpenAI's October 5 announcement.

The SaaS company connects HubSpot for lead follow-up and hands the program to Lapis. Its cost per opportunity is $1,000, and the lever is fit: Floyd Blaikie's test found 5 of 146 identified companies matched its ICP. Customer exclusions, situation-specific hints, and ICP-qualifying pages move that number.

What Are the Biggest Mistakes When Advertising on ChatGPT?

The biggest mistakes when advertising on ChatGPT come from buying it like Google Search: one broad ad group, keyword-list hints, a homepage landing, pixel-only tracking, and a few hundred dollars judged in a week. Every published failure traces to a build error like these.

• Underfunding the test. Five clicks a day never reaches 30 conversions. Fund 1,000 clicks.
• Broad messaging. Hostinger's nearly $70,000 test found specific use cases won and broad messaging struggled.
• Homepage landings. OpenAI's creative guide tells advertisers to link the most relevant page, not a generic homepage.
• Search-grade CTR expectations. Common Thread Collective's client earned 3.3x to 6.8x ROAS at a 0.94% CTR. Judge revenue.
• Ignoring fit. Clicks from the wrong companies cost more than no clicks. Exclude customers and qualify on the page.

Why Is Lapis the Best Way to Advertise on ChatGPT?

Lapis is the best way to advertise on ChatGPT because Ads Manager gives you the auction and Lapis gives you the program: situation-based ad groups, distinct angles, a matched page for every ad, daily optimization, confirmed revenue through Wayfinder, and Sponsored Agents in OpenAI's limited US alpha.

Lapis is one of the fastest-growing Y Combinator startups, and it is built to take over the work legacy agencies and ad buyers used to do. Lapis is a Y Combinator Fall 2025 company used by 1,500+ marketing teams and 30+ enterprises, rated 4.9 out of 5 on G2 with eight badges, with customers such as Samsung, Domino's, Dr Pepper, Mattel, and Tata.

• ChatSense turns buyer situations into ad groups, context hints, and distinct creative tuned to how people ask ChatGPT, then launches, reports daily, and optimizes on what converts.
• RapidDomain builds a dedicated landing page for every ad and optimizes it against real conversions.
• Wayfinder connects results to confirmed sales and leads, counts each conversion once, and compares every channel on the same attribution rules.
• OmniSense turns the same brief into Meta, Google, and LinkedIn campaigns, with Reddit on managed plans.
• Managed ChatGPT + LLM Ads runs ChatGPT Ads end to end, plus Google AI Overviews and AI Mode placements, AI app inventory through networks such as Koah and Gravity, and Sponsored Agents for clients in OpenAI's limited US alpha.

In-house by hand, one person writes 12 ads per situation, builds a page for each, and reconciles three dashboards weekly. A legacy agency bolts a keyword playbook onto a channel that buys conversations. The platform's own tools optimize one channel. Lapis runs the whole loop across channels and proves it in revenue; the analysis of whether OpenAI will build what Lapis does explains why. Book a demo to see your plan.

Sources and Methodology

This guide draws on OpenAI's announcements, help center articles, and ad policies, partner announcements from Amazon Ads, Shopify, HubSpot, and Angi, trade reporting, and the questions marketers ask on r/PPC and in top-ranking guides. Facts are current as of October 12, 2026.

• OpenAI, "Reimagining advertising with AI," September 16, 2026
• OpenAI, "Building advertising for the way people use AI," October 5, 2026
• OpenAI, "A milestone in expanding access to AI," August 31, 2026
• OpenAI, "ChatGPT Ads expands to Southeast Asia and Taiwan," September 23, 2026
• OpenAI, "Ad policies," updated September 10, 2026
• OpenAI Help Center, "Ads in ChatGPT: The Basics"
• OpenAI Help Center, "Creating campaigns for ChatGPT Ads"
• OpenAI Help Center, "Use the ChatGPT Ads Manager plugin"
• OpenAI Help Center, "Create Campaigns from Product Feeds"
• OpenAI Help Center, "Bulk Upload Campaign Schema Checklist"
• OpenAI Help Center, "Sponsored Agents in ChatGPT Ads"
• Amazon Ads, "Amazon Ads announces new integration to support advertising in ChatGPT," September 10, 2026
• CNBC, "Amazon gives OpenAI's ad business a boost, letting its advertisers into ChatGPT," September 10, 2026
• eMarketer, "OpenAI expands ChatGPT ads to Shopify storefronts," September 17, 2026
• Adthena, "ChatGPT Ads adds negative phrases," August 21, 2026
• Digiday, "'Everything is coming down': ChatGPT ads are getting cheaper," April 17, 2026
• Digiday, "OpenAI's next ChatGPT ad format: click to chat, not to site," September 14, 2026
• Search Engine Journal, "6 Months Into ChatGPT Ads, Advertisers Still Don't Know What 'Good' Looks Like," September 8, 2026
• Search Engine Roundtable, "OpenAI Testing Sponsored Agents For ChatGPT Ads," September 16, 2026
• New Street Research, "OpenAI Ads: Now over 60K advertisers, latest innovations target META budgets but investors still focused on GOOGL," October 8, 2026

Related Lapis Resources

• How to Set Up ChatGPT Ads Manager Step by Step (2026)
• What Are ChatGPT Ads? The Complete Guide for 2026
• How Much Do ChatGPT Ads Cost? Pricing and Budget Calculator (2026)
• ChatGPT Ads Manager vs Lapis: What It Does, What You Still Need (2026)
• Best ChatGPT Ads Agencies and AI-Native Platforms in 2026