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How to advertise on ChatGPT, step by step (2026)

Setting up ChatGPT ads feels like a search campaign with the keyword list surgically removed. The entry fee is low: OpenAI lists a $25 minimum daily budget for USD accounts.

If you want the big picture first (who sees ChatGPT ads, how the auction works, what it has cost so far), start with our ChatGPT ads guide. This post is the hands-on companion: the clicks, settings and decisions in the order you'll actually make them.

Platform facts below come from OpenAI's help center and developer docs. Where it's our judgment, we say so.

What do you need before you start advertising on ChatGPT?

How do you set up a ChatGPT Ads Manager account?

1. Sign in at ads.openai.com. You can create your first ad during signup or skip straight to Ads Manager. Skip it. Measurement comes first.
2. Enter the advertiser name. It seeds three names: Account Name (internal only), Brand Name (shown next to your ads in ChatGPT) and Legal Name (billing and verification). You can edit each later in Settings, but changing Brand or Legal Name triggers a review that can pause delivery.
3. Pick country, currency and time zone carefully. They're permanent for that account. If you report in USD on Pacific time everywhere else, match it here.
4. Add billing. Card, billing address, business name and an invoice email.
5. Confirm your logo. It sits beside your brand name on every ad, so use the version that reads at thumbnail size.
6. Invite the team. Roles are Admin, Member (create and manage campaigns) and Viewer. Give finance and leadership Viewer, not Member.

How do you set up conversion tracking for ChatGPT ads?

OpenAI gives you three tools. Use all three if you can.

1. The measurement pixel

A JavaScript snippet you initialize with your pixel ID. When someone clicks an ad, the landing URL carries an oppref parameter; the pixel stores it in a first-party __oppref cookie for 30 days. Standard events include lead_created, appointment_scheduled, registration_completed, trial_started, subscription_created and order_created, plus a custom type. Turn on debug: true during setup to log activity to the browser console.

2. The Conversions API

Server-side events sent to OpenAI with a Conversions API key as a bearer token. Each event needs an ID, a type, a millisecond timestamp from the last 7 days and an action source such as web or offline. Email, phone and names go in as SHA-256 hashes of normalized values. A validate_only flag lets you test without saving data.

For B2B this is the important one. The conversion you care about (a qualified lead, a booked meeting) usually happens in your CRM, not on the page. The offline action source lets you send it back.

3. UTMs and deduplication

If you run pixel and API together, send the same event ID from both so OpenAI counts the conversion once. The first event received wins. Then add UTM parameters to every destination URL so ChatGPT traffic is a clean segment in analytics and CRM. A convention that keeps reporting sane:

Attribution: the click-through window is a setting on your account; view-through is a fixed 1 day after an eligible impression, and a click takes precedence when both apply.

How should you structure campaigns and ad groups?

ChatGPT ads use a familiar three-level hierarchy: campaign, ad group, ad.

• Campaign: objective, budget, start and end dates, locations, platforms and optional custom audiences. Locations go down to states, cities and postal codes where available. Platforms are Android app, Android web, desktop web, iOS app and iOS web. Custom audiences need at least 25,000 matched users to include; exclusion lists can be smaller. One catch: some new accounts can only target their home country until identity verification and a spend threshold clear.
• Budget: campaign-total, or daily. A daily budget is an average across 7 days: any single day can spend up to 2x, and the week caps at 7x.
• Ad group: one shared product, service or customer need, with its context hints and bid strategy. OpenAI recommends separate ad groups for meaningfully different use cases.
• Ad: the creative. OpenAI pushes volume with variety: several title and description variations per offering, each a different angle.

Here's how a hypothetical 40-person compliance software company might lay out a first test:

Three needs, three pages, two or three ads each. Enough to learn without spreading a small budget thin.

How do you write context hints that match?

Context hints are plain-language descriptions of the conversations where your ad belongs. OpenAI is explicit that they aren't exact-match keywords or targeting rules and don't guarantee delivery. Its own example: "cushioned everyday running shoes for beginners training for their first 5K" beats "running shoes."

A working formula: who + the job + the moment + a constraint. Watch it applied to hypothetical B2B drafts:

Our judgment, not an OpenAI rule: 3 to 5 hints per ad group, each describing a different angle on the same need. If a hint would make sense in a different ad group, it belongs in that ad group.

What are the creative specs for ChatGPT ads?

Every ad shows your brand name, logo, a title, a description, an image and the landing page URL. OpenAI's help center tells you to keep titles concise and stay within the recommended character limits, but doesn't print the numbers.

Third-party numbers disagree, from roughly 16 characters for the title and 32 for the description to limits several times longer. Trust the character counter in Ads Manager, and write the short version first so you never have to cut. Ads Manager can also prefill a draft from your site's metadata; OpenAI says that feature doesn't write new copy, so treat it as a starting point, not a finished ad.

• Title: the need, not the brand. "First SOC 2 audit?" beats your company name, which already sits above it.
• Description: one concrete offer. A checklist, a template, a benchmark.
• Image: show the thing (a product screen, the checklist itself). Reported guidance says not to make your logo the main visual.

Should you bid on CPM, CPC or conversions?

Two constraints shape the choice. Conversion-optimized campaigns don't currently support custom events, so you need a standard one like lead_created. And the objective and billing option can't be changed after creation; switching means cloning the campaign.

Then pick a bid strategy per ad group. Maximize results is preselected for eligible new ad groups: it sets bids automatically to get the most clicks or conversions from your budget, with no guaranteed CPA, CPC or ROAS. Manual: Max bid is the only hard ceiling.

Our default: start on Clicks with a manual max bid in OpenAI's $3 to $5 range, confirm conversions are flowing cleanly for two to three weeks, then test Maximize results or clone into a Conversions campaign if volume supports it.

Where should each ad group send the click?

To the most relevant page you have for that one need. Someone who just spent four messages describing their first SOC 2 audit should land on a page about first SOC 2 audits, not a homepage. The landing page is also one of the inputs OpenAI uses for relevance, so a matching page helps before the click as well as after it. If you're new to the idea, our message match guide covers how to line up ad, hint and page.

What does a first 30 days test plan look like?

One rule across all four weeks: change one variable at a time. The platform gives you aggregated data only, so if you change hints, copy and bids at once, you'll never know what moved the number.

If the test looks good, the next question is whether those leads would have come anyway. A geo or audience holdout answers that; our post on incrementality testing shows how to set one up.

What should you check every week?

Where this breaks

• No query-level data. You'll never see the conversations that triggered your ad. Learning is slower than in search, by design.
• Moving specs. Character limits, minimums and features have changed several times in 2026. Recheck before every launch.
• Small B2B volume. Niche needs may not produce enough conversions for the Conversions objective to learn. Clicks may stay the right choice.

Wondering whether this belongs next to your search budget at all? Our ChatGPT ads vs. Google Search ads comparison is written for exactly that call.

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