ChatGPT ads are now a self-serve product. Since May 2026 a business can open an account in OpenAI's Ads Manager, set a daily budget and bid per click, and OpenAI says ChatGPT Ads are available in more than 60 countries, including the Czech Republic, Spain, Turkey, the UK and the US.
For a B2B software or IT company the questions are whether to spend there, how to test without waste and when to skip it. The answer depends on who your buyer is and which ChatGPT plan they use at work.
Below is what OpenAI's own pages say as of 27 September 2026, and how to act on it.
What are ChatGPT ads, and where do they appear?
A ChatGPT ad is a sponsored unit shown below the end of a response when OpenAI's system matches it to the conversation. It is labeled as sponsored, visually separate from the answer, and carries the advertiser's name, logo, title, description, image and link. One unit can show several advertisers, so a competitor may sit next to you.
OpenAI's advertising principles say ads do not influence answers and conversations stay private from advertisers. Ads are kept away from sensitive topics such as health, mental health and politics. The table draws on OpenAI's help center FAQ and advertiser guides; the right column is our B2B reading.
| Question | What OpenAI says | What it means for B2B |
|---|---|---|
| Who sees ads? | Free and Go users; not Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, Edu or under-18s | Buyers on company plans never see you |
| Where do ads appear? | Below the response, labeled as sponsored | You cannot buy a place inside the answer |
| What can you target? | Context hints, country, platform and custom audiences | No job titles; lists need 25,000 matched users |
| How do you pay? | CPM or CPC in a second-price auction, from 15 euros a day | Cheap to enter, slow to learn |
| What comes back? | Aggregated clicks, spend and conversions, never the chat | Pipeline has to be tracked in your CRM |
Who sees ChatGPT ads, and who never will
Ads are shown to users on the Free and Go plans. Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Edu accounts have no ads, and OpenAI does not show ads to accounts it identifies as belonging to people under 18. Testing began in the US on 9 February 2026 and has rolled out market by market since.
If you sell to companies, read that list twice. People with a Business or Enterprise seat from their employer often evaluate software at work, and they are outside the inventory. You reach the colleague researching on a free account, the founder of a small firm or an outside adviser.
That person is rarely the whole decision: Gartner's 2025 buyer survey found that B2B buying groups typically include 5 to 16 people. And in the EEA and Switzerland personalized ads are not available for now, so ads there rely on the current conversation rather than past chats or memory.
How to advertise on ChatGPT: who can buy and how
Larger advertisers can buy through OpenAI's sales team or agencies such as Dentsu, Omnicom, Publicis and WPP. Everyone else uses the self-serve Ads Manager, which OpenAI opened in beta on 5 May 2026 along with cost-per-click bidding. Check four conditions first:
- Your legal entity. The business that advertises and pays must be based in a country on the Ads Manager availability list.
- Review. OpenAI verifies new advertisers and checks your product against its ad policies, which for now focus on a limited set of consumer categories, including digital products and education.
- Home market first. Some new accounts can at first advertise only in their home country, until verification and a required level of spend there open up other countries.
- Restrictions. Financial, legal and health services are generally not allowed outside the US, and OpenAI can decline ads that conflict with its business interests or competitive position.
B2B software usually fits under digital products, but confirm it in the review. If your pipeline lives in HubSpot, OpenAI announced an integration in September 2026 for creating ChatGPT ads and following up on leads there.
How much do ChatGPT ads cost?
There is no list price. Ads are sold in a relevance-weighted, second-price auction, and you choose an objective: views, billed per 1,000 impressions (CPM); clicks, billed per valid click (CPC); or conversions, which steers delivery toward an event but still bills per click or impression, never per conversion.
For click campaigns, OpenAI's advertiser basics recommend starting with a maximum bid of USD 3 to 5 per click. The campaign setup guide sets a minimum daily budget of 15 euros, 25 US dollars or 350 Czech crowns, by billing currency. A daily budget averages out over the week, so one day can reach twice the amount.
OpenAI publishes no minimum commitment for buying through its sales team and, per its advertiser FAQ, no performance benchmarks yet. At the full recommended bid, 25 dollars a day buys roughly five to eight clicks: enough to learn over a few weeks, not a few days. The pages change often; check current figures before you commit.
ChatGPT ads targeting: what you can and cannot target
You do not buy keywords. At ad group level you write context hints that describe the conversations and situations where your offer is relevant. OpenAI says hints guide matching, but they are not exact-match keywords and do not guarantee delivery.
So brief the situation, not the product. Field service software is a category. Scheduling software for heating companies with 20 to 100 technicians who still plan jobs in spreadsheets is a context the system can match.
Campaigns can also be limited by country, region, platform and custom audiences built from your own lists. That is where B2B plans hit a wall: a custom audience needs 25,000 matched users before it can be used for inclusion, and OpenAI recommends 100,000. Smaller lists only work as exclusions. The campaign settings list no job title, industry or company size targeting, and in the EEA and Switzerland OpenAI advises against custom audiences for now.
How to run a small ChatGPT ads test
Treat the first campaign as a paid experiment with a written plan:
- Budget. A fixed amount you can afford to lose over four to six weeks, set as a daily budget as OpenAI suggests for newcomers. Say 30 euros a day for six weeks: about 1,260 euros.
- Audience. One country, one product and two or three ad groups, each built on one buyer situation. Outside the EEA and Switzerland, upload your customer list as an exclusion.
- Ads. Several distinct titles and descriptions per ad group, in your buyer's language. OpenAI's ad guide recommends a large, varied set.
- Landing page. The page that answers the buyer's question, never the home page, with a short form or booking link. It must not block OpenAI's crawlers (OAI-AdsBot and OAI-SearchBot), so check robots.txt and firewall rules.
- Metric and stop rule. One conversion event, such as a demo request, tracked from day one, plus qualified conversations counted in your CRM. Agree in advance what ends the test, for example no qualified conversation by the time the budget runs out.
Then leave it alone. OpenAI warns that delivery and spend can fluctuate during the beta, and daily changes on a handful of clicks teach you nothing. Review weekly, change one thing at a time and decide on the date you set.
How to measure ChatGPT ads when attribution is limited
Ads Manager reports impressions, clicks, spend, click-through rate, average CPC and CPM, and conversions, split by device, country and platform. You never see the conversation or the wording that triggered your ad, so there is no query report to prune. What you learn comes after the click, within three limits:
- Short windows. OpenAI's reporting guide credits conversions on a last-touch basis within a 7, 14 or 30 day click window, plus an optional one-day view window. A deal that closes three months after the click will not show up.
- Fresh events. The Conversions API accepts only events from the last seven days, so send conversions as they happen, not in a quarterly backfill.
- Consent. OpenAI tells advertisers to follow their site's consent requirements before sending measurement data. Ask your own counsel how the pixel fits your cookie banner and privacy notice.
Measure the first qualified step in Ads Manager and everything after it in your own systems. Add UTM parameters (Ads Manager can insert campaign and ad IDs), store them on the CRM record and ask new leads how they found you. After 60 to 90 days, compare cost per qualified conversation with your other channels.
When not to spend on ChatGPT ads
Skip or postpone the channel if one of these applies:
- Your buyers use company ChatGPT plans. Enterprise IT teams on Business or Enterprise seats will not see the ad.
- Your market is not covered, or a new account can only advertise at home while your buyers are abroad.
- Your category is restricted, or you compete with OpenAI. An AI assistant startup should take OpenAI's right to decline competing ads seriously.
- You need account-based targeting of a few hundred named companies.
- You cannot measure. If your CRM cannot tell which channel produced last quarter's meetings, this channel will not tell you either. Fix the tracking first.
- You are not in the answer yet. The organic mention inside the response is not for sale, and it reaches paid plans too. Start by checking whether ChatGPT recommends your company.
Alternatives to ChatGPT ads: AI visibility, LinkedIn and search
Organic AI visibility is about being named inside the answer, which users on every plan see. Our explainer on what generative engine optimization is covers the research, and our SEO and AI visibility service does the work.
LinkedIn ads let you target by job title, company, industry and company size, with a minimum audience of 300 member accounts. That is the account-based campaign ChatGPT cannot run.
Search ads capture stated demand, and they now reach AI answers too. Google says ads from existing Search, Shopping and Performance Max campaigns can show above or below AI Overviews in all 200+ markets where AI Overviews appear, and inside them in English in a shorter list of countries, including the US.
Our guide to what a B2B IT company should spend on marketing sizes the split from the qualified meetings you need.
Frequently asked questions
Can any company buy ChatGPT ads?
A business can, if its legal entity is based in a country where the self-serve Ads Manager is available and its product category is allowed. You open an account, add payment details and pass OpenAI's advertiser review. New accounts may start out limited to their home country.
What is the minimum budget for ChatGPT ads?
The minimum daily budget is currently 15 euros, 25 US dollars or 350 Czech crowns, by billing currency. You pay per 1,000 impressions or per click, priced by an auction, and OpenAI recommends starting click campaigns at a maximum bid of USD 3 to 5. With no published benchmarks, only your own test gives a reliable cost per lead.
Can ChatGPT ads target job titles or specific companies?
No. Campaigns can be limited by country, platform and custom audiences, and context hints describe the conversations you want. OpenAI lists no job title or company size targeting, and a custom audience needs 25,000 matched users for inclusion. For account-based campaigns, LinkedIn is the better tool.
Do people on ChatGPT Business or Enterprise see ads?
No. OpenAI says Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Edu accounts have no ads; only Free and Go users see them. If your buyers mainly use ChatGPT through a company plan, your ads will reach colleagues and smaller firms on free accounts rather than the core buying team.
Where ChatGPT ads fit in a B2B plan
ChatGPT ads are a narrow but real slice of demand capture: someone describing a problem in their own words, on a Free or Go account. Test them with a fixed budget and a decision date, and judge them on cost per qualified conversation like any other channel.
If you want a channel plan that puts ChatGPT in its place next to search, LinkedIn and Meta, that is what our paid advertising work covers, and the budgets are public on our marketing pricing page. If you need meetings rather than clicks, our lead generation service and Sales Engine plans guarantee a set number of qualified meetings every month.
Sources and further reading: OpenAI, Ads in ChatGPT: The Basics; OpenAI, user FAQ on ads; OpenAI, Ads Manager availability; OpenAI, creating campaigns; OpenAI, creating ads; OpenAI, custom audiences; OpenAI, measuring results; OpenAI, advertiser FAQ; OpenAI, Conversions API docs; OpenAI, advertising principles, January 2026; OpenAI, self-serve launch, May 2026; OpenAI, HubSpot integration, September 2026; OpenAI, Asia expansion, September 2026; OpenAI, ad policies; Gartner, B2B buyer survey, May 2025; LinkedIn, ad targeting options; Google Ads Help, ads and AI Overviews.