ChatGPT ads: how they work and what affiliates can run

ChatGPT ads are sponsored placements that OpenAI shows below ChatGPT's answers to users on the Free and Go plans, bought through OpenAI's self-serve Ads Manager or its sales team. Ads in ChatGPT went into testing in the US on February 9, 2026. As of October 2026, OpenAI's ad policy disallows real-money gambling and sports betting ads.

Rules checked October 28, 2026.

For a media buyer, this is a contextual network whose main signal is the conversation. For an iGaming affiliate, the buying tools are open but the gambling category is closed.

What are ChatGPT ads (and who sees them)

OpenAI ads are paid units that sit under a ChatGPT response, labelled as an ad and kept apart from the answer. OpenAI's help centre is direct about the line: "Ads do not influence ChatGPT's answers." Ads run on separate systems from the chat model, and advertisers cannot shape, rank or alter what ChatGPT says.

Who sees them, per OpenAI's help centre:

• Free and Go users may see ads.

• Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Edu accounts do not.

• Under-18s do not, where OpenAI identifies them from account data and age prediction.

• Temporary Chats show no ads.

• Free users can opt out by switching to an Ads-Free mode with lower message limits and fewer tools.

Ads are also kept away from sensitive conversations, including personal health, mental health and politics.

Self-serve buying through Ads Manager opened in the US in May 2026 and has since reached Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, 31 European markets (August 2026), India, the Middle East and North Africa. OpenAI also sells ads in more than 40 countries through its sales team and partners. Check OpenAI's Ads Manager availability page before you plan a market.

On privacy, OpenAI says it does not share conversations with advertisers and never sells user data. Advertisers get aggregated reporting, not chats, memories or personal details.

What ChatGPT ads look like

The main format is one ad unit under the answer: the advertiser's brand name and logo, a short title, a line of copy, an image and a landing-page link. The unit can hold one image or several. OpenAI is also testing a multi-image ad that shows while ChatGPT generates an image and disappears when the image is ready.

OpenAI's bulk-upload guide sets the creative limits:

That is less text than a search ad, so the title has to match what the user just asked about.

An illustrative example. A user asks ChatGPT to plan a long weekend in San Diego with two young kids. Under the answer, a hotel group's unit shows its logo, the title "Family suites, San Diego" and the line "Kids under 12 eat breakfast free". Both sit inside the recommended lengths.

Each ad has a menu where users can hide it, report it, read "About this ad", or share it into the chat with "Ask ChatGPT".

How ChatGPT ads are bought and what they cost

ChatGPT ads are sold in an auction that weighs relevance and the advertiser's bid.

Objectives and billing (OpenAI help centre, October 2026):

• Views: billed per 1,000 impressions (CPM).

• Clicks: billed per click (CPC).

• Conversions: optimised for conversions but billed per click (oCPC) or per 1,000 impressions (oCPM). You do not pay per conversion.

You set a maximum bid at the ad-group level, or keep the default "Maximize results" strategy, which adjusts bids automatically and does not guarantee a target CPA or ROAS. For CPC campaigns, OpenAI's help centre suggests starting at a maximum bid of $3 to $5 per click. That is a starting point, not a market price.

Budgets. Each campaign has a total budget and a daily budget. OpenAI treats the daily figure as an average over a Sunday-to-Saturday budget week in the ad account's time zone: one day's spend can reach twice the daily budget, and the week's spend is capped at seven times it. A campaign that uses up its weekly allowance early can stop delivering until the next week starts, even while it shows as active. Billing is postpay.

What the market has paid. These figures come from trade press, not OpenAI price lists:

• In the early pilot, OpenAI confirmed a $200,000 minimum commitment to Adweek.

• On April 10, 2026, Digiday reported that the pilot minimum had been lowered to $50,000.

• Digiday reported in April 2026 that CPMs had fallen from about $60 at launch to as low as $25 in some cases, and that CPC bids of $3 to $5 had appeared in Ads Manager.

• Trade press reported that self-serve buying carries no minimum commitment.

With no reported minimum, a small self-serve test is possible; auction prices vary by market and category.

How to advertise on ChatGPT: Ads Manager step by step

Advertising on ChatGPT takes six steps in Ads Manager, from sign-up to policy review, condensed here from OpenAI's help documentation.

1. Check your country and sign up at ads.openai.com. If Ads Manager is not live in your country, you can register but get no access until it is. OpenAI checks that advertisers are legitimate businesses.

2. Set up billing. Ads deliver only once account, billing and campaign requirements are met and the ad is approved.

3. Create a campaign. Pick the objective, the conversion event if you optimise for one, total and daily budget, dates, target countries, and optionally platforms and custom audiences. OpenAI recommends separate campaigns for different objectives, regions or product categories.

4. Create an ad group with a title, a bid approach and context hints.

5. Write the ads: brand name, logo, title, copy, image and landing page, inside the limits above.

6. Submit for review. OpenAI checks creative and landing page against its policies before anything runs.

Larger accounts can do the same through bulk upload or OpenAI's Advertiser API.

Context hints describe the conversations where your offer fits. OpenAI treats them as broad thematic signals, not exact-match keywords. A one-word hint such as "hotels" gives the system little to work with. "Parents planning a beach weekend in San Diego with young kids, comparing family rooms" describes a situation it can match to real chats.

Targeting and measurement

ChatGPT ads are targeted by country, audience and context rather than keyword, and conversions are measured with a pixel plus a server-side API. The levers OpenAI documents:

• Countries. Campaign docs describe location at country level. If your offer works only in some US states, confirm finer geo targeting with OpenAI first.

• Platforms, optionally.

• Custom audiences from your own hashed customer lists. An inclusion audience needs at least 25,000 matched users, counted after any exclusions; uploaded rows that are invalid, duplicated or unmatched do not count. Exclusion lists can be smaller. For campaigns in the EEA or Switzerland, OpenAI advises against custom audiences while ad personalization is unavailable there.

• Context hints at the ad-group level.

Reach depends on how well hints, title, copy and landing page fit real conversations.

OpenAI offers two measurement tools, the same browser-plus-server pairing Meta uses with its Pixel and Conversions API:

• OpenAI Pixel, a browser script that sets a first-party cookie and ties later conversions to an ad.

• Conversions API, a server-to-server feed. It does not capture the click reference for you: keep the oppref parameter from the landing URL, store it and send it back with the event.

Run both with shared event IDs to avoid double counting. Identifiers are hashed with SHA-256, and an Event Quality Score rates your signal.

For affiliates, the conversion usually happens on the advertiser's site. Your tracker has to receive it through postback tracking, then pass it to OpenAI with the stored click reference. Redirect chains are where oppref usually gets lost.

Reports cover impressions, clicks, spend, CTR, average CPC, average CPM and conversions, with spend data about seven to eight hours behind. There is no user-level or conversation-level data.

Can gambling and betting advertisers run ChatGPT ads?

No: as of October 2026, OpenAI's ad policies, last updated September 10, 2026, disallow real-money gambling and betting ads. The rule reads:

"Ads promoting products or services that involve wagering money on games of chance, skill, or uncertain outcomes are currently disallowed. This includes casino or betting promotions, online sports betting, lotteries, and poker or gaming platforms that offer cash prizes."

The carve-outs are narrow: "Ads for casinos may be permitted only when promoting lodging, travel, or entertainment experiences where gambling is not the focus (e.g., a hotel stay at a casino resort). Digital games that do not involve real-money wagering or cash prizes may also be allowed."

Other parts of the policy close the gaps around that rule:

• Placement. Conversations about regulated goods, with gambling named as an example, get no ads at all. Even an approved advertiser will not appear next to a betting question.

• Landing pages count. The standards cover copy, images and landing pages, and an ad must be consistent end to end. An approved creative cannot lead to a page with disallowed content.

• Advertiser eligibility. Businesses whose primary model sits in a restricted or prohibited category may be ineligible altogether. The policy does not name affiliates, but a site whose business is sending players to casinos or sportsbooks may be treated as promoting the disallowed category.

• Review and enforcement. OpenAI checks ads, landing pages and advertiser signals with classifiers and LLMs, keeps monitoring live ads, and treats pages its systems cannot evaluate as ineligible. Attempts to get around the policy can end in suspension or termination of the account.

Edge cases. The policy does not name prediction markets, sweepstakes casinos or daily fantasy sports, but its wording, money wagered on "uncertain outcomes" and platforms "that offer cash prizes", reads broadly enough to reach all three. A sweepstakes casino that redeems prizes for cash matches the "cash prizes" wording; a free-to-play social casino with no cash prizes is the kind of product the second exception describes. If your product sits near this line, get OpenAI's ads team to confirm in writing before you spend, and keep the landing page identical to what was reviewed. OpenAI says the category list "may evolve", so recheck the policy changelog before each new test. For event contracts, see how prediction markets work.

This is a summary of OpenAI's published ad policy, not legal advice.

ChatGPT ads vs Google Search and Meta

For gambling, Google and Meta have an approval path for licensed operators, and ChatGPT currently has none. For other verticals, ChatGPT is closest to search in intent, except that you describe situations instead of bidding on keywords.

Reddit's ad rules, including its gambling policy, are covered in our Reddit ads guide.

What affiliates should do now

Affiliates with gambling offers should stay out of ChatGPT ads for now; those in allowed categories can test small once tracking works.

• Organic visibility: being cited in ChatGPT's answers is not ad inventory. Our guide to ChatGPT SEO covers how that works.

• Offers in allowed categories (travel, consumer goods, software, education): start small, and plan for single-day spend of up to twice the daily budget. A media buyer should treat the first weeks as a learning budget.

• Objective: a Conversions campaign optimises on the events you send, so it is only as good as that feed. Until Pixel and server events are deduplicated and the Event Quality Score is healthy, buy on Clicks.

• Tracking: keep oppref through every redirect and get the advertiser's postback into your tracker before you scale.

FAQ

Does ChatGPT have ads?

Yes, ChatGPT has ads: OpenAI began testing them in the US on February 9, 2026, and has since added more markets. Free and Go users may see them. Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Edu accounts are ad-free, and accounts identified as under 18 get no ads.

Can I pay to advertise on ChatGPT?

Businesses can pay to advertise on ChatGPT if their country is supported and their product is in an allowed category. Sign up for ChatGPT ads at ads.openai.com, or buy through OpenAI's sales team or partners. Every ad goes through policy review.

How much does a ChatGPT ad cost?

ChatGPT ad prices are set in an auction. You pay per 1,000 impressions or per click, including on conversion campaigns. OpenAI suggests a $3 to $5 starting maximum CPC. The early pilot reportedly launched at about a $60 CPM with a $200,000 minimum; trade press reported that self-serve buying has no minimum commitment.

What do ChatGPT ads look like?

A ChatGPT ad is a labelled unit below the answer with the brand's name and logo, a short title, a line of copy, an image and a link. OpenAI is also testing a multi-image ad shown during image generation.

Why am I getting ads on ChatGPT?

You get ads on ChatGPT because you are on the Free or Go plan in a market where ads run. The ad is picked from your current conversation and, if personalization is on, from signals such as past chats and memory. You can turn personalization off, see why an ad was shown, switch Free to Ads-Free with lower limits, or upgrade to Plus or Pro. OpenAI says ad personalization is not yet available in the EEA and Switzerland.

Can I run gambling or betting ads on ChatGPT?

Gambling and betting ads cannot run on ChatGPT: as of October 2026, OpenAI's ad policy disallows casino, sports betting, lottery and cash-prize gaming ads. Casino resorts may advertise lodging and entertainment where gambling is not the focus.

Sources

OpenAI, Google and Meta policy and help pages below were checked on October 28, 2026.

• OpenAI, Ad policies (updated September 10, 2026)

• OpenAI Help, Ads in ChatGPT

• OpenAI Help, Ads in ChatGPT: The Basics

• OpenAI Help, Billing & Payment

• OpenAI Help, Creating campaigns

• OpenAI Help, Set up Custom Audiences

• OpenAI Help, Create ad groups

• OpenAI Help, Launch campaigns

• OpenAI Help, Conversion measurement

• OpenAI Developers, Conversions API

• OpenAI, New ways to buy ChatGPT ads

• OpenAI, ChatGPT Ads expands across Europe

• OpenAI, A milestone in expanding access to AI

• Adweek, $200,000 minimum commitment

• Digiday, ads manager test and $50,000 pilot minimum (April 10, 2026)

• Digiday, CPC buying and CPM trend (April 21, 2026)

• Axios, OpenAI launches self-serve ad platform (May 5, 2026)

• Digiday, US self-serve launch

• Digiday, UK launch

• Google Ads, Gambling and games policy (checked October 28, 2026)

• Meta, Online gambling and games (checked October 28, 2026)