How to advertise on ChatGPT? A guide to ChatGPT Ads in 2026

To advertise on ChatGPT, a company creates an account in OpenAI's Ads Manager at ads.openai.com, picks an objective, sets budget and country and builds ads that appear below the answer, labeled as sponsored. In Brazil, ads started on August 4, 2026, and self-serve opened two days later. This guide covers the steps, what the policy prohibits and how paying for an ad differs from being cited in the answer.

What is ChatGPT Ads?

It is OpenAI's advertising platform inside ChatGPT. The ad appears below the answer, separate from it and labeled as sponsored, for adult users on the Free and Go plans. OpenAI states that advertising does not change what ChatGPT answers.

The ad that is shown is chosen through a relevance-weighted, second-price auction. According to OpenAI's help center, the system weighs the context and intent of the conversation, the ad copy, the landing page and the context hints the advertiser provides. Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Education subscribers see no ads, and neither do accounts identified as belonging to users under 18.

Advertisers receive only aggregated performance data, such as impressions, clicks and conversions. OpenAI states that conversations, memories and personal details are not shared with advertisers.

Where is ChatGPT Ads available, and since when?

Ads are available in more than 40 countries, according to OpenAI in August 2026. In Brazil, ads started showing to users on August 4, 2026, and on August 6 self-serve at ads.openai.com opened to companies headquartered in Brazil, with no agency required.

Sources: OpenAI (05/05/2026 and 08/31/2026), CNN Brasil and Meio & Mensagem (08/04/2026), Times Brasil (08/07/2026) and TechCrunch (10/05/2026), accessed 10/15/2026.

Brazil is among ChatGPT's three largest markets by weekly active users, alongside the United States and India, according to CNN Brasil. Search interest followed the launch: on Google, searches from Brazil for the Portuguese equivalents of "how to advertise on ChatGPT" and "ChatGPT Ads Brazil" peaked in August 2026.

How do you advertise on ChatGPT, step by step?

There are six steps: check whether your industry may advertise, create and verify the Ads Manager account, choose the campaign objective, set budget and audience, build ad groups with context hints, and prepare the landing page and measurement.

The order prevents rework. An ad in a prohibited category is rejected at review, and a campaign with the wrong objective has to be rebuilt, because the objective cannot change once saved.

Step 1 · Check whether your industry may advertise

OpenAI's ad policies, updated on September 10, 2026, prohibit whole categories and restrict others by country. Outside the United States, financial and health services are generally prohibited, and legal services are not allowed. The table in the section on who cannot advertise summarizes the rules.

Step 2 · Create and verify the Ads Manager account

Sign-up happens at ads.openai.com. Ads only run after business verification and billing are complete and after the creative passes policy review. New self-serve accounts may be limited to their home country until they meet verification and spend requirements.

Step 3 · Choose the campaign objective

There are three objectives: Views, billed per thousand impressions (CPM); Clicks, billed per valid click (CPC); and Conversions, optimized for an event such as a purchase or sign-up, billed per click or per impression. The objective sets pricing and optimization and cannot be changed later.

Step 4 · Set budget, dates and audience

The budget can be a campaign total or daily, and the daily budget has a minimum that varies by billing currency. Targeting covers country and region where available, platform (Android and iOS apps and mobile or desktop web) and custom audiences, which need at least 25,000 matched users.

Step 5 · Build ad groups with context hints

Each group gathers ads for one product, service or customer need. Context hints describe the conversations where the ad is useful; according to OpenAI, they are not exact-match keywords and do not guarantee delivery. A specific hint works better than a generic one, and several ads per group let you test different approaches.

Step 6 · Prepare the landing page and measurement

Under OpenAI's policy, ads or landing pages its systems cannot review are not eligible to run. A page whose text is in HTML, readable without JavaScript and outside a PDF, meets that requirement and is the same page the AI reads in order to cite. To measure results, OpenAI offers a pixel and a conversions API, and the Insights panel shows performance by platform.

The page standard a machine can read is covered in why AI assistants can't read PDFs.

How much does it cost to advertise on ChatGPT?

There is no rate card, because the price comes out of an auction. The company pays per thousand impressions (CPM), per click (CPC) or for results optimized toward conversions, within a total or daily budget. The daily budget has a minimum that varies by currency.

Cost per click depends on competition for the same conversation context and on the ad's relevance, because the auction weighs both. On August 31, 2026, OpenAI reported that cost-per-click and outcome-optimized bidding already accounted for most campaigns.

Which companies cannot advertise on ChatGPT?

Those in categories OpenAI's policy prohibits in every country, such as adult content, alcohol and tobacco, gambling, recreational drugs and political content. Outside the United States, financial and health services are generally prohibited, and legal services are not allowed.

Source: OpenAI ad policies, updated 09/10/2026, accessed 10/15/2026.

Even in an allowed category, ads do not appear in sensitive conversations, such as personal health or emotionally vulnerable situations. OpenAI also reserves the right to decline advertisers and creatives.

For financial firms outside the United States, the rule leaves one way to show up when an investor asks ChatGPT: being cited as a source inside the answer. What earns that citation is covered in AI Visibility for financial firms.

How does advertising on ChatGPT differ from appearing in the answer?

The ad sits below the answer, labeled as sponsored, and shows while there is budget. The citation sits inside the answer, as a source the AI chose, and depends on the page being read, understood and trusted. The first is paid media; the second is the result of GEO.

Sources: OpenAI help center and ad policies, accessed 10/15/2026.

The two work together. The ad reaches people already close to buying, and the citation builds the reference the AI repeats in questions with no commercial intent, where no ad appears. The landing page serves both: the same readable page OpenAI reviews to approve the ad is the one the search crawler reads to cite. The organic steps are in how to get your company to appear in ChatGPT.

When is it worth hiring a ChatGPT Ads agency?

When the company wants to test the channel without building its own team, or wants to measure ads and organic presence in ChatGPT together. Self-serve needs no agency; the work lies in choosing objective, context and page and in reading the results with a method.

ReBo is a generative marketing agency and manages ChatGPT Ads campaigns alongside its GEO work. It checks whether the category may advertise, sets up the campaign and ad groups, prepares the landing page to the standard the AI reads and measures ads and citations in the same round. See ReBo's service, or use the questions in how to choose a GEO agency to assess any vendor.

Keep reading

To see how the answer picks its sources, read how ChatGPT chooses the sources it cites. For a first snapshot of your company, run the 20-minute test. For the comparison between the disciplines, see GEO vs SEO.