There’s a new way to get in front of millions of people, and most brands haven’t caught on yet.
OpenAI’s official advertising platform is now available for businesses to place their ads directly below ChatGPT responses.
In March 2026, OpenAI’s advertising platform reached Australia and New Zealand, then on May 5, 2026 the fully self-service platform was opened to advertisers in the United States And then a few months later in June 2026, it reached Japan and South Korea as well as the United Kingdom, which became the first European market to launch ChatGPT ads.
There are a lot of mysteries around LLMs themselves, so it’s not surprising that OpenAI’s advertising platform is also mysterious for some of the advertisers.
But it shouldn’t be.
As a media buyer myself I always used to say – once you know one advertising platform very well the others will be easy to unlock because most of the logic will be the same.
The same is with OpenAI’s Ads Manager and campaign setup.
Overview of The Ads Manager
When you come to Ads Manager first of all what you will see is the Performance Trend dashboard, where you can see your data (spend, Impressions, Clicks, CPC) on different date ranges.
There are by default date ranges like 7 days, 14 days, 30 days, or you can choose a custom date range.
If you want to see deeper data, you can also use segments and filter your campaigns by device or country.
On the left side you can find a menu which includes Overview, along with:
- Campaigns – That redirects you directly to the campaign manager.
- Tools – Under which you can find change history
- Conversions – Where you can set up a Data source, create a conversion event, implement and log events, and link events to campaigns.
- Feed – Here you can upload your product feed, which helps you to keep your ads updated with the latest items, prices, discounts and availability.
- Billing – Here you can choose a billing method and create a billing profile.
- Settings – Here you can simply add general information about the account, such as account name, timezone and logo. You can also find API keys here.
API keys help you connect your apps or tools to OpenAI’s models. They allow you to automate tasks like generating ad copy, analyzing campaigns, creating content variations, and integrating AI into your workflows. In short, an API key acts as a secure access pass for using OpenAI programmatically.
Campaign Creation
The logic for creating a campaign itself is very simple and similar to other platforms.
First you create a campaign, then an ad group and ad.
Campaign creation starts from something very simple but yet very important – the campaign name. Some marketers don’t spend a lot of time on such things as campaign names, but actually it’s very important so you can track your campaigns properly and also keep your ad account hygiene.
During the campaign creation process you need to choose an Objective, it can be Reach, Clicks or Conversions. Think very well what kind of end result you want from your campaign and based on that choose the objective. Remember that the algorithm does what you asked for – if you asked for as many clicks as possible – it will do so, if you asked for conversions – it will bring conversions.
If you want to run campaigns with a conversion objective, you need first to set up conversion events in the conversion section on the left side of the page under the tools.
After you choose the objective on the campaign level you also need to add a location for the campaign. Compared with other advertising platforms, location is usually under the ad group but in OpenAI’s advertising platform this is slightly different.
At the moment you can choose from 7 locations where your ads can appear:
- United States
- Australia
- Canada
- Japan
- New Zealand
- South Korea
- United Kingdom
The last thing to do on a campaign level is to set a budget.
You can choose whether to have a daily budget or a campaign total budget. Remember after you launch the campaign you can’t change the budget type but you can adjust the budget itself.
Ad Group
When creating your ad group, first remember to keep the naming convention simple yet informative about its purpose.
The second step here is to set your bid, which depends on your chosen objective:
- If you choose clicks as your objective – you are bidding on CPC (Cost Per Click).
- If you choose Reach objective then you are bidding on CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions).
- For conversions you are bidding on CPA (Cost per Action/Conversion).
If you are confused what kind of bid to enter, there is a nice helper on the side to understand what kind of bid to choose. It shows you whether or not your bids will deliver for the campaign.
The next step is to add a default destination URL which will be used for new ads in this particular ad group. Also, destination URL for specific creative will be added on ad creation stage.
And the last optional step on ad group creation is to add Context hints. Describe the conversations, topics, or keywords where your products or services may be relevant; these hints guide matching but aren’t exact-match targeting rules.
Creating Ads
So we come to the last part before launching a new ChatGPT ads campaign – ads creation.
Don’t forget to add a name – an informative ad name which later you can include in your UTM can help you to understand which visual performs best and optimize your campaign properly.
The next step is the Destination URL. Here you can put your URL with UTM together, so you can track and see your creative performance using third-party tracking tools such as Google Analytics. You can append a static UTM to your link because automatic UTMs are not possible on OpenAI’s Ads Manager.
The 3 next steps are about creating the Ad itself:
- Add headline – maximum 50 characters
- Add description – maximum 100 characters
- Add visual – jpg or png formats at least 256 x 256 px
If you want to create one more ad you can do it two ways: duplicate the existing one and change only the visuals for example, or you can choose to create a new one from scratch.
After you are all set with your campaign, ad group and ads, you just click the “Next: Review” button.
After creating an ad you will see your campaign summary. Once you double-check it and if everything looks good, just click “Publish” and wait for the first results to appear on the dashboard.
Key Moments While Setting Up a Campaign
- Objective – You need to clearly know what end result you want to have and based on that choose the right objective.
- Budget – Don’t forget to give a bigger budget at the beginning. It can help to bring better results sooner or at the very least, give you better understanding sooner about your campaigns performance.
- Bid – Remember you set the maximum amount you’ll pay for each bid
- Context hints – This is optional but it helps to find the right audience, and the right audience means your budget will be better spent well.
- Creative part – An eye-catching headline, clear description and informative visual will help your ad to perform.
Tracking Your Competitors
After you launched on ChatGPT you may also be curious about what your competitors are doing on the platform.
OpenAI doesn’t have their own “Ad library” where you can track such a thing, but luckily there is a tool trendos.com, which reveals which competitors are paying to appear in the AI answers your customers see every day.
Trendos Ad Radar shows Impression share, and overall impressions based on the date range you choose, prompt groups, prompts and country. You can actually see what kind of actual ads they are running, including their copy, visuals and what URL link they are using.
Based on Trendos research, there was a 315% increase in brands running ads on ChatGPT between May to June 2026, showing that competition on the platform is rapidly increasing. As the space becomes more crowded, visibility and understanding brand digital strategies are becoming increasingly important.
Final Thoughts
As ChatGPT becomes a trusted source for millions of users, it is also becoming an important space for brands to build visibility and connect with audiences.
The key to success is to take the skills and experience developed across other platforms and adapt them to this evolving campaign landscape.
