ChatGPT ads are now open to businesses through OpenAI Ads Manager. Millions of people use ChatGPT every week to compare products, shortlist vendors and decide what to buy, and ads let you appear in a labelled sponsored slot below the answer at that exact moment. This guide covers the full ChatGPT account setup for advertisers: signing in, verifying your business, adding billing, inviting your team, writing context hints and launching your first campaign.
Spacemen Digital works on SEO, AEO and paid media, so we approach ChatGPT ads from the intent side: what people are asking, and where a paid placement adds to the organic visibility you are already building in AI search.
How ChatGPT ads work
ChatGPT ads are matched to conversations, not keywords. When someone discusses a problem, a product category or a purchase with ChatGPT, OpenAI’s ad system reads the context of that conversation and compares it with your signals: the context hints you write, your ad copy and your landing page. A relevance-weighted auction then decides which ad is shown, so the highest bid does not automatically win.
A few points that matter for planning:
- Ads appear below the response in a clearly labelled sponsored area. They do not change the answer ChatGPT gives.
- Ads currently serve to users on ChatGPT’s Free and Go plans. Paid subscribers on Plus, Pro and Business plans do not see them.
- There are no exact-match keywords. Context hints describe the kinds of conversations your offer is useful in.
- Ads Manager reports impressions, clicks, spend, CTR, average CPC, average CPM and conversions.
The mental shift from Google Ads is simple. Stop thinking about a search term like “CRM software” and start thinking about the situations where someone would want your product. “Comparing CRM tools for a ten-person sales team” is a context hint. “CRM software” is not.
What to keep ready before you start
The ChatGPT account setup takes about fifteen minutes if you have everything at hand. Gather these first:
- An OpenAI account (your existing ChatGPT login works)
- Legal business name, website URL and industry
- Tax details: GST number for an Indian business, VAT or the local equivalent elsewhere
- Company logo or favicon
- Business country, currency and time zone
- A credit or debit card, a billing address and an email for invoices
- Documents for advertiser verification, such as business registration and proof of address
Decide the currency and time zone carefully. They are set at the account level and are difficult to change once billing is live, so agree them with your finance team before you create the account.
ChatGPT account setup for ads: five steps
Step 1. Sign in to OpenAI and open Ads Manager
Go to ads.openai.com and sign in with the OpenAI account that should own the ad account. If you do not have one, create it with an email address, a Google or Apple login, or a phone number. Use a company-controlled login rather than a personal one, because this account will hold billing and admin rights.
Step 2. Add your business details
Ads Manager asks for your company name, website, logo and industry, along with the account country, currency and time zone. Indian businesses are prompted for a GST number at this stage. OpenAI may pull your logo from your website automatically. Check what it picked up and replace it if the crop or version is wrong, because this is what appears in your ads.
Step 3. Complete advertiser verification
A verification notice appears in Ads Manager once your details are saved. Click Start Verification, choose Business as the advertiser type and follow the prompts. Make sure the name and address you enter match your registration documents exactly. Mismatches are a common cause of delays on any ad platform, and campaigns will not serve until verification is approved.
Step 4. Add billing and a payment method
Enter the billing entity name, invoice email and billing address, then add a card. Billing must be complete before any campaign can deliver. If you run ads for clients, set the billing entity to whoever should receive invoices from OpenAI, not the person doing the setup.
Step 5. Invite your team
Ads Manager supports three roles:
- Admin: full control of the account, including user management
- Member: can create and edit campaigns, ad groups and ads
- Viewer: read-only access to reporting
Give each colleague the lowest role that does the job. If an Admin invite throws an error, invite the person as a Member first and change the role later.
How to create your first ChatGPT ads campaign
Ads Manager uses three levels: campaign, ad group and ad. The campaign holds the objective, budget, schedule and locations. The ad group holds the bid and context hints. The ad holds the creative and landing page.
Choose the objective
You can pick Reach (CPM), Clicks (CPC) or Conversions (oCPC). Reach suits awareness, Clicks suits traffic, and Conversions optimises toward a specific event such as a form submission or a purchase. The objective cannot be changed after the campaign is created, so start a new campaign if you want to switch.
For a first campaign, Clicks is usually the right choice. Conversions needs a working pixel and enough conversion volume to optimise against, which a new account will not have yet.
Set the budget and schedule
Choose a daily budget or a total campaign budget, plus start and end dates. Like the objective, the budget type is locked once the campaign exists. A modest daily budget over a two to three week window is a sensible first test: enough data to read, not enough to hurt.
Select locations
Targeting is set at the campaign level. Pick the countries shown as available in your Ads Manager account and match them to where you actually sell. Country availability is limited during the beta and changes over time, so check the list rather than assuming a market is or is not covered.
Build ad groups around intent
Create one ad group per customer situation, not one per product feature. A digital marketing agency might run separate ad groups for people comparing SEO agencies, people asking how to get cited in AI answers, and people planning a paid media budget. Each group gets its own bid, its own context hints and its own landing page.
Keep the number of context hints in each group manageable. Ads Manager allows up to 2,000 per ad group, but you will not be able to tell which individual hints did the work, so a group with hundreds of hints teaches you very little. Fewer hints in more groups is easier to learn from.
Write context hints that describe conversations
Context hints are the closest thing ChatGPT ads have to targeting. Write each one as a short description of a question, need or situation a user might bring to ChatGPT:
- “Comparing SEO agencies for a B2B SaaS company in India”
- “Asking how to get a brand mentioned in ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews”
- “Planning a paid ads budget for a product launch”
Avoid hints that describe your product (“award-winning SEO agency”) or that are single keywords. They give the matching system very little to work with.
Create the ad
Each ad carries your advertiser name, logo or favicon, a title, description copy, an image and a destination URL. Send people to the page that matches the conversation, not the homepage. Add UTM parameters (for example utm_source=chatgpt and utm_medium=cpc) so the traffic shows up in GA4 and your CRM.
Make at least two variations per ad group with a different title or angle so you have something to compare after launch.
Set up conversion tracking
Install the OpenAI pixel on your site and, where possible, connect the Conversions API for server-side events. Do this before launch even if you start with a Clicks campaign. You will need conversion data to move to the Conversions objective later, and to judge whether ChatGPT ads deserve a place in your mix.
Review, launch and read the numbers
Check the objective, budget, dates, locations, context hints, creative and landing page once more, then submit. Once approved, watch impressions, CTR, average CPC and conversions in Ads Manager through the first week. Low impressions usually point to context hints that are too narrow or a bid that is too low. High impressions with low CTR point to the creative, or to a mismatch between the hint and the ad.
Common mistakes in ChatGPT ads setup
- Writing context hints as product descriptions instead of customer situations
- Putting every hint into one ad group, which makes results impossible to interpret
- Sending all traffic to the homepage
- Choosing the wrong currency or time zone at account creation
- Launching a Conversions campaign before the pixel is live
- Treating the first campaign as final rather than as a test to learn from
Where ChatGPT ads fit alongside AEO
ChatGPT ads and answer engine optimisation (AEO) reach the same people at the same moment, through different doors. Ads buy a labelled slot for users on Free and Go plans. AEO earns citations and mentions inside the answer itself, for every user on every plan, including the paid tiers that never see an ad.
The research overlaps almost completely. The questions your buyers ask ChatGPT are the basis for both your context hints and the content you need to be cited for. If you already track how AI assistants describe your brand, that data is the fastest route to a well-targeted ChatGPT ads campaign. If you do not, a paid test is a quick way to find out which conversations convert, and then build organic visibility around them.
Frequently asked questions
What are ChatGPT ads?
ChatGPT ads are sponsored placements shown below ChatGPT’s responses, matched to the context of the conversation. Advertisers create and manage them through OpenAI Ads Manager.
How much do ChatGPT ads cost?
There is no fixed price. Ads are sold through a relevance-weighted auction, and you set a maximum bid and a daily or total budget yourself. Ads Manager is still in beta, so bid guidance and minimums may change.
Can an Indian business run ChatGPT ads?
Yes. Ads Manager accepts Indian business details, including GST, during ChatGPT account setup. The countries you can target depend on the list available in your account, which is expanding through the beta.
Do ChatGPT ads change the answer ChatGPT gives?
No. Ads appear in a separate, labelled sponsored area below the response and do not influence the generated answer.
What are context hints?
Context hints are short descriptions of the conversations or situations where your ad is relevant. They are set at the ad group level and are not exact-match keywords.
Do ChatGPT ads support conversion tracking?
Yes. OpenAI provides a JavaScript pixel and a Conversions API, and the Conversions (oCPC) objective optimises toward an event you choose.
Get help with ChatGPT ads
Setting up the account is the easy part. Results depend on the quality of your context hints, ad group structure, landing pages and tracking, and on knowing where paid placements add to the organic visibility you already have in AI search.
Spacemen Digital runs SEO, AEO and paid media for businesses that want to be found in both search engines and AI assistants. If you want help planning or managing ChatGPT ads, talk to us at spacemendigital.com.