ChatGPT Ads: access, formats and capabilities

This chapter sets out what OpenAI has published about ChatGPT Ads as of 28 October 2026: how the product rolled out, who can see an ad, which formats exist, how Ads Manager is bought and billed, and what reporting an advertiser receives. The headline for UAE businesses is that self-service Ads Manager is listed as available to legal entities in the UAE in an 89-country list read on 28 October 2026, with a minimum daily budget of AED 65 (OpenAI Help Center; OpenAI Help). Availability is an account fact, not a category approval, and several formats and controls described in the trade press are still US tests (OpenAI; TechCrunch).

In brief

• OpenAI announced ads on 16 January 2026 and started testing in the US on 9 February 2026, on the Free and Go tiers only.
• Self-service Ads Manager opened in beta on 5 May 2026, adding cost-per-click bidding alongside CPM and launching a Conversions API and pixel (OpenAI).
• On 21 October 2026 OpenAI said ChatGPT Ads had expanded to 26 more countries, for a total of 89; the help-centre list read on 28 October 2026 includes the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman.
• Ads appear only to Free and Go users; Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Edu are ad-free, and no ads are shown to users who say, or are predicted to be, under 18 (OpenAI).
• Delivery is a relevance-weighted second-price auction with three objectives: Views (CPM), Clicks (CPC) and Conversions (billed as oCPC or oCPM, not per conversion) (OpenAI Help).
• The minimum daily budget is AED 65 for AED-billed accounts; OpenAI recommends a starting maximum CPC bid of USD 3 to USD 5, which is not an expected CPC.
• Business verification may take up to 7 business days, and a registered business is not automatically eligible for every category or market (OpenAI Help Center).
• Delivery metrics refresh about every 15 minutes, spend can lag 7 to 8 hours, and recent conversions can take 24 to 48 hours to settle (OpenAI Help; OpenAI).
• Sponsored agents and visual ads beside image generation were announced as US tests; no date has been published for other markets (Reuters via Zawya, Anzar Mehraj, 2026; TechCrunch).

How ChatGPT Ads rolled out

OpenAI first described its plans on 16 January 2026, saying it would test ads "in the coming weeks" for logged-in adults on the Free and Go tiers in the US, and that Plus, Pro, Business and Enterprise would not carry ads. The same post set out the principles OpenAI continues to cite: "Ads do not influence the answers ChatGPT gives you", conversations are kept private from advertisers and data is never sold to them, and users will always have a way to not see ads. TechCrunch reported that testing began on Monday 9 February 2026, US only, with ads matched on conversation topic, past chats and previous ad interactions.

The first phase was a managed pilot with large commitments. PPC Land reports a launch CPM of USD 60 with a USD 200,000 minimum commitment on 9 February 2026. Digiday, reporting in April 2026, gave the launch minimum as USD 250,000, falling to USD 50,000. These two launch minimums conflict (USD 200,000 against USD 250,000) and neither is an OpenAI statement; both come from trade press. The Decoder reported a monthly minimum of USD 30,000 to USD 50,000 and that the pilot was extended past the end of March because of underdelivery.

The product moved to self-service on 5 May 2026. OpenAI's own post announced a beta self-serve Ads Manager, added CPC bidding while keeping CPM, and launched the Conversions API and pixel. Axios reported the same day that the previous USD 50,000 test minimum had been removed. Conversion-optimised campaigns began rolling out on 5 June 2026 for accounts that had configured conversions by 1 June, and product-feed management arrived in Ads Manager from 2 June 2026, with up to 1 million SKUs per advertiser (PPC Land).

Geographic expansion then accelerated. Canada, Australia and New Zealand were added to the pilot on 26 March 2026 (PPC Land). On 9 June 2026 MarTech reported targeting expanding from the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand to the UK, Japan, South Korea, Brazil and Mexico. The UK had two separate events: a Similarweb deck cited by PPC Land dates UK ads going live to 6 June 2026, and a PPC Land timeline dates UK advertiser self-serve access to 22 June 2026. The same timelines give 22 June for Japan and South Korea, 17 August for Brazil and Mexico, 24 August for 31 European markets and 29 August for India (PPC Land); OpenAI opened self-serve in India two days later, on 31 August 2026.

On 31 August 2026 OpenAI said self-serve purchasing through Ads Manager was opening in India, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, and that ChatGPT Ads were available in over 40 countries. That post did not name any Middle East country (OpenAI). On 23 September 2026 OpenAI added Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and Taiwan, describing the total as "over 60" countries. On 21 October 2026 it announced 26 more countries, for a total of 89, including 14 in Latin America (OpenAI). The UAE-specific listing history is covered in Chapter 05.

Country counts differ by source because OpenAI and the press mix markets where ads are live with markets where self-serve buying is available. The public counts recorded in the notes are 41 markets after the India launch on 29 August, 63 countries on the help page on 24 September, and 89 on 21 October 2026 (Relevant Audience, Antonio Fernandez; PPC Land).

Countries where ChatGPT Ads were reported available, global, 29 Aug to 21 Oct 2026. Counts mix live-ad and self-serve markets

Source: Relevant Audience (29 Aug, estimate); PPC Land (24 Sep); OpenAI (21 Oct 2026)

Scale claims and how they conflict

OpenAI's scale statements have grown quickly, and third-party counts sit well below OpenAI's own figures. Each figure below is global, not UAE.

On 31 August 2026 OpenAI described "tens of thousands of advertisers" and an ad-supported free tier serving "more than 1 billion weekly active users". By 21 October it said more than 100,000 advertisers had run campaigns in just over eight months and that over 1.2 billion people use ChatGPT weekly (OpenAI). The 21 October figure is the current one. Independent counts are lower and measure different things: Adthena counted 7,306 unique advertisers in the week of 9 July and 12,075 in the week of 31 August, and The Information, as reported by TNW, put the figure at about 20,000 advertisers in late August (PPC Land). Sensor Tower counted about 1,200 unique US advertisers in August 2026. The difference between "have run campaigns" (cumulative, global) and weekly active advertisers seen by a panel explains part of the gap, but the sources do not reconcile it.

Revenue targets also conflict. Axios reported a 2026 target of USD 2.5 billion and USD 100 billion by 2030, while The Information, via The Decoder, reported USD 2.4 billion for 2026 and USD 11 billion for 2027. Press coverage derived the USD 1 billion run rate as roughly USD 83 million a month; OpenAI published no monthly figure. eMarketer forecasts total US AI chatbot ad spending of USD 5.41 billion in 2030, a US-only, all-chatbot figure that is not like for like with OpenAI's global 2030 goal. OpenAI says CPC and outcome-optimised bidding now account for most campaigns and that small and medium businesses are a material share of the business, without giving percentages.

ONS reading The scale figures tell a UAE business that the platform is large and growing, not that a UAE campaign will find volume. None of the advertiser, user or revenue figures above is broken down by country, and OpenAI has not published a share of weekly users on the Free and Go plans. A UAE plan should treat these as context for why the product matters, and build its own volume expectations from a small test.

Who sees ads

The ad-supported audience is a subset of ChatGPT users. Ads may appear for eligible Free and Go users; OpenAI identifies Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Edu as ad-free plans. No ads are shown where the user says, or OpenAI predicts, they are under 18. Logged-out users see ads "designed to be suitable for all ages", no ads appear in Temporary Chats, and ads data is deleted from OpenAI's servers within up to 30 days. Free users can also choose an ad-free option under Settings, Ads controls, which comes with "lower usage limits and reduced feature access" (OpenAI Help). Total ChatGPT usage is therefore not the available paid audience. For education, the sensible planning audience is an eligible adult decision-maker, such as a parent, not a child (OpenAI).

Ad placement is also limited by conversation type. The current ad policy (v1.6, updated 10 September 2026) excludes ads from conversations in sensitive categories, including regulated goods such as gambling or tobacco, and from "vulnerable user-model interactions", which include emotionally reliant contexts and "Mental and personal health conversations" (OpenAI). The January 2026 announcement worded this as no ads near health, mental health or politics; the September policy is the current statement (OpenAI).

Plan mix matters because only Free and Go users can see ads. OpenAI has not published the share of weekly users on each plan. The Information, via Shopifreaks, reported OpenAI projections of about 112 million Go subscribers and about 9 million Plus subscribers in 2026, out of 122 million total consumer subscribers, with Go reaching 92% of paying subscribers by year-end. These are global projections reported second-hand, not counts.

Projected consumer subscribers, millions, global, 2026 (The Information via Shopifreaks; projections, reported as approximate)

Source: Shopifreaks citing The Information, 29 Apr 2026

How often eligible users actually see an ad varies by market. Similarweb and Graphite, via PPC Land, measured the share of ad-eligible users who saw at least one ad in September 2026, ranging from 45.7% in the UK to 27.8% in Mexico. Similarweb separately recorded sponsored placements in 26% of ChatGPT responses to Free and Go users on 17 August 2026, geography not stated (PPC Land). SE Ranking found that 25.94% of 50,006 US commercial prompts returned an ad (collected 23 July 2026), and a Wired test of 500 questions found an ad on about one in five questions in a new thread (Search Engine Journal; Search Engine Land, Anu Adegbola). None of these panels covers the UAE or any Middle East market (PPC Land).

Share of ad-eligible users who saw at least one ad, %, nine markets, Sep 2026. No Middle East market measured

Source: PPC Land on Similarweb and Graphite, 4 Oct 2026

Advertisers do not receive conversation data. OpenAI's help centre says advertisers never receive chats, chat history, memories, name, email, precise location or IP address, only aggregated views and clicks, and that with personalisation off, ads use the current thread only. Targeting uses the current conversation and, depending on country and user settings, broader ChatGPT context (OpenAI). In the US ad personalisation is on by default with an opt-out, while the EU and UK require opt-in consent (Crypto Briefing via Gizmodo). At the European launch personalisation by conversation context, general location and device was withheld (TechWyse, DJ Kennedy, 2026). OpenAI has not published which setting applies to UAE users.

Getting into Ads Manager

Self-service access depends on where the advertiser's legal entity is. The Ads Manager availability page, read on 28 October 2026, lists 89 countries, all marked "Available", including the United Arab Emirates, and states that to use self-service Ads Manager the legal entity must be in a listed country (OpenAI Help Center). The UAE listing refers to the location of the legal entity using and paying for Ads Manager; it does not certify category or target-market eligibility (OpenAI). Businesses outside supported countries can register through the OpenAI Advertisers Interest Form, and new European markets start through the OpenAI Ads Solutions team or partners.

Account setup has fixed choices. The Account Legal Name must be the registered business name and is used for billing and business verification; self-serve billing is by credit card; currency and time zone cannot be changed after the account is created (OpenAI Help). For a UAE business this makes the first set-up decision material: an account created in USD cannot later be switched to AED. A Saudi agency reading of the help pages adds that the advertising entity and card should match the listed country and that ads may run, and be billed, for up to 24 hours after a pause (Origami).

Verification and review add time. Business verification "may take up to 7 Business days", and appeals pending for more than 7 days can be raised with ads-support@openai.com. Review covers the advertiser, the ad creative and landing page, and the placement; most reviews are automated with human oversight, and ads or landing pages that cannot be reviewed by OpenAI's systems are not eligible to run. Landing pages must be reachable, must not block OAI-AdsBot or OAI-SearchBot, and should be the most relevant page rather than a generic homepage (OpenAI Help). Approved creatives may not link to destinations that introduce disallowed content (OpenAI).

Passing verification is not the same as being eligible. OpenAI states that "A registered or licensed business is not automatically eligible for every advertising category or market", that certain categories are restricted to a small group of approved advertisers with no applications being accepted in some categories, and that an ad "can pass review and still be ineligible to serve in its selected countries". During the initial test period, ads are "primarily limited to consumer verticals such as lifestyle and household goods, local services, travel and experiences, and digital products or education" (OpenAI). Outside the US, health services are generally prohibited and legal services are prohibited (OpenAI). Chapter 06 sets out sector eligibility in full.

New accounts may also be limited to their home market. Some new self-serve accounts can serve only in their home country until identity verification is approved and a required level of home-country spend is reached (OpenAI Help). A UAE provider recruiting students abroad, or a hotel targeting visitors in source markets, should not promise international reach simply because the account can be created (OpenAI; OpenAI Help).

Buying models and billing

Eligible ads are chosen through a relevance-weighted, second-price auction, with bids set at ad-group level (OpenAI Help). OpenAI states that its ads system "controls all delivery decisions". There are three objectives. Views are billed on CPM, Clicks on CPC, and Conversions are billed as optimised CPC (oCPC) or optimised CPM (oCPM); OpenAI states "you don't pay per conversion". Conversion optimisation requires suitable tracking and a supported standard event (OpenAI). A promise to optimise toward conversions is therefore not a guarantee of conversions or a cost-per-acquisition contract.

For CPC campaigns OpenAI recommends starting with a maximum bid of USD 3 to USD 5 per click. This is a starting maximum bid in USD, not an expected CPC and not a UAE price benchmark. Search Engine Journal reports that from August 2026 the default bid strategy for eligible new ad groups is "Maximize results", and that manual bidding is needed to set a hard ceiling. The daily budget is a 7-day average target: spend on a single day can reach twice the daily budget, weekly spend can reach seven times it, and the budget week runs Sunday to Saturday in the account time zone (OpenAI Help).

Minimum daily budgets are set by billing currency. The current table lists 30 currencies, including AED 65, SAR 50 and QAR 60, and has no row for KWD, BHD, OMR, EGP or JOD (OpenAI Help, 2026; OpenAI Help). The ONS draft verified the AED 65 figure on 28 October 2026 (OpenAI).

Prices in the managed pilot fell over the first months. Digiday reported that CPMs fell from USD 60 to as low as USD 25, that Jellyfish saw averages near USD 45, and that Ad Age reported CPMs as low as USD 15 (US, February to April 2026). Search Engine Journal, citing Digiday screenshots, reported CPC bids of USD 3 to USD 5 offered to some pilot advertisers (US-only pilot at the time) in April 2026. In September 2026 OpenAI told a MENA briefing, as reported by Al Bayan, that average cost per purchase had fallen about 60% and average CPM about 20% over the previous six weeks. These are US or global figures; no independent UAE price data has been published. Chapter 12 covers advertiser-reported CPCs and acquisition economics.

Reported CPM, USD, US managed pilot, Feb to Apr 2026; trade-press reports, not OpenAI rate cards

Source: PPC Land (25 Sep 2026); Digiday (17 Apr 2026)

Partner routes carry their own minimums. Digital Applied reports that Criteo cut its ChatGPT minimum from USD 50,000 to USD 10,000 in June and that StackAdapt set a USD 0 minimum on 5 May. HubSpot offered a USD 750 match on ad spend for new accounts opened by 30 September 2026; the offer has expired (PPC Land). These partner offers are not OpenAI terms.

Targeting and delivery controls

ChatGPT Ads have no keyword targeting. The Information, via The Decoder, reported in April 2026 that advertisers get broad topic tags instead. Ad groups use context hints, which OpenAI describes as relevance signals, not delivery controls. Hints cannot enforce geography or exclusions (OpenAI). Text such as "Dubai only" in a context hint is therefore not a substitute for a location setting.

Location targeting depends on campaign type and country. Campaigns other than new product-feed campaigns can target regions, cities, markets and postcodes where available; new product-feed campaigns support country-level targeting only (OpenAI Help; OpenAI). The ONS draft classed sub-national targeting as qualified because it varies by country and account (OpenAI). This chapter does not certify that every Dubai, Abu Dhabi or Sharjah selection is available in every account and campaign type. Confirm the controls offered during setup, record them and use accurate service-area information on the destination.

Platform targeting covers the Android app, web on Android, desktop web, the iOS app and web on iOS (OpenAI Help). Custom audiences need at least 25,000 matched users for inclusion, while exclusion lists can be smaller (OpenAI Help). TechWyse reported beta features in the week of 31 August 2026 allowing custom audiences above 5 million members, Google Advertising ID matching and member changes without rebuilding. No frequency cap is documented in the basics article (OpenAI Help).

Brand-safety controls are still in test. eMarketer, citing Adweek, reports that OpenAI is testing exclusion targeting, meaning contexts to avoid, with a small group of advertisers. Adweek reported on 5 October 2026 that OpenAI is piloting brand suitability controls with DoubleVerify and IAS, which assess safeguards without access to conversations.

Ad formats

The standard unit sits below ChatGPT's response and shows the advertiser name, favicon, title, description, landing page and image (OpenAI Help). Adobe Advertising's ChatGPT ad settings give hard limits of 50 characters for the title and 100 for the description, with a square JPG or PNG image up to 20 MB, 256 by 256 pixels or larger recommended. PPC Land describes shorter display guidance of about 16 characters for the headline and about 32 for the description. The two do not conflict: Adobe's figures are maximum lengths and PPC Land's are what typically displays. OpenAI's own help text did not state numbers.

Product feeds can be supplied as CSV or TXT files, through a hosted HTTPS URL or by SFTP; uploaded items lapse after two weeks (OpenAI Help). Sensor Tower, via PPC Land, found about 23% of US desktop ChatGPT ads placed between 15 and 30 August 2026 were carousel ads. Sponsored agents and visual ads beside image generation are US tests; neither has a published date for any other market (Reuters via Zawya, Anzar Mehraj, 2026; TechCrunch). They should not be presented to UAE clients as available.

Creative tools are also changing. Reuters reported on 16 September 2026 an Ads Manager plugin for natural-language campaign management, AI-suggested copy and images drawn from the landing page, and opt-in headline adaptation and translation into the user's language. The report does not state which markets have these tools. OpenAI has also stopped accepting ads for standalone image- and audio-generation tools that compete with its own, according to The Information; this was communicated to partners, and the specific image and audio rule is reported only, not published (Let's Data Science, 2026). The v1.6 policy, dated 10 September 2026, gives OpenAI the right to decline ads that conflict with its advertising principles, business interests or competitive position.

Partners and integrations

At the 5 May 2026 launch OpenAI named agencies Dentsu, Omnicom, Publicis and WPP and technology partners Adobe, Criteo, Kargo, Pacvue and StackAdapt. Its 23 September post listed dentsu, Havas Media, Omnicom Media, Publicis Groupe and WPP (OpenAI). Criteo reported more than 1,000 brands running through its API by 5 May 2026, with its integration covering the US, Australia, Canada and New Zealand (PPC Land, Luis Rijo). HubSpot is the first CRM partner and Shopify the first ecommerce partner, with the Shopify app available internationally from 23 September 2026 in ChatGPT Ads markets (PPC Land).

Amazon DSP advertisers can extend campaigns into ChatGPT in a pilot with select US advertisers, announced 10 September 2026. Amazon DSP is available to UAE advertisers, but tbreak notes the announcement does not confirm ChatGPT inventory for UAE campaigns. Thrad says it runs a managed service for MENA brands and names Criteo as an official ad tech partner, but does not claim an OpenAI partnership for itself.

Measurement and reporting

Conversion tracking uses a pixel and a Conversions API. The pixel stores the "oppref" click reference in a first-party cookie, the same event ID deduplicates pixel and API events, Automatic Advanced Matching hashes data with SHA-256 in the browser, and totals may include modelled conversions (OpenAI Help; OpenAI). TechWyse reports that the pixel supports hashed phone, first name, last name, region and postal code, and the API adds hashed email, external ID, city, country and Android advertising ID. An Event Quality Score from 1 to 10 sits under Tools, Conversions (PPC Land).

Third-party measurement partners named by TechCrunch on 5 October 2026 include AppsFlyer, Triple Whale, Adjust, DV Rockerbox, Northbeam, Branch, Singular, Kochava, Airbridge and Tenjin for click attribution; Fospha, Measured and INCRMNTAL for full-funnel measurement; and Haus, Measured and WorkMagic for geo experiments (TechCrunch, Sarah Perez). OpenAI cites one ecommerce advertiser achieving 3x ROAS over 28 days and one technology partner reporting that more than 80% of ad-driven ChatGPT traffic came from new customers. These are single examples chosen by OpenAI, with no geography stated, and are not benchmarks. Chapter 10 covers attribution and Chapter 11 ONS's own UAE test observations.

For UAE marketers: Do not judge a campaign on the first day's conversions. Spend can lag by hours and conversions by up to two days, so the most recent figures in Ads Manager will change (OpenAI Help; OpenAI).

Treat the product as a dated operating environment

The policy page alone has gone through six revisions since its first publication in March 2026, from v1.1 in April to v1.6 in September 2026 (OpenAI). Several help-centre articles carry relative "updated" stamps; the availability page read on 28 October 2026 listed 89 countries, all "Available", including the UAE.

Save a setup record with objective, billing method, selected event, destinations, locations, platforms, budget, attribution settings and approval status, and date it. If a feature changes, the team can then tell whether a performance change coincided with a configuration change rather than attributing it to customer behaviour alone.

ONS reading For a UAE business the practical position on 28 October 2026 is simple: a UAE legal entity can open a self-service account, bill in AED from a minimum of AED 65 a day, and buy on CPM, CPC or optimised bidding, subject to verification and category eligibility. What it cannot assume is that every format, location control or tool reported in the trade press is in its account; several are US tests. ONS recommends a fresh pre-launch check of the actual account and another before materially expanding spend. This book is the starting evidence; the account is the place to confirm what can be selected and delivered.

ONS outlook The pattern so far has been US tests first, then wider release some weeks or months later, as with self-serve buying and conversion optimisation. ONS expects some current US tests may reach other markets, but OpenAI has published no date for any of them outside the US, and some may not launch at all. Plans should not depend on a feature that has not appeared in the account.

Gaps in the evidence

No public data. OpenAI has not published the share of weekly users on Free and Go plans, so the ad-eligible audience in the UAE or anywhere cannot be sized. No frequency cap is documented. No OpenAI page names the UAE's ad-personalisation setting, the exact date the UAE was added to the availability list, or the billing currency for Kuwaiti, Bahraini or Omani advertisers. Sponsored agents and visual image-generation ads have no published date outside the US. The topic list in the exclusion-targeting test is unpublished. A future edition should re-read the availability, campaign-creation and policy pages in a browser and record each locale and date.

Sources for this chapter

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