A 7-step guide to running ads on ChatGPT

OpenAI's self-serve ad platform opened to all advertisers in May 2026, and early campaign data suggests ChatGPT could become the most consequential new ad surface since TikTok. The platform places brands inside AI conversations at the precise moment of user intent — a search-adjacent model with fundamentally different targeting mechanics. After spending our own budgets and client dollars on the platform, here's the seven-step playbook for launching your first campaign.

Step 1: Confirm Eligibility Before You Build

OpenAI maintains a restrictive category list that catches many B2B advertisers off guard. Adult content, alcohol, tobacco, financial services, and gambling are categorically blocked. The financial services prohibition alone eliminates fintech, lending, insurance, and wealth management — categories that dominate Google Search spend. Legal advertising sits in a policy gray zone: the published policy forbids "legal advice, representation, or services offered to individuals or businesses," yet the changelog notes some legal ads are permitted, and law firm campaigns have run since launch. Read the policy page literally, then test with a minimal budget before committing.

Minimum daily spend is $25 — a dramatic drop from the $200,000 pilot-phase floor. Geographic targeting currently covers the United States, Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, and the United Kingdom. If your ICP sits outside these markets, wait.

Step 2: Set Up the Ad Account Correctly

Agencies cannot create accounts on behalf of clients. The brand must own the ads.openai.com account; agencies are added as users afterward. This is a deliberate structural choice by OpenAI to prevent account churn and ensure legal liability sits with the advertiser.

Have these ready before starting: legal business name exactly as registered, business tax ID (EIN in the U.S.), a credit or debit card for payment, and a favicon file. The favicon requirement signals OpenAI's emphasis on brand visibility inside the chat interface — your icon appears alongside every impression.

Step 3: Target the Right Tier, Not Just the Right Demographics

ChatGPT Ads only serve to users OpenAI classifies as 18 or older on Free and Go tiers — including logged-out sessions. Paying Plus, Team, and Enterprise users are excluded from the ad pool entirely. This creates a structural bias: your audience skews toward price-sensitive, early-funnel explorers rather than power users with budget authority.

For B2B software, this means you're reaching individual contributors researching solutions, not the decision-makers who already pay for premium tiers. Adjust your funnel expectations accordingly. Top-of-funnel education and free-trial offers will outperform direct demo requests.

Step 4: Build Creative for a Conversation, Not a Feed

Ad units render inline with chat responses. There is no feed, no scroll, no sidebar. Your headline, body copy, and favicon appear as a labeled "Sponsored" message inside the dialogue. Character limits are tight: 30 characters for the headline, 90 for the body. Every word must earn its place.

Landing pages must load instantly and render cleanly in the embedded browser that opens from chat. Mobile-first is non-negotiable — over 60% of ChatGPT sessions are mobile. Strip navigation, reduce form fields, and match the ad's promise exactly. A "Free SEO audit" ad that lands on a 12-field demo request form will tank your quality score fast.

Step 5: Respect the $3 CPC Floor

Early data shows average CPCs clustering between $2 and $5 across verticals. But the platform enforces a hard-coded floor: set a max CPC below $3 and the interface warns "your ad may not deliver." This is not a dynamic quality assessment — it's a platform minimum disguised as a suggestion.

Plan your unit economics around a $3.50–$4.50 effective CPC. At $25 daily minimum, that's 6–7 clicks per day per campaign. You need multiple campaigns or higher daily budgets to reach statistical significance in any reasonable test window. We recommend starting at $75–$100 daily across three creative variants.

Step 6: Measure at the Conversation Level, Not the Click

ChatGPT's attribution model reports which conversations triggered an impression and whether the user clicked. You do not get keyword data. You do not get search query strings. You get conversation topology: the topic cluster, the user's prior turns, the intent signals OpenAI infers.

This forces a different optimization loop. Instead of keyword negatives, you exclude topic clusters. Instead of bid adjustments by query, you shift creative to match high-converting conversation themes. The platform's reporting UI surfaces "conversation themes" as the primary dimension — treat these like ad groups and optimize creative against them.

Step 7: Iterate on Creative, Not Targeting

Targeting levers are deliberately thin: geography, age floor, tier inclusion. No interests, no job titles, no company size, no retargeting pixels. The platform's thesis is that the conversation itself is the targeting. Your optimization surface is creative rotation and conversation-theme exclusion.

Run three distinct creative angles per campaign: problem-awareness, solution-comparison, and offer-driven. Pause the weakest at 50 clicks. Add negative conversation themes weekly. Scale budget only when a creative–theme pair sustains a 3%+ click-through rate and your downstream conversion metrics hold.

The platform will evolve fast. OpenAI ships updates weekly. But the structural constraints — tier-based audience, conversation-level attribution, $3 CPC floor, creative-only optimization — are likely foundational. Build your playbook around them now, and you'll be ahead when the inventory expands.