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Ads in ChatGPT

ChatGPT ads / OpenAI Ads Manager / sponsored ads in ChatGPT

In short

Ads in ChatGPT are paid placements that OpenAI shows below ChatGPT responses, labeled as sponsored, for users on its Free and Go plans. Advertisers pay for impressions or clicks, and OpenAI gives them aggregated results such as views and clicks while keeping the conversations themselves away from advertisers.

OpenAI began testing ads in ChatGPT in the US on February 9, 2026. Ads may appear for users on the Free and Go plans. Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Edu accounts do not have ads. Ads are not eligible to appear near sensitive or regulated topics such as personal health, mental health or politics.

An ad appears below the end of a response, labeled as sponsored and visually separated from the answer. OpenAI says ads run on separate systems from its chat model. Its ads system weighs the context and intent of the current conversation, the ad's landing page, title and copy, and the advertiser's targeting and context hints. When several ads qualify, relevance and advertiser bids decide which shows first.

Context hints are descriptions the advertiser writes of the products, use cases or needs behind an ad group, and one ad group can hold up to 2,000. OpenAI's targeting guide says hints are not exact-match keywords. Location, platform and uploaded customer lists are set separately. A customer list needs at least 25,000 matched users before it can be used to include people.

Each ad group pays for impressions or for clicks. An advertiser can set a fixed bid, or let OpenAI adjust bids toward more clicks or more conversions within a daily budget. Conversion campaigns still bill for valid clicks, and they need conversion events, such as purchases or sign-ups, sent from the advertiser's site.

What comes back is aggregated. Advertisers receive non-identifying performance data such as total views and clicks, and have no access to chats, chat history, memories or personal details. A conversion is counted when someone clicks and then acts within the configured click window. OpenAI reports view-through conversions within one day of an eligible impression separately, and bases cost per action on click-through conversions.

In practice

A roofing company runs a clicks campaign in ChatGPT with a $50 daily budget and a fixed bid of $2.50 per click. Over one week it spends $350 and records 7 click-through conversions for booked estimates, plus 3 view-through conversions. Its reported cost per action is $50, because OpenAI divides spend by the 7 click-through conversions and leaves the 3 view-through conversions out. The figures are a worked example.

Why it matters to you

A ChatGPT ad buys a place below the answer and has no effect on the answer above it. Health and financial services companies may qualify to advertise if they meet strict eligibility criteria, but their ads still stay away from personal health conversations. Conversion numbers need at least a day to appear, so a new campaign should be judged on settled data.

What to ask or check

  1. 01Is Ads Manager open to advertisers in your country, or only accepting sign-ups?
  2. 02Does your campaign pay for impressions or for clicks, and who sets the bid?
  3. 03Is your reported cost per action built on click-through conversions alone?
  4. 04Has anyone promised that your ads will change what ChatGPT says about the business?

What people get wrong

That buying ads in ChatGPT helps a business get recommended in its answers. OpenAI says ads run on separate systems from its chat model, and advertisers have no ability to shape, rank or alter the responses.

Red flags

  • A proposal that sells ChatGPT ads as a way to change what ChatGPT says about the business.

Keep reading

AI Overviews

An AI Overview is the summary Google sometimes places above the results, with links to sources. Google says they are only shown when its systems judge them additive to classic Search, so they often do not trigger. There is no special file or markup that gets you into them.

AI Assistant channel

The AI Assistant channel is a Google Analytics 4 traffic channel for visitors who arrive from AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Deepseek, Copilot or Grok. It excludes Google's own AI Overviews and AI Mode, which GA4 counts as Organic Search, so AI traffic is split across two channels.

View-through conversion

A view-through conversion credits an ad that was seen but never clicked. Google counts an impression as viewable when at least 50% of the ad is onscreen for at least 1 second, so the standard being met is lower than most people picture when they hear that someone saw the ad.

Cost per click

Cost per click is what you pay each time someone clicks your ad. You set a maximum you are willing to pay, and the auction usually charges less: Google says advertisers are often charged less, sometimes much less, than that maximum. It is the unit your ad invoice is built from.

Google-Extended

Google-Extended is a robots.txt token that controls whether content Google crawls from your site may be used to train Gemini models and ground Gemini apps. Google states it does not affect your inclusion in Search or your ranking. It is a training control, not a way to stay out of search results.

AI performance report

An AI performance report shows how often AI search features show or cite your site. Google's version counts impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode. Bing's counts citations and states its numbers do not indicate ranking, authority or placement. Neither publishes a position inside an AI answer.

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