How to Advertise on ChatGPT: Ads Now Open in India

Here's how to advertise on ChatGPT: create an account in OpenAI Ads Manager at ads.openai.com, set up billing and verification, then build a campaign whose ads appear below relevant answers for people on ChatGPT's Free and Go plans. Businesses in India have been able to buy these ads themselves since 31 August 2026, with a minimum daily budget of ₹725 per campaign.

This guide covers who sees the ads, the account rules, a first campaign step by step, billing, the October 2026 changes and how ChatGPT compares with Google and Meta.

Key takeaways

• Ads appear below ChatGPT's answers for Free and Go users. Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Edu accounts see no ads, and neither do accounts OpenAI identifies as under 18.
• Self-serve buying opened in India, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa on 31 August 2026. The business that pays must be based in a country OpenAI lists as available.
• The minimum daily budget for an INR account is ₹725 per campaign. You pay per 1,000 impressions or per valid click, never per conversion.
• There are no keywords. You choose countries, platforms and optional custom audiences, and write "context hints" that describe when your ad is useful.
• Since 30 October 2026, creative enhancements are on by default: OpenAI can rewrite, translate and re-route your ads. Check Manage settings in Ads Manager.

What are ChatGPT ads and who sees them?#

ChatGPT ads are paid placements chosen using the context of the current conversation. According to OpenAI's Ads in ChatGPT help page, people see one ad unit below a response, with one or several images. Each ad shows the advertiser's name and logo, a title, a short description, an image and a link.

Ads only appear for Free and Go users in countries where ads run. They don't appear for paid Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise or Edu accounts, for accounts OpenAI identifies as under 18 (using account information and age prediction), or in Temporary Chats. Free users can also switch to an "Ads-Free" mode with lower message limits.

Under OpenAI's ad principles, ads run on separate systems from the chat model and can't shape or alter answers, and advertisers never see chats, memories, names or precise locations, only aggregated reporting such as views and clicks.

Ads aren't shown near conversations about personal health, mental health or politics, and political advertising isn't allowed. Health and financial services advertisers must meet strict eligibility criteria. If a user turns ad personalisation on, their past chats and memory can also inform which ads they see.

Can you advertise on ChatGPT from India?#

Yes. In its 31 August 2026 announcement, OpenAI said advertisers could buy ChatGPT ads directly through Ads Manager across India, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa from that day. It also said ChatGPT Ads had reached a $1 billion annualised revenue run rate in under 200 days.

Four days earlier, OpenAI said it would start showing ads to Free and Go users in India, beginning with 50 brands through its first Indian agency partners, WPP and Omnicom, according to TechCrunch.

OpenAI's Ads Manager availability page lists India as "Available" for self-service, along with markets Indian agencies often buy for, such as the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, the UK and the US.

Know these account rules before you sign up:

• The paying business must be local. The legal entity that advertises and is billed has to be based in an available country, and your card should match that country.
• Some settings are permanent. Country, currency and time zone can't be changed after the account is created, so an Indian business should pick INR and Indian time.
• New accounts may start at home. Some new self-serve accounts can only advertise in their home country until identity verification is approved and they've reached a required level of spend there.

How to advertise on ChatGPT, step by step#

These steps follow OpenAI's setup and campaign creation guides.

1. Sign up at ads.openai.com with your OpenAI login. You can enter your website URL so Ads Manager drafts a first ad and campaign, or skip that step.
2. Enter your account details. Your advertiser name becomes the account, brand (shown on ads) and legal name. Edit them in Settings → General, but changing the brand or legal name triggers a review that can pause delivery.
3. Set up billing: a billing profile (business name, address, invoice email) and a credit card. A temporary authorisation hold on the card isn't an advertising charge.
4. Complete verification, add your logo and invite your team as Admin, Member or Viewer.
5. Create a campaign (Create → Create campaign): choose an objective, a budget and target countries. Optionally narrow by platform (Android or iOS app or web, or desktop web), state, city or postal code, or a custom audience of at least 25,000 matched users.
6. Create ad groups, each built around one product, service or customer need, with a maximum bid and context hints.
7. Create ads: several titles and descriptions per offer, an image, and the most relevant landing page (not your home page) with UTM tags.
8. Submit and monitor. Ads go live after they pass review, as long as billing and campaign settings allow delivery. If an ad shows "Not serving", hover over the status to see why.

Open OpenAI Ads Manager

How do bidding, budgets and billing work?#

The campaign objective sets how you pay:

• Views (CPM): per 1,000 impressions served.
• Clicks (CPC): per valid click.
• Conversions: optimised towards a conversion event you've set up, billed per click (oCPC) or per 1,000 impressions (oCPM), not per conversion.

You set a maximum bid for each ad group. OpenAI's basics guide for advertisers recommends starting click campaigns at a maximum of $3 to $5 per click, and Ads Manager may show bid-strength guidance if your bid could limit delivery. Ads compete in a relevance-weighted, second-price auction.

Three budget rules are worth knowing:

• A daily budget is an average over a Sunday-to-Saturday week. A campaign can spend up to twice the amount on one day, but no more than seven times it in a week.
• The minimum daily budget depends on your billing currency: ₹725 for INR, $25 for USD and 65 AED for dirham accounts, for example.
• You can switch a campaign-total budget to daily, but not back, and you can't change a campaign's objective after creation.

Billing is postpaid. Your card is charged when unpaid spend reaches your account's payment threshold, and any balance left is charged at month end. In some cases a paused campaign keeps serving for up to 24 hours, and that spend is billed.

What ad formats can you use?#

When you create an ad, you choose Single image or Multiple images. The multi-image format, an open beta since 26 October 2026, uses 4 to 6 square images that all link to the same URL, with "Learn more" as the only call to action.

OpenAI's bulk-upload template gives these limits, which are a sensible guide for any ad:

• Title: 16 to 24 characters recommended, 50 maximum.
• Description: 32 to 48 characters recommended, 100 maximum.
• Image: PNG or JPG, square, no larger than 1,200 × 1,200 pixels.

Retailers can also build campaigns from a product feed, and there's a Shopify integration. Landing pages must load and must not block OpenAI's crawlers, OAI-AdsBot and OAI-SearchBot; our robots.txt and sitemap checker shows whether yours does.

On 5 October 2026 OpenAI also announced a visual ad format shown during image generation for Free and Go users. It's a US test with an initial group of advertisers, so don't plan an Indian campaign around it yet.

Creative enhancements are on by default: what changes?#

According to OpenAI's creative enhancements help page, the feature switched on automatically for new and existing campaigns on 30 October 2026. Using your ad, your landing page and the conversation, it can:

• write new or updated headlines and descriptions;
• translate your ad text into other languages;
• resize images to fit the format;
• send people to a different, more relevant page on your site.

These versions can run without you approving each one, and there's no preview of every variation. To turn the feature off, select Manage settings in Ads Manager. You can set an account default and override it per campaign, and opt-outs made before 30 October are kept.

Enhancements draw on your landing pages, so keep prices and offers there current. If every click must land on one page, such as a lead form, switch them off for that campaign.

How do you measure ChatGPT ad results?#

Ads Manager reports impressions, clicks, spend, CTR, average CPC, average CPM and, once measurement is set up, conversions. Impressions, clicks and CTR refresh about every 15 minutes; spend can lag by 7 to 8 hours.

To track beyond Ads Manager:

• UTM tags on every destination URL make ChatGPT traffic visible in GA4. Our UTM builder creates them.
• OpenAI Pixel and Conversions API. OpenAI's conversion measurement guide explains that each ad click adds a reference called oppref to your landing page URL, which the Pixel stores in a first-party cookie. Keep oppref through redirects, and send the same event ID through both Pixel and API so duplicates are removed.
• GA4 connection is in beta; OpenAI says to ask your account manager for early access.

Send conversion data only after telling visitors what you collect and getting consent where the law requires it, as OpenAI asks. Ads Manager and GA4 totals will differ because their attribution windows and methods differ.

ChatGPT ads vs Google AI Mode ads vs Meta ads#

Google also sells ads inside AI answers (our guide to Google AI Mode ads covers them in detail). Its help page on ads in AI-powered experiences in Search says existing Search, Shopping and Performance Max campaigns qualify automatically, with no way to target or opt out of AI Mode separately, and a 28 October 2026 Google blog post says AI Mode ads are scaling in India.

Google captures people who type what they want, Meta reaches people before they're looking, and ChatGPT reaches them while they compare options.

Should your business try ChatGPT ads?#

ChatGPT ads suit categories where people ask ChatGPT to help them choose, such as software, courses, travel, home services or products with clear specifications, especially if you already track leads or sales.

Hold off if your category sits near health, mental health or politics, if you need exact keyword control (Google Search still gives you that), or if the floor is too high: ₹725 a day is about ₹21,750 over 30 days per campaign.

Write for the conversation, not the search box. OpenAI recommends clear, specific, benefit-led copy that says what you offer, who it's for and when it helps. Give each offer several distinct titles and descriptions. Write context hints the same way, one idea per hint: "accounting software for small retailers in India that need GST-ready invoices" tells the system far more than "accounting software".

Run a small, clean test first:

1. Start one Clicks campaign targeting India only (new accounts may be limited to their home country anyway).
2. Create two or three ad groups for different customer needs, with three to five ads each.
3. Set a daily budget at or just above ₹725, remembering one day can spend up to double.
4. Install the Pixel, add UTM tags and decide on creative enhancements before launch.
5. After a few weeks, compare cost per lead or sale with your Google and Meta campaigns in GA4, using the same attribution model.

If the numbers hold up, raise the budget gradually or move to the Conversions objective. Paid channels work best alongside organic growth; our guide on how to increase website traffic covers the free side.