ChatGPT Ads is no longer a pilot. OpenAI has opened a self-serve Ads Manager to all US businesses, removing the USD 50,000 minimum spend that used to keep smaller businesses out. Which means anyone can now buy ads in ChatGPT — but "can buy" and "can buy something profitable" are two different things.
Pricing and how you are billed
- OpenAI recommends a maximum bid of USD 3–5 per click for click-billed campaigns. Verbatim from the help documentation: "we recommend starting with a maximum bid of $3–5 USD per click".
- The minimum daily budget on a USD account is USD 25, averaged across a Sunday-to-Saturday week. A single day may spend up to twice that, but a week never more than seven times it.
- The auction is a relevance-weighted second-price auction: you pay less than your maximum bid, and only what was needed to win.
- There is currently a USD 500 credit when you spend USD 500 — halving the first month's cost.
Ads currently appear only to users on the Free and Go plans. Plus, Pro and Business users see no ads, and accounts identified as under 18 are excluded. That is why the audience is much smaller than the 800-million-user figure usually quoted — not everyone using ChatGPT will see your ad.
Four gates, and the fourth is the hard one
- Registration: the legal entity advertising and being billed must be registered in one of the 63 countries OpenAI supports.
- Verification: the partner Persona matches the business against public records, and screens the identity of the person completing the check.
- Payment: the card must be in the business's name and bill in the same currency as the account's country.
- Category: every ad, image and landing page is reviewed against policy — and a business whose main activity sits in a restricted category can be refused at signup.
The first three are about who you are, and most US businesses clear them in days. The fourth is about what you sell, and no paperwork changes its answer. This is the biggest difference from Google and Meta: the account's country and currency are fixed at setup, and changing them means a different legal entity and a new account.
Next in the series: which verticals are blocked, the economics of a $3–5 CPC, account setup and the first 30 days.
Sources: Ads in ChatGPT: The Basics, Ad policies, Advertise in ChatGPT, Our approach to advertising.