Where they appear
ChatGPT Ads appear below ChatGPT's answer, labeled as sponsored and kept separate from the answer itself.
B2B ChatGPT Ads agency · US and Canada
Via Marketing is a B2B fractional marketing agency with offices in Vancouver and near Tel Aviv. We plan, launch, and manage ChatGPT Ads for B2B companies in the United States and Canada.
ChatGPT Ads are sponsored placements that people on the Free and Go plans see below ChatGPT's answers. We review your eligibility, set up tracking that reaches your CRM, write the ads and the context hints that tell OpenAI when an ad may be relevant, and run a fixed-budget test that ends in a clear decision: scale, change course, or stop.
Free 30-minute intro call, no commitment. Prefer to talk? Call +1 (604) 757-2686.
Key facts
ChatGPT Ads are OpenAI's paid advertising product: sponsored placements shown below a ChatGPT answer when the conversation relates to what the advertiser offers. Companies buy them in OpenAI's self-serve Ads Manager, choose an objective and a budget, and pay per thousand impressions or per click. The product is also called ChatGPT advertising, ads in ChatGPT, or OpenAI ads.
ChatGPT Ads appear below ChatGPT's answer, labeled as sponsored and kept separate from the answer itself.
OpenAI states that advertising does not influence answers, so being named inside an answer takes organic work (GEO/AEO, generative or answer engine optimization).
Accounts on the Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Edu plans have no ads.
ChatGPT Ads have no keyword targeting. OpenAI matches ads to the context and intent of a conversation, guided by "context hints" that the advertiser writes.
A company based in one of the more than 60 countries where the self-serve Ads Manager (beta) is available, including the US and Canada, if its category is allowed under OpenAI's ad policies.
The minimum daily budget applies to accounts billed in US or Canadian dollars. Advertisers pay for impressions or clicks, never per conversion.
Reported with last-touch attribution. ChatGPT Ads do not show the conversations behind an ad.
Google Ads match keywords that people search for. ChatGPT Ads match the context of a conversation and appear below the answer.
OpenAI publishes customer stories but no performance benchmarks, and published B2B test results are mixed, so a controlled test is the sensible start.
Last reviewed on October 13, 2026, against OpenAI's Help Center and ad policies. Reviewed by Almog (Al) Sosin, Fractional CMO.
Free 30-minute intro call, no commitment.
What our service includes
Via Marketing's ChatGPT advertising services cover the full cycle of a controlled test: an eligibility review, account and tracking setup, ads and context hints, weekly optimization, and a report that ends in a recommendation to scale, change course, or stop. If the test earns a larger budget, we keep managing the account.
A free 30-minute call that gives you a first read on whether your category and market are eligible and whether a test makes sense.
Setup, launch, and weekly optimization on a budget and timeline agreed in writing, ending in a decision report. A typical test runs for 1 to 4 weeks.
After a decision to scale, we manage the account month to month. If you already advertise on ChatGPT, we start with a review of your tracking, context hints, and results.
Three ways to work with us on ChatGPT Ads
Is it right for your company?
ChatGPT advertising fits B2B companies whose buyers research and compare before they contact sales, whose deal size can carry a cost per lead in the hundreds of dollars and a cost per opportunity in the thousands, and whose CRM can follow a lead through to pipeline. It is not yet a fit for restricted categories, for companies without conversion tracking, or for anyone who needs guaranteed results next month.
The evidence
As of October 2026, ChatGPT Ads are unproven for B2B lead generation. Small self-funded B2B tests report click-through rates of about 0.65% to 1.1% and no qualified leads on budgets under $2,500, while the more positive results, from an OpenAI customer story and an agency case study, are self-reported and harder to verify. The evidence supports a controlled test. It does not support moving budget away from proven channels.
In a G2 survey of 1,076 B2B software buyers in March 2026, 51% said they start their research with an AI chatbot more often than with Google. In a Gartner survey of 645 B2B buyers, fielded in 2025 and published in May 2026, 45% said they used generative AI during a recent purchase.
B2B SaaS accounted for 19.9% of US ChatGPT ad impressions between March 30 and August 4, 2026, the largest share of any category, according to Graphite's analysis of Similarweb panel data, reported by Search Engine Journal. Graphite's report adds that the ten largest advertisers worldwide all sell something a user can buy online right away, so the figure says less about B2B companies with a sales-led process.
Three of the agencies in the tests below said their ChatGPT clicks cost less than their Google Search clicks, though only one compared the same 30 days.
The case for testing now
| Known risk | How the test is designed around it |
|---|
Published ChatGPT Ads tests with B2B relevance, as reported by the advertisers themselves, by the trade press, or by OpenAI.
What they ran The agency's own campaigns, on its own budget.
Comparison or caveat For reference, its Google Search campaigns: $6.76 per click, 5.2% click-through rate, 2 marketing-qualified leads. The author calls it "not a direct comparison."
What they ran Two campaigns promoting the agency to manufacturing and industrial audiences.
Comparison or caveat Conversion optimization was not yet available. The agency says clicks cost about a third of what it pays on Google Search.
What they ran Campaigns for a B2B compliance services client.
Comparison or caveat Google Ads over the same 30 days: $10.46 per click, 6.64% conversion rate, $157.57 per lead, and a much higher share of its leads have become customers so far, though StubGroup says that count is not final. It also says this click price is at the low end and that it usually sees $3 to $5.
What they ran Two click-bid campaigns targeting Ontario and Alberta and one impression-bid campaign, for the agency's own service.
Comparison or caveat A small Canadian test. The spend figure comes from MediaPost.
What they ran Two campaigns run in Canada for a B2B client.
Comparison or caveat Google Ads for the same client over the same period, with the same tracking: 5.95% conversion rate.
What they ran Campaigns for three B2B SaaS clients.
Comparison or caveat Reports a cost per lead 60% lower than on Google Ads. A case study for the agency's own ChatGPT Ads service: it does not define "qualified" or state the currency, and it publishes no spend or raw data.
What they ran Its own campaigns. Stream sells communication APIs to developers.
Comparison or caveat Published by OpenAI, from the advertiser's internal data. More than 70% of clicks became website sessions, against below 10% on the other channels it tested.
The three self-funded agency tests, from about CA$415 to $2,319, produced clicks but no qualified leads. The four other results all recorded conversions, with conversion rates below Google Ads wherever the two were compared, and a cheaper lead was not automatically a cheaper customer. Three of the seven tests disclose no spend, and the two most positive results are also the two published as marketing material: an agency case study and an OpenAI customer story.
Our six-step process
Via Marketing runs ChatGPT Ads as a controlled test in six steps, from an eligibility review to a decision based on the data.
We review your category, offer, and landing pages against OpenAI's current policies. We map the questions your buyers ask before they shortlist vendors, we look at how ChatGPT answers them today, and we check whether those buyers are likely to be using Free or Go accounts rather than a company workspace. Together we set a measurable target: cost per qualified lead, cost per meeting, or cost per opportunity.
You open the Ads Manager account under your company's registered legal name and invite us as users. We guide you through the settings that can't be changed later, through billing, and through business verification, which OpenAI says can take up to seven business days.
We install the OpenAI Pixel and, where needed, the Conversions API, and we define conversion events such as form leads, booked meetings, trials, or sign-ups. We add UTM parameters, make sure OpenAI's click reference (oppref) survives your redirects, connect GA4 and your CRM, and confirm that every event is received before any media budget is spent. We also make sure your site does not block OAI-AdsBot, the crawler that OpenAI requires for landing page validation and review.
We write context hints from the buyer-question map and prepare several versions of title, copy, and image for each offer. We decide with you whether to opt in to OpenAI's AI-powered text customization, which adapts ad text to the conversation and can translate it. Each ad points to a landing page that answers the buyer question its ad group was built around, not to your home page.
We launch on the budget agreed in advance. OpenAI recommends that advertisers new to the platform start with a daily budget, and describes a campaign-total budget as the stricter control for total spend, so we choose between the two with you before launch. Each week we review impressions, clicks, cost per click, and conversions, and we adjust bids, context hints, ads, and landing pages.
At the end of the test we compare the agreed metric (cost per qualified lead, per meeting, or per opportunity) with the same figure from your other paid channels over the same period, and we decide together. "Not now" is a legitimate result, and a better one than a budget that keeps running without an answer.
If the numbers support scaling, we move to monthly management: more ad groups, budget increases in steps, and custom audiences once your lists are large enough to qualify. If the answer is to change course, we re-plan the test around a different offer, audience, or objective, on a new budget agreed in writing. If your team wants to run the account, we hand over the setup and what we learned. If the answer is to stop, the account, the Pixel, and the data stay with you for a later test.
Costs and fees
As of October 2026, the minimum daily budget for ChatGPT Ads is $25 per campaign for accounts billed in US or Canadian dollars, about $750 a month for one campaign. Advertisers pay per thousand impressions or per click at prices set in an auction, and OpenAI suggests starting click bids at $3 to $5. In the published tests summarized on this page, clicks cost between US$0.76 and US$5.68, and about CA$7 in one Canadian test. Media is paid directly to OpenAI, and an agency's management fee, if you use one, comes on top.
US$25 or CA$25 per campaign. EUR 15 or GBP 15 for accounts billed in those currencies.
Per 1,000 impressions or per valid click. There is no pay-per-conversion option.
In US dollars. A starting point, not an average price.
In the tests on this page, and about CA$7 in one Canadian test. PPC ONE's review of 15 dollar-billed campaigns found US$0.76 to US$14.80, with half below US$4.41.
ChatGPT Ads costs at a glance, as of October 2026.
The minimum daily budget depends on the account's billing currency. The daily budget is an average over seven days:
2× Spend on a single day can reach twice the daily budget.
7× Spend over the budget week, Sunday through Saturday, will not exceed seven times the daily budget.
Cap A campaign-total budget limits spend over the whole campaign. OpenAI suggests that new advertisers start with a daily budget.
Postpay Billing is postpay: OpenAI charges your payment method when the account reaches its payment threshold, and again at the end of the month for any outstanding balance.
Two costs, two invoices. Media spend never passes through us.
Media budget OpenAI bills you directly, at a minimum of US$25 or CA$25 a day per campaign, on a postpay basis.
Management fee Our management fee covers the work listed under what's included, from the eligibility review to the decision report. We quote it after the feasibility check, once the scope and the test budget are clear.
| Cost per click | Landing page conversion rate | Cost per lead | Media budget for 20 leads | Cost per opportunity (1 lead in 5) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $3 | 1.0% | $300 | $6,000 | $1,500 |
| $4 | 0.8% | $500 | $10,000 | $2,500 |
| $6 | 0.5% | $1,200 | $24,000 | $6,000 |
Measurement
ChatGPT Ads let you measure impressions, clicks, spend, and conversions, and a CRM connection extends that to pipeline. They don't show the conversations behind your ads, audience demographics, or incremental impact. Via Marketing measures in three layers: OpenAI's Pixel and Conversions API record conversions on your site, UTM parameters identify the traffic in GA4, and the CRM connection shows what happened to each lead after the form.
The OpenAI Pixel sends conversion events from your website, and the Conversions API sends them from your server. When both are used, a shared event ID lets OpenAI deduplicate them. According to OpenAI's reporting guide, Ads Manager shows impressions, clicks, spend, click-through rate, average cost per click, and conversions, with breakdowns by device, country, and platform. Impressions and clicks refresh about every 15 minutes, spend figures lag by roughly seven to eight hours, and attributed conversions can take 24 to 48 hours to appear.
For HubSpot users, an integration documented by OpenAI adds new leads to the CRM and shows ChatGPT Ads performance next to your other ad channels. OpenAI also lists integrations with Hightouch, Tealium, and LiveRamp. For other CRMs, including custom builds, we set up the connection ourselves.
The Pixel brings privacy obligations. OpenAI requires advertisers to tell users what data they collect and to obtain any consents the law requires before sending conversion data. It also says that the Pixel detects customer information that visitors enter in recognizable web forms and hashes it in the browser before sending it. We review your privacy notice and consent setup before the Pixel goes live.
Attribution in Ads Manager is last-touch. In reports you can choose a 7-, 14-, or 30-day click window and add a 1-day view window, which counts conversions that follow an ad impression without a click, and OpenAI says totals may also include modeled conversions. So OpenAI's totals are not directly comparable with click-based numbers from other platforms, and they rarely equal the leads in your CRM. The gap can run the other way too: Digiday describes an agency whose form fills had still not appeared as conversions in Ads Manager two weeks later. We report click-through conversions and CRM-confirmed leads side by side, and we judge the test on the CRM numbers.
Once a month you get a "money on the table" report in business language: what was spent; how many qualified leads, meetings, and opportunities came in; what each one cost on ChatGPT compared with your other paid channels; and where budget should move next.
What we commit to
At Via Marketing, we commit to how the test is run, how it is measured, and what we report, because those are the things we control. No agency can commit in advance to a cost per lead or a return on a channel this new.
In-house or agency?
You can run ChatGPT Ads in-house. Ads Manager is self-serve, and no agency or OpenAI partner is required. Where a ChatGPT advertising agency earns its fee is in the setup decisions that are hard to undo, in tracking that reaches the CRM, and in keeping a test disciplined enough to end in a decision.
You probably don't need one if you have a paid-media specialist with time to test every week, your conversion tracking already reaches the CRM, and you only want a small first look at the channel. In that case, use the eligibility table and the budget arithmetic on this page and run the test yourself. If you want a second opinion later, we also review accounts that are already running.
Why Via Marketing
Via Marketing is a B2B fractional marketing agency, founded in 2017, that brings to ChatGPT Ads what it already does on Google Ads and LinkedIn Ads for B2B companies: CRM-level tracking, the discipline of a controlled test, and one plan across the whole marketing mix. The channel is less than a year old, so no agency has a long track record on it.
We have worked with more than 180 companies across Israel, North America, and Europe, including startups, SaaS companies, and other B2B firms. Every engagement is led by an experienced CMO.
CRM integrations, conversions APIs, and server-side measurement are part of our everyday work on other ad platforms. For Tic Tac Telecom, for example, we connected a custom CRM to a conversions API and set up server-side measurement. On ChatGPT Ads, where reporting is still limited, the same work is a requirement.
The team that writes your ads also checks what ChatGPT says about your category and, through our SEO services, can work on your organic visibility in AI answers. That raises the odds that the ad and the answer above it tell the same story.
ChatGPT is one channel in a mix. A fractional CMO leads the plan, and budget moves according to each channel's contribution to pipeline and revenue. For Strata Engineering, a consulting engineering firm in the Vancouver market, we combined SEO, paid search, and account-based marketing with events and content.
Our Vancouver office serves clients across North America, and our head office is in Kiryat Ono, near Tel Aviv. Because we work on both sides of the US-Canada border and with Israeli and European companies selling into North America, we plan for cross-border account, billing, and targeting rules from the start.
Simply an excellent marketing company! From the first moment we got personal, professional and responsive service. The team listened to our needs and knew how to tailor precise solutions for our target audience. Within…
A professional, reliable and creative marketing company of the highest calibre. They guided us every step of the way, with personal service, high availability and solutions that fit perfectly. Thanks to them we saw…
Launching our startup was an exciting but challenging journey, and partnering with Via Marketing turned out to be one of the best decisions we made. The Fractional CMO…
Reliability and professionalism! Close guidance, full transparency and clear explanations. Thank you so much.
True professionals. We worked with several marketing agencies specializing in Google Ads and SEO, and none came close to the results the Via team…
Reviews translated from Hebrew. Originals on our Google Business Profile.
A custom CRM connected to a conversions API, with server-side measurement.
SEO, paid search, and account-based marketing combined with events and content for a consulting engineering firm in the Vancouver market.
Platform reference
The rest of this page is reference material on the platform itself: who can advertise, how the ads work, and how they compare with organic visibility and with other channels.
Who can advertise
As of October 2026, a company can advertise on ChatGPT through the self-serve Ads Manager if it meets three conditions. The legal entity that advertises and pays must be based in a country where Ads Manager is available, must pass OpenAI's business verification, and must be in a category that OpenAI's ad policies permit. Ads Manager is available in both the United States and Canada. Category rules are stricter outside the United States: several categories that are open in the US are closed everywhere else, including Canada.
The three conditions
countries on OpenAI's availability list when we last checked, including:
The account uses the advertiser's registered legal name, and the country, billing currency, and time zone chosen at setup can't be changed later. OpenAI's billing guide says billing details and the payment method should match the business entity and country on the account.
| Parameter | Category | United States | Canada and all other countries |
|---|---|---|---|
| Allowed in every country | |||
| OpenAI's focus categories: household and consumer goods, local services, travel and entertainment, digital products, and education | ok | ok | |
| Financial software | ok | ok | |
| Health software and infrastructure | ok | ok | |
| Open in the US, closed or restricted elsewhere | |||
| Legal services | ok|for advertisers licensed to practice law where the ad is shown | no | |
| Insurance (excluding health insurance) and deposit accounts | ok | ltd|to select approved advertisers | |
| Dietary supplements; consumer medical devices, wearables, and apps | ok | no | |
| Restricted in the US, restricted or closed elsewhere | |||
| Credit cards; investing, brokerage, and robo-advisers | ltd|to select approved advertisers | ltd|to select approved advertisers | |
| Payments and remittances, personal loans, financial planning, and cryptocurrency | ltd|to select approved advertisers | no | |
| Hospitals and urgent care; health insurance | ltd|to select approved advertisers | no | |
| Not allowed anywhere | |||
| Telehealth services | no | no | |
| Credit repair, debt relief, payday loans, prescription medicines, and online pharmacies | no | no | |
| Individual job listings or property listings | no|A platform that hosts listings can advertise as long as the ad and its landing page don't reference a specific listing. | ||
| Dating apps and adult content, alcohol and tobacco, gambling, and political advocacy | no | no |
OpenAI's written policy does not settle this. It says that during the initial test period ads are "primarily limited to consumer verticals" and that "all other categories are disallowed at launch," and it never mentions B2B. In practice, B2B advertisers are running: B2B SaaS was the largest category of US ad impressions in Graphite's analysis, and the published tests include campaigns for marketing agencies and for a B2B compliance services company. OpenAI's own material points the same way: its customer stories include Stream, which sells APIs to developers; its eligibility table lists financial software and health software and infrastructure as allowed in every country; and its context hints guide uses bookkeeping software for retailers as an example. OpenAI reviews every ad and landing page and reserves the right to decline any advertiser, so eligibility is the first thing we confirm.
Yes. OpenAI began rolling out ads to Free and Go users in Canada on April 16, 2026, and Canadian companies can open a self-serve Ads Manager account. Accounts billed in Canadian dollars have a minimum daily budget of CA$25 per campaign, and OpenAI supports targeting below country level (regions, cities, and postal codes) where available; one published Canadian test targeted Ontario and Alberta. Canada falls under "all other countries" in OpenAI's eligibility table, so campaigns that serve in Canada can't promote legal services, most health categories, or several financial categories. On the demand side, 39% of Canadian adults told a Léger survey for National Bank of Canada in June 2026 that they had used a generative AI tool in the past year to help with a purchase decision.
How ChatGPT Ads work
ChatGPT Ads work in four steps. An advertiser sets up a campaign in OpenAI's Ads Manager with an objective, a budget, ads, and context hints. When a Free or Go user's conversation relates to the offer, OpenAI runs an auction among the eligible ads. The winning ad or ads appear below ChatGPT's answer, labeled as sponsored. The advertiser pays per thousand impressions or per click.
OpenAI began testing ads in the United States on February 9, 2026, and started rolling them out in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand on April 16, 2026. The self-serve Ads Manager entered beta on May 5, 2026, and by late September 2026 ChatGPT Ads were available in more than 60 countries.
A ChatGPT ad sits below ChatGPT's answer, in a separate unit labeled as sponsored. Each ad carries the advertiser's name and logo, a title, a line of copy, a square image, and a link to a landing page. OpenAI's Launch Campaigns guide recommends titles of 16 to 24 characters (50 at most) and copy of 32 to 48 characters (100 at most), so each ad has room for one idea.
According to OpenAI's Help Center, ads may appear for users on the Free and Go plans, including in logged-out sessions. Accounts on the Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Edu plans have no ads, and OpenAI does not show ads to accounts it identifies as belonging to users under 18. Ads don't run in Temporary Chats or near sensitive or regulated topics such as personal health, mental health, or politics, and Free users can switch to an ad-free experience with lower usage limits.
An employee working inside a company's ChatGPT Business or Enterprise workspace will not see your ad. In B2B, you reach professionals only when they use a Free or Go account, on the web or in the mobile apps.
You don't buy keywords in ChatGPT. According to OpenAI's overview for advertisers, its system weighs the context and intent of the current conversation; the ad's title, copy, and landing page; and context hints supplied by the advertiser. When several ads fit, OpenAI runs what it calls a relevance-weighted, second-price auction, so both your bid and your ad's relevance count.
Context hints are short natural-language phrases, written for each ad group, that describe what you offer, who it helps, and when it is useful. OpenAI's guidance is to write a clear, natural phrase about one idea, not a list of disconnected keywords. For example:
Hints are not targeting rules. OpenAI's guidance says they don't guarantee that your ad appears in a particular conversation or for a particular audience, and they can't enforce geographic limits, schedules, or exclusions. Advertisers also never see the conversations: OpenAI shares only aggregated, non-identifying information, such as total views and clicks.
Beyond context, you can target by platform and by location (country, plus states or regions, cities, and postal codes where OpenAI supports them), and you can upload lists of customers or prospects as custom audiences. OpenAI also says that some qualifying advertisers can add Negative Phrases to meet narrow placement requirements set by their own brand policies.
Best for Awareness
You pay for Every 1,000 impressions (CPM)
Good to know OpenAI describes Views as best for maximizing visibility and exposure.
Best for Bringing qualified visitors to a landing page and learning the channel
You pay for Each valid click (CPC)
Good to know OpenAI recommends starting with a maximum bid of $3 to $5 per click.
Best for Leads, demo requests, sign-ups, and trials
You pay for Clicks or impressions, your choice. Never per conversion.
Good to know Optimizes toward one supported standard event, for example a lead submission (leadcreated). Custom events can't be used, and the event can't be changed after the campaign is created.
Where the option is available, new ad groups default to the Maximize results bid strategy, in which OpenAI sets bids automatically. OpenAI states that it does not guarantee a specific CPA, CPC, or ROAS, so in each test we decide with you whether to start there or with manual maximum bids. For Conversions campaigns, OpenAI advises choosing an event with enough signal. B2B demo requests are often too rare for that, so we usually recommend starting with a Clicks campaign and moving to Conversions when volume allows.
Ads vs. organic visibility
A ChatGPT ad and a mention inside a ChatGPT answer are two different things. The ad is a paid placement below the answer. Being named or cited inside the answer is earned through clear content, authority, and a site that AI crawlers can read. The work that improves it is called generative engine optimization (GEO) or answer engine optimization (AEO).
| Parameter | Aspect | ChatGPT Ads (paid) | Organic visibility (GEO/AEO) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Where you appear | Below the answer, in a unit labeled as sponsored | Inside the answer or in its cited sources | |
| How you get there | Buy placements in Ads Manager | Clear, authoritative content, a crawlable site, and mentions across the web | |
| What you pay | Per thousand impressions or per click | Nothing to OpenAI. The investment is in content and technical work. | |
| How fast | As soon as the account and ads are approved | Gradually, over weeks to months | |
| What you measure | Impressions, clicks, conversions, and cost per lead | Mentions, citations, and referral traffic from AI engines |
No. OpenAI states that advertising does not influence the answers ChatGPT provides, and that ads are always clearly labeled and separate from those answers. An agency that promises that ad spend will make ChatGPT recommend you is promising something OpenAI itself rules out.
Your ad appears under an answer you don't control. If that answer recommends a competitor, the ad has more work to do. If it mentions you, the ad and the answer reinforce each other. So before a campaign we check what ChatGPT currently says in response to your buyers' questions, and we shape the message around it. The organic side is handled in our B2B SEO services, which can be extended with a GEO/AEO layer. Our guide to LLM optimization explains the method.
Comparison
ChatGPT Ads don't replace Google Ads or LinkedIn Ads. Each channel reaches a B2B buyer in a different way: Google captures demand that people type into a search box, LinkedIn reaches decision-makers by job title and company, and ChatGPT meets a buyer in the middle of a research conversation, while they are comparing options.
| Parameter | Aspect | ChatGPT Ads | Google Ads | LinkedIn Ads |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Where the ad appears | Below a ChatGPT answer, labeled as sponsored | Search results, YouTube, Maps, and the Display Network | The feed and the message inbox | |
| What the buyer is doing | Asking questions and comparing options | On Search: looking for something specific, now | Scrolling in a professional context | |
| How you target | Conversation context and context hints, plus location, platform, and custom audiences. No keywords and no job titles. | Keywords, search intent, and audiences | Job title, seniority, company, industry, and account lists (ABM) | |
| What you pay for | Impressions or clicks | Mostly clicks | Clicks or impressions | |
| What you can measure | Impressions, clicks, and conversions with last-touch attribution. No report of the prompts behind them. | Conversions, calls, conversion value, and a search terms report | Leads, conversions, and company-level reporting | |
| Maturity and benchmarks | In beta since 2026, with no official benchmarks | Mature, with widely published third-party benchmarks for most industries | Mature, with third-party benchmarks and a comparatively high cost per click |
On Google Ads you bid on keywords and appear when someone searches for them. On ChatGPT you can't bid on keywords: OpenAI matches ads to the context of a conversation, guided by the context hints you write, and shows them below the answer. Google also gives you a search terms report, while ChatGPT Ads show no data on the conversations behind your ads.
It is not an either-or choice: ChatGPT Ads and LinkedIn Ads do different jobs. LinkedIn Ads let you target by job title, seniority, company, and account list, which ChatGPT Ads cannot do. ChatGPT Ads reach people while they research a problem or compare vendors. If your sales motion depends on named accounts, keep LinkedIn as the core and test ChatGPT Ads as an addition, funded from an experimentation or upper-funnel budget.
FAQ
There are two costs. The media budget is paid directly to OpenAI, with a minimum of US$25 or CA$25 a day per campaign. Via Marketing's management fee is separate and covers the work from the eligibility review to the decision report.
Launch depends mainly on OpenAI: business verification can take up to seven business days, and every ad is reviewed before it runs. Via Marketing uses that time to set up tracking and write the ads and context hints. Judging cost per qualified lead takes longer than launching: two of the small self-funded tests on this page ran for 30 days or less, and none of the three produced a qualified lead. A typical Via Marketing test runs for 1 to 4 weeks.
Then the recommendation is to stop or change course, and that is a legitimate outcome of a test. You keep the ad account, the Pixel and conversion setup, the buyer-question map, and the data, and the budget goes back to the channels that performed better over the same weeks. Via Marketing does not recommend continuing to spend on a channel that has not shown it can produce pipeline for you.
Yes. Via Marketing joins your existing Ads Manager account as invited users and reviews the tracking, context hints, ad groups, audiences, and landing pages, then compares the results with your other paid channels. From there we either hand back a list of fixes or take over management, whichever you prefer.
No. Ads Manager is self-serve, and an eligible business can open an account and run campaigns on its own. OpenAI has named agency partners, including Dentsu, Omnicom, Publicis, and WPP, as well as technology partners, but buying through a partner is optional. Via Marketing is not affiliated with OpenAI.
You do. The account is opened under your company's legal name, OpenAI bills you directly, and Via Marketing joins as invited users. The Pixel, the campaign history, and the conversion data stay in your account if we stop working together.
Keywords and job titles, no. Contact lists, only if they are large. ChatGPT Ads have no keyword targeting and no targeting by job title, company, or industry. You can target by location and platform, and you can upload lists of customers or prospects as custom audiences, matched on email addresses, phone numbers, or Google advertising IDs. OpenAI requires at least 25,000 matched users before a list can be used for targeting or bid adjustments, and recommends 100,000. Smaller lists, such as the contacts on a typical ABM list, can still be used as exclusions.
No. OpenAI says advertisers receive only aggregated, non-identifying information about how their ads perform, such as total views and clicks. Advertisers never receive chats, chat history, memories, names, email addresses, precise location, or IP addresses. There is also no report that shows which conversations triggered an ad.
OpenAI's Help Center says the two measure different things: ad clicks count interactions with the ad, while analytics sessions depend on page load, redirects, consent settings, browser blocking, UTM handling, attribution windows, and time zone settings. Some advertisers have reported far fewer site visits than reported clicks, and others report no gap. Via Marketing adds UTM parameters to every ad, compares reported clicks with landing page sessions every week, and raises large gaps with OpenAI support.
Probably. OpenAI's Help Center does not list the languages ads can be written in. ChatGPT Ads are sold in more than 60 countries, most of them outside the English-speaking world, and OpenAI offers an opt-in feature that adapts ad text and automatically translates it into the user's preferred language. For any market that matters to you, we recommend writing each language version by hand instead of relying on automatic translation, and checking how it renders before launch, especially for right-to-left languages such as Hebrew and Arabic.
Sources and review notes
This page was last reviewed on October 13, 2026, against OpenAI's Help Center and ad policies. ChatGPT Ads are in beta and change often. We re-check this page regularly, and the date shows the last review.
Ads in ChatGPT; Ads in ChatGPT: the basics; Ads Manager availability; Ads Manager account setup; onboarding, verification, and the eligibility table; creating campaigns, budgets, and location targeting; Launch Campaigns and ad specifications; writing context hints; conversion-optimized campaigns; the Maximize results bid strategy; conversion measurement; supported conversion events; measuring results; custom audiences; billing and payment; OpenAI web crawlers; the HubSpot integration; frequently asked questions; ChatGPT release notes.
ad policies, updated September 10, 2026; self-serve Ads Manager announcement, May 5, 2026; announcement on expanding access, August 31, 2026; text customization announcement, September 16, 2026; market expansion announcement, September 23, 2026; measurement update, October 5, 2026; customer stories, including Stream, September 1, 2026.
Optimize content for LLMs (GEO): answer-first structure, schema, citations, internal links, and freshness for AI Overviews, ChatGPT & Gemini
Level up your B2B marketing with our Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) guide, with a template, examples, and actionable insights.
Stop guessing. Get the final answer on which is better, SEO or paid search (PPC), and learn how to combine both for maximizing your ROI.