OpenAI walks advertisers through how ChatGPT Ads works, where it’s live, and where it’s headed next, including a European expansion starting next week.

OpenAI held a webinar on August 20, 2026, to walk advertisers and agencies through its ChatGPT advertising platform. OpenAI’s Christin Klein and Zoheb Hajiyani shared how the product works and is evolving, what’s happening in the near future, and OpenAI’s vision and approach to advertising in ChatGPT. Yep Ads’ search marketing team attended the session. Below is a summary of what was presented, drawn directly from the session.

How Ads Appear in ChatGPT

OpenAI described ChatGPT Ads as being built around a user’s broader “journey” rather than only the topic of the immediate conversation. The presenters illustrated this with an example: someone who researched minivans in an earlier conversation could still be shown a relevant car dealership ad even while chatting about an unrelated topic, such as planning a trip. The intent, as described, is for ads to support progress on things a user has already shown interest in, rather than simply matching the last message typed.

OpenAI presented a six-step consideration journey discover, research, compare, evaluate, decide, and purchase as the framework it uses to think about where brands can be useful to a user along the way, using hiking boots as a worked example.

OpenAI’s six-stage “consideration layer” framework, presented with a hiking-boots example.

Ads are shown clearly labeled beneath the assistant’s response. OpenAI stated that ads do not influence or alter the assistant’s underlying answer to the user.

Brand and User Safety

OpenAI said ads are only placed in conversations it considers brand-safe, and that safeguards are in place to keep ads out of brand-unsafe contexts. Separately, it said ads are avoided in conversations it classifies as sensitive to the user, and that users are given controls over their ad experience.

OpenAI’s stated approach to brand safety and user safety, with an example ad shown below an assistant response.

Who Can Be Shown Ads

OpenAI outlined the eligibility criteria for ad delivery as presented in the session:

• Users must be 18 years of age or older.
• Ads are shown to users on ChatGPT’s Free and Go plans.
• Ads can be shown to both logged-in and logged-out users.

Eligibility criteria for ad delivery, as presented.

Targeting Controls Available to Advertisers

OpenAI described three targeting controls currently available in ChatGPT Ads:

• Custom audiences advertisers can upload their own customer or prospect lists to include or exclude from a campaign.
• Geo-targeting campaigns can be targeted by country, and within the United States, by state, DMA, or zip code.
• Platform targeting advertisers can control which surfaces a campaign runs on, including the iOS app, Android app, and web.

Audience, geographic, and platform targeting controls shown during the presentation.

Where ChatGPT Ads Are Live

OpenAI shared a timeline of its rollout. A sales-managed launch began in the United States in February 2026, followed by a self-serve launch in the U.S. in April 2026. Canada, Australia, and New Zealand launched in June 2026, alongside the UK, Japan, and Korea in the same month. Brazil and Mexico launched in August 2026, bringing the total to nine live markets at the time of the presentation.

ChatGPT Ads market rollout timeline, as presented.

OpenAI also said that in the coming week, the platform will begin expanding to 31 additional European countries, naming the Netherlands, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Austria among them.

From Pilot to Platform

OpenAI framed its own product roadmap in three stages. The early pilot phase, it said, focused on introducing ads to ChatGPT’s U.S. Free and Go users without eroding user trust, using a minimal ad format and CPM bidding. The early beta phase that followed added foundational improvements: expansion to the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand; a refreshed core ad format and product feed ads; geo, platform, and custom audience targeting; and CPC plus oCPC bidding with CAPI/pixel measurement.

OpenAI described the current and coming phase starting in August 2026 as moving toward an “early platform,” with plans for expansion to more than 40 countries, improvements to auto-bidding and measurement partnerships, and what it called “agentic native experiences,” including automatic campaign creation and sponsored agents.

OpenAI’s presented roadmap from early pilot to early platform.

Early Advertiser Results

OpenAI shared results from a small number of early advertisers on the platform. Best Buy’s Vice President of Media, Amy Adams, was quoted saying click-through rates were higher than the company anticipated, which the company took as a sign that customers were engaging with the ads in meaningful ways. Newegg reported a 3x return on ad spend across campaigns over a 28-day period, and a 7x return on ad spend during a two-week seasonal campaign. VistaPrint’s Senior Manager of Paid AI Media, Garima Singh, said the majority of traffic ChatGPT drove to the company was from new visitors, which VistaPrint described as an encouraging early signal that the platform can reach customers outside its existing customer base.

Early results shared by Best Buy, Newegg, and VistaPrint.

A Faster Path to a First Campaign

OpenAI demonstrated a new, streamlined onboarding flow at ads.openai.com, which it said is rolling out gradually and may not yet be visible to all users. In the flow shown, an advertiser enters only a business website URL, and the platform generates an ad preview automatically including suggested ad copy, an image, and a title based on themes it identifies on the site. From there, the tool proposes a full campaign plan: objective, budget, targeting locations, bid strategy, and destination URL, all pre-filled but editable before anything is submitted. OpenAI emphasized that nothing goes live until the advertiser reviews and approves it.

The presenters also showed a ChatGPT plugin called “ChatGPT Ads Manager,” which can be added from ChatGPT’s plugin directory. In the demo, a user asked the plugin, within a ChatGPT conversation, to help build an ad for a specific product page; the plugin reviewed the page, proposed several ad variations with different angles, and asked the user to supply or confirm an image before rendering a finished ad preview. It then proposed campaign settings objective, budget, initial status, and destination for the user to confirm before anything was created.

OpenAI’s Stated Vision: An AI Agent for Ad Management

Looking further ahead, OpenAI described a vision for an AI agent, accessible through ChatGPT, that would let advertisers describe marketing goals in plain language for example, a small business owner asking for help bringing in more customers within a monthly budget and a target cost per reservation and have the agent handle campaign creation, ongoing monitoring, optimization recommendations, and reporting on the advertiser’s behalf. OpenAI presented this as a future direction for the platform rather than a feature available today.

How Advertisers Are Paid to Bid

OpenAI listed the bidding and payout models currently supported: CPM (cost per thousand impressions), CPC (cost per click), and oCPC (optimized cost per click).

Highlighted Advertiser Quotes

“What we’re seeing from early results is encouraging. Click-through rates were higher than we anticipated, showing that customers are engaging with the ads in meaningful ways.” Amy Adams, Vice President of Media, Best Buy

“The majority of traffic ChatGPT drove was new visitors … this is an encouraging early signal that the platform has the potential to reach customers who aren’t already in our ecosystem.” Garima Singh, Senior Manager of Paid AI Media, VistaPrint

Resources Shared During the Session

OpenAI pointed attendees to the following resources for further reading and setup:

• Advertise in ChatGPT / Ads Manager: ads.openai.com
• Creating campaigns for ChatGPT Ads 
• ChatGPT Ads policies, including vertical restrictions
• Ads Manager beta account setup guide 
• Advertiser support: [email protected]

OpenAI also noted that eligible new advertisers can apply for an initial ad credit when registering at ads.openai.com; full terms are published at openai.com/policies/ad-credit-terms.

What This Means for Yep Ads

We’re sharing this because we believe ChatGPT Ads represents more than just another new advertising placement. It’s an early look at how paid media may evolve as consumers increasingly use AI to discover, research, compare, and make decisions. The platform is still developing, and there is plenty left to learn, but the pace of expansion, new targeting and measurement capabilities, and OpenAI’s push toward agent-driven campaign management point to significant potential for advertisers willing to test and learn early.

At Yep Ads, we see this as part of a broader shift in the search and performance marketing landscape. The way people find information and interact with brands is changing, and advertising strategies will need to evolve with it. Our team will continue following ChatGPT Ads closely, testing the opportunities as the platform develops, and evaluating where it can create meaningful incremental value for the brands we work with.

Interested in what ChatGPT Ads or the broader shift toward AI-driven discovery could mean for your brand? Let’s talk about your goals, your ideas, and where these emerging channels could fit into your growth strategy.