How to advertise on ChatGPT: what SaaS teams need to know now ads reach 89 countries

To advertise on ChatGPT, you sign up at ads.openai.com, verify your business, add billing and build a campaign that pays per view, per click or toward conversions. As of October 2026, self-service Ads Manager is open to businesses based in 89 countries, and the minimum daily budget in US dollars is $25.

By the end of this guide you will know who actually sees ChatGPT ads, what a first test costs, how targeting differs from Google Ads, and the cases where a software company should not spend here yet. That last part matters most: the audience rules exclude everyone on a paid ChatGPT plan, including the company-paid Business and Enterprise seats people use to research tools at work.

The 89-country count is OpenAI's own, and it checks out

On October 21, 2026, OpenAI expanded ChatGPT Ads to 26 more countries, bringing availability to 89 and reporting that more than 100,000 advertisers have run campaigns since ads launched just over eight months earlier. Coverage called them 89 countries or 89 markets, and none of it could list all 26 additions, because the announcement names only 11: Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Nigeria, South Africa, Serbia, Ukraine, Cambodia, Bangladesh and Pakistan.

The full list lives on OpenAI's Ads Manager availability page, and we counted it. On October 23, 2026 the table had 89 rows, every one marked available for self-service, so the announcement and the help page agree. One caveat on the word "countries": the list includes Puerto Rico and Taiwan, and 16 of its rows are in Latin America, which is consistent with 14 new Latin American markets added to Mexico and Brazil.

Which countries have ChatGPT ads, and can you buy them from yours?

Two rules decide whether you can buy, and neither is about where your customers are. First, the legal entity that advertises and is billed must be based in a listed country. If yours is not, you can still create an account at ads.openai.com and OpenAI says it will notify you when self-service opens.

Second, some new self-serve accounts can initially advertise only in their home country. An account becomes eligible for other supported countries once identity verification is approved and it reaches a required level of spend at home. OpenAI does not publish that threshold. For a SaaS company based in one country with most of its customers in another, this is the first thing to check, because selecting foreign countries in the campaign does not override the restriction.

Ads in ChatGPT reach only Free and Go users

Ads may appear for users on the Free and Go plans. Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Edu accounts do not see ads, and neither do accounts OpenAI identifies as belonging to people under 18. Temporary Chats show no ads either.

For a B2B software company, that plan rule is the most important fact in this guide. A buyer researching tools on a company-paid ChatGPT Business or Enterprise seat will never see your ad. OpenAI says more than 1.2 billion people use ChatGPT each week but does not publish how they split across plans, so nobody outside the company can tell you what share of software buyers you are reaching. Assume you are reaching individuals on free and low-cost plans, not procurement teams.

Placement has limits too. Ads are not eligible to appear near sensitive topics such as personal health, mental health or politics, and political advertising is not allowed. Personalized ads are not initially available in the European Economic Area or Switzerland, so ads there lean on the current conversation.

How to advertise on ChatGPT in five steps

OpenAI's help center lays out a single path through Ads Manager, which is still labeled a beta. In order:

1. Create an account at ads.openai.com and set up billing.
2. Complete account verification. Ads may not serve until it is done.
3. Create a campaign: objective, budget, start and end dates, countries, and optionally platforms and custom audiences.
4. Add ad groups, each built around one product, service or customer need, with context hints that describe when the ad is relevant.
5. Add ads with a title, copy, image and landing page, then submit them for review. Ads go live only after they pass policy review.

Platform targeting lets you pick any of five surfaces: Android app, Android web, desktop web, iOS app and iOS web. Outside product-feed campaigns you can also narrow by state, city, market or postal code where available. Custom audiences used for inclusion need at least 25,000 matched users, which rules them out for most early-stage products.

How much do ChatGPT ads cost? An auction with a floor

OpenAI publishes no rate card. Ads are ranked on a combination of relevance and advertiser bids, and what you pay depends on the objective you choose when you create the campaign. According to OpenAI's campaign guide, there are three:

Conversions campaigns optimize toward an event such as a sign-up, but you never pay per conversion. The objective cannot be changed after the campaign is created, so pick it deliberately.

The minimum daily budget depends on billing currency. As of October 2026 it is 25 USD, 15 EUR, 15 GBP, 25 CAD, 25 AUD and 725 INR. A daily budget is an average over a week, not a cap: spend can reach twice the daily amount on a single day and seven times it in a Sunday-to-Saturday week. At the US floor, that is $175 a week at most per campaign.

What a click should cost is the question OpenAI will not answer yet. Its own advertiser FAQ says ChatGPT Ads has no performance benchmarks across advertisers, industries or campaign types, and warns that delivery and spend can fluctuate during the beta. Any CPC figure you see quoted is someone else's campaign in someone else's market.

ChatGPT ads vs Google Ads: context hints are not keywords

The two platforms buy different moments. On Google Ads, keyword match types decide how closely a search query must match your keyword before your ad can enter the auction. OpenAI's own ad guide says ChatGPT needs a different approach from keyword-based platforms: there is no query to bid on. The system weighs the conversation, your landing page, ad copy and the context hints you write for each ad group.

OpenAI is explicit that context hints are not exact-match keywords or targeting rules and do not guarantee delivery. Its advice is to write specific phrases about what you offer, who it helps and when it is useful, rather than short category labels.

The strongest case for ChatGPT is the shape of the conversation. People describe their constraints, ask follow-ups and narrow a shortlist in one thread, which is closer to a buyer comparing tools than a two-word search. The strongest case against is control: on Google Ads you choose the keywords and how loosely they match, while ChatGPT advertisers receive aggregated reporting such as views and clicks, and nothing from the conversations themselves.

One more distinction trips people up. Paying for ads does nothing for whether ChatGPT mentions your product in its answers, because OpenAI says ads run on separate systems and do not influence responses. AI search visibility is a separate job, closer to SEO than to paid media. Our SEO and growth category, which lists 350 products as of October 23, 2026, is the place to compare tools for that work.

Are ChatGPT ads worth it for startups? Only for some

ChatGPT advertising fits a narrow set of software companies right now, and the ad policies explain why. During the initial period, ads are primarily limited to consumer verticals: lifestyle and household goods, local services, travel and experiences, and digital products or education. Financial, health and legal services are restricted, approved case by case and largely limited to the US.

Skip ChatGPT ads for now if

• You sell to enterprises whose staff use ChatGPT Business or Enterprise. Those seats never see ads.
• Your product competes with ChatGPT itself. OpenAI's policy reserves the right to refuse advertisers that conflict with its business interests or competitive position.
• You sell financial, health or legal services outside the US, where ads for them are generally prohibited. Budgeting apps and general financial software are generally permitted.
• You need keyword-level control or query reports to justify spend. ChatGPT does not offer them.
• Your entity sits outside the 89 listed countries. You cannot buy self-serve until it is added.

Test it if

• Your product is self-serve, priced for individuals or small teams, and fits the "digital products" category.
• Your best customers describe a problem before they know your category exists. That is the conversation a context hint can describe.
• You can measure a sign-up or trial start on your own site, so a Conversions campaign has an event to optimize toward.

A cheap first test for a software product

A first test should answer one question: does ChatGPT traffic convert at a cost you would pay on another channel? Here is a plan built only from OpenAI's published settings.

1. Run one campaign in your home country, which new accounts may be limited to anyway, with a daily budget at or near the currency minimum.
2. Choose Clicks while you learn, and start a separate Conversions campaign once your site records sign-ups reliably, since an objective cannot be changed in place.
3. Build two or three ad groups around distinct use cases, each with specific context hints and its own landing page rather than your homepage.
4. Write several distinct titles and descriptions per ad group. OpenAI recommends a high volume of varied creative so the system can find more conversations where your ads are relevant.
5. Add UTM tags to every destination URL, and make sure your site does not block the OAI-AdsBot user agent.
6. Judge results against a channel you already trust, using the same landing page and the same conversion definition.

Keep the comparison honest. Because OpenAI shares only aggregated reporting, your own analytics carry the attribution. If you are choosing a tool for that, our analytics category lists 228 products as of October 23, 2026, and the advertising and PR category lists 176, including multi-channel ad managers.

Your next step is to open the availability page, confirm your legal entity's country is on it, and write your first five context hints before you spend anything. If you are launching the product you plan to advertise, listing it on Upfynd is free and every submission is checked by a person on our team before it goes live.