ChatGPT ads are paid units that appear below the end of a ChatGPT response, labelled as sponsored and visually separate from the answer. OpenAI started testing them in the United States on February 9, 2026, shows them only on the Free and Go plans and to logged-out visitors, and says they run on systems separate from the chat model, so an advertiser cannot change what the answer says. Advertisers buy them by impression (CPM) or by click (CPC) in a relevance-weighted, second-price auction, either through the self-serve Ads Manager, open to businesses based in the countries on OpenAI’s list, or through OpenAI’s sales team and partners. OpenAI’s own starting guidance for click bids is $3 to $5 per click. For a brand, the important point is what ads do not buy: the recommendation inside the answer. That part is still earned, and it is the part you need to measure separately.
Where ChatGPT ads appear
An ad appears under a finished response, never inside it. OpenAI’s Ads in ChatGPT help article describes one or more ad units below an answer when there is a relevant match to the chat, and a single unit can hold items from one advertiser or several. Its advertiser basics page lists what each ad carries: the advertiser’s name, a favicon, a headline, a short description, an image and a landing page.
There are places ads do not appear, according to the same pages:
- Paid plans. Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Edu accounts see no ads.
- Under-18 accounts. OpenAI excludes accounts it identifies as belonging to users under 18, using account-level age information and age prediction where available.
- Sensitive conversations. Ads are not eligible near personal health, mental health or political topics, and political advertising is not allowed at all.
- Temporary Chats and, during the test, the ChatGPT Atlas browser.
Logged-out visitors can see ads too, limited to ads appropriate for all audiences. Free users who do not want ads can switch to an ads-free mode with lower message limits and no access to some tools, such as image generation.
Two newer formats sit outside the standard unit. Sponsored Agents let a person open a chat with an AI representative of a business from an ad; OpenAI lists them as a limited alpha for selected advertisers and is not accepting early access requests. On October 5, 2026, OpenAI announced a visual ad format that it will test during image generation for Free and Go users, starting later in October in the US with an initial group of advertisers. OpenAI says those ads will be labelled and kept separate from the image being made.
How an ad is chosen
The ad system picks from eligible ads using the context and intent of the current conversation, the ad’s landing page, headline and copy, and the “context hints” the advertiser writes for each ad group. Context hints describe the conversations, topics or keywords where a product may be relevant. OpenAI is explicit that they are not exact-match keywords and do not guarantee delivery, which makes them closer to a brief than to a keyword list in paid search.
When a user leaves ad personalization on, the system can also draw on select signals from their wider ChatGPT use: past chats, memory and how they interacted with earlier ads. OpenAI says personalized ads are not initially available in the European Economic Area or Switzerland. Users can turn personalization off, see why an ad was shown, hide or report it, and clear their ad data.
Among eligible ads, OpenAI considers a combination of factors, including relevance and the advertiser’s bid. Because the auction is relevance-weighted, the bid is one input, not the whole decision.
What ChatGPT ads cost
OpenAI publishes the billing model and a bid recommendation, not a rate card. The facts it states:
- Billing: by impression (Views, on a maximum CPM bid) or by valid click (Clicks, on a maximum CPC bid). A Conversions objective optimizes toward a standard conversion event; with click billing it still charges per valid click, not per conversion.
- Starting bid: for click campaigns, OpenAI recommends a maximum bid of $3 to $5 per click to start, and Ads Manager may show bid-strength guidance.
- Auction: a relevance-weighted, second-price auction, with bids set at the ad-group level.
- Mix: on August 31, 2026, OpenAI said CPC and outcome-optimized bidding accounted for the majority of campaigns.
OpenAI’s pages do not publish a minimum spend or average CPC or CPM figures, so this page does not give them. Third-party cost figures you may see elsewhere are estimates from individual campaigns.
How to start advertising
There are two routes. The self-serve Ads Manager began rolling out in beta on May 5, 2026, as OpenAI’s announcement describes, and lets a business register, add payment details, set budgets, bids and pacing, upload ads and read results. It only works if the legal entity that advertises and is billed is based in a country on OpenAI’s availability list. On the list we read on October 7, 2026, that included the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, India, Japan, all 27 EU member states, the six Gulf states and Brazil. Anyone can create an account elsewhere and be told when their country opens.
The second route is managed: OpenAI’s Ads Solutions team, agencies such as Dentsu, Omnicom, Publicis and WPP, and technology partners such as Adobe, Criteo and StackAdapt, all named in the May announcement. OpenAI said in August 2026 that ads were available this way in over 40 countries.
Reporting in Ads Manager covers impressions, clicks, spend, click-through rate, average CPC and CPM, and conversions, with a pixel and a Conversions API for measurement. Advertisers get aggregated numbers only, never the conversations.
Ads, mentions and citations are three different things
A brand can show up in a ChatGPT session in three ways, and only one of them is for sale.
| Paid ad | Organic mention | Citation | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Where it sits | Below the response, labelled sponsored | Inside the answer text | A linked source inside or under the answer |
| How you get it | Bid in the ads auction | The model recommends you from what it has read | Your page is retrieved and used as a source |
| Who sees it | Free and Go users and logged-out visitors, outside sensitive topics | Every user who asks a matching question, on any plan | Every user, when the answer uses web sources |
| Stops when | You stop paying | Sources stop supporting you | Your page stops being retrieved |
| Bought? | Yes | No | No |
OpenAI states that ads do not influence answers and that seeing an ad is not an endorsement. So a campaign can put your name under a response that recommends a competitor, and the answer will still recommend the competitor. Plus and Pro users, who see no ads at all, only ever get the organic answer. The difference between a mention and a citation matters for the same reason: they move for different causes and need different fixes.
This is also why the short answer to whether you can pay to appear in AI answers is still no. You can pay to appear next to the answer, in front of part of the audience.
How to tell sponsored from earned when you track ChatGPT
If you watch ChatGPT for your brand, keep the two apart from the start:
- Read the label. An ad is marked sponsored and sits after the response. A brand named inside the response text is an organic mention, whatever ads appear beneath it.
- Record the answer, not the screen. OpenAI says ads are not integrated into responses, and by default ChatGPT cannot see the ads shown to the user. A tracker that stores the answer text and its sources measures the earned side; the ads are not part of the response.
- Tag your ad links. OpenAI documents static tracking parameters, such as UTM tags, that persist on ad clicks. Tag every ad landing URL, and your analytics will separate paid ChatGPT visits from unpaid ones. Our guide to tracking AI traffic in Google Analytics covers the unpaid side.
- Compare by plan. A check from a Plus account shows the answer with no ads. If your brand appears there, it is earned.
A useful pattern is to run ads on the questions where your brand is missing from the answer, while you work on the sources the engine cites for them, and to stop the spend on questions where you are already recommended. That needs a regular view of the answers themselves. Cituna’s ChatGPT rank tracker records which brands each answer names and which pages it cites, and writes the fix for each answer you are missing from.
The earned answer is still the one to measure
Ads give a brand a place under the answer for part of ChatGPT’s audience, for as long as the budget lasts. The recommendation inside the answer reaches every user and comes from the sources the engine trusts, and OpenAI says advertisers have no ability to shape it. Cituna checks that recommendation daily across seven AI engines, shows the pages each answer cites, and writes the fix for each answer where a competitor is named instead of you.
Drafted with AI assistance from our own research and Search Console data, and reviewed by Rahul A before publishing. Rules and prices change; check the linked official source before you act.