ChatGPT Ads: How They Work, What They Cost, and What to Make for Them

ChatGPT ads are small cards under ChatGPT's answers, shown to people on the Free and Go plans, and any business can buy them at ads.openai.com with a $25 daily minimum in the US. The $200,000 commitment and "$60 CPM" you'll still read about came from the February pilot: the commitment was dropped in May, and $60 was a maximum bid, not a price. Our read, after going through every test advertisers have published: the question picks the ad, only free users see it, and a 20-character headline does the selling. That makes it worth a small test for products people ask ChatGPT to choose between, and so far a poor bet for B2B lead gen.

The ad is a headline under an answer

The card sits below the answer with a gray "Ad" chip: your brand name, a headline, a short description and a square image that shows at about 120 px on a phone. There's no button. The whole card links to your page.

So it behaves more like a search ad than a Meta ad. On Meta the image stops the scroll and the copy backs it up. Here the image is a thumbnail, and the headline has to answer the question the person just typed.

OpenAI said on October 5 that it will test a bigger visual ad, shown while ChatGPT generates an image, in the US later in October. There are no specs and you can't buy it in Ads Manager, so plan around the card.

The question picks the ad, and only free users see it

Because the card answers a question, OpenAI places it by the conversation, not by who the person is. You give it a landing page and context hints, plain phrases like OpenAI's own example, "After-hours residential plumbing in [city], with an $89 service-call fee for urgent repairs". Hints "are not exact-match keywords", OpenAI says. The model decides what counts as related.

Your own targeting is thin. You can target countries, regions, platforms and custom audiences of 25,000+ matched users, but not age, gender or interests, and the report never shows which questions triggered your ad. And ads only show on Free and Go, logged-out use included. Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Edu users never see one, and OpenAI keeps ads away from personal health, mental health and politics (its help center has the full list).

The free-plan limit is why we're cautious about B2B. The people who sign off on software budgets are the people most likely to use a paid or work ChatGPT plan. The test results below fit that picture.

What seven advertisers paid, and what came back

You can't judge reach or price from a rate card, because there isn't one. You bid for views, clicks or conversions in an auction, and conversion campaigns still bill per click or per impression. OpenAI suggests starting at a $3-5 max CPC and publishes no benchmarks, so the best price data comes from advertisers who posted their own numbers.

Every one of them paid far more per click than Meta's 2025 traffic average of $0.70, and four of seven paid more than OpenAI's suggested bid. Symphonic Digital needed a ~$12 max bid to land ~$9 clicks. Five tests, mostly B2B lead gen, got zero leads. The one that worked was Common Thread Collective's ecommerce client selling $1,000+ orders, at 3.3x to 6.8x ROAS on $9,620. A high order value can carry a $4 click; a demo request mostly couldn't.

OpenAI's customer stories look better (Newegg at 3x ROAS over 28 days, Angi with 34% lower cost per lead), but OpenAI picked them. And expect ChatGPT to report more clicks than your analytics records: Symphonic counted 53 clicks against 35 GA4 sessions. Tag every URL with UTMs.

Write the card as the answer to the question

If the question picks the ad and the image is a thumbnail, the copy is your creative, and it's where most advertisers bring the wrong habits. OpenAI asks for copy that explains "the practical value of what you offer, who it is for, and when it may be helpful, rather than relying on a catchy line or generic call to action." A feed-ad headline fails that and runs too long.

• Headline: what it is plus the detail that decides it, in 16-24 characters.

• Description: the next fact (sizes, price, delivery, proof) in 32-48 characters, the important word first.

• Several pairs per ad group, each a different angle. OpenAI asks for "a high volume and diverse set of ads". Our free ad copy generator drafts variants you can trim to 24 and 48 characters.

• Image: one product or one scene, no logo as the main visual, no text in the frame. Text won't read at 120 px.

• Landing page: the product or use-case page, with robots.txt and your firewall letting OAI-AdsBot through, or the ad can't run.

• If you sell products, connect a product feed or the Shopify app. OpenAI calls feed ads "among the strongest-performing ads in our program to date."

Who should test, and the first campaign to run

Put together, ChatGPT ads fit when someone would ask ChatGPT to pick a product like yours and your card can answer in one line. Check OpenAI's ad policies before anything else: OpenAI can also decline ads that compete with its own products.

ChatGPT ads FAQ