In February 2026, OpenAI began experimenting with allowing advertising within its famous AI language model, ChatGPT. As a business that is looking into digital marketing, how effective is advertising within ChatGPT?
We at Bean Media Productions are a Buffalo, NY-based full-service digital marketing agency; we’ve been doing this for over 20 years now. For many of those years, we’ve been running Display Ads, Search Ads, Social Media Ads, PPC ads, and more for our clients. We’ve witnessed the many changes and new strategies in our industry, and today, we’re here to share them with you.
How Does Advertising in ChatGPT Work?
When a user types a query into ChatGPT, it will, of course, provide its response; however, at the bottom of the response, you may find an advertisement. An ad isn’t at the bottom of every single response; however, whether or not there is depends on the nature of the query.
Above is an example of how an advertisement looks in ChatGPT; this advertisement for an online baking degree appeared after I looked up “How to bake a muffin.” This button is a link that takes you to a landing page of the advertiser’s choice when you click on it.
The ad that appears is dependent on the context of the conversation; in this case, a baking question prompts a baking ad to appear.
The Ad Placement is pretty Optimized
It’s right below the response the user just spent time reading, so the user is likely to continue reading and look at the ad. Additonally its right above the prompt box gives the ad lots of space in the user’s field of vision as they type a new message.
The Creative Limitations of ChatGPT ads
The creative (the image) in the advertisement is relatively small; this is true on mobile and desktop, so it can be a challenge when designing your advertisement. The size specifications are at least 256×256 pixels, with the option to upload much larger images as well. According to OpenAI, square images give the best results.
Because of the small creative, the written copy of the advertisement is very important. The headline can be up to 50 characters long, and the description can be up to 100 characters long. Your company name will always appear above the copy, along with a tag, letting users know this is an advertisement.
Also, at least as of now, no video advertisements are allowed within ChatGPT, and it’s likely to stay that way.
The Features of OpenAI Ads Manager
Similar to Meta, Google, and other advertising platforms, OpenAI has a pretty comprehensive Ad Manager. A business could use it to have control over their ads personally or allow an agency to manage them. Here are some of the features that OpenAI’s Ads Manager has:
Campaign Management
Like all the best ad managers, OpenAI Ads Manager allows multiple different ad campaigns with individual ad groups and strategies. This gives very precise control over ad management/placements.
Audience Targeting
The ads manager allows you to target specific audiences you build from email lists or phone number lists. Alternatively, you can also use these lists to exclude audiences to make your ads less likely to go in front of the wrong people.
Context Hints
OpenAI’s Ad Manager lets advertisers provide it with “Context Hints” to improve the chances of the ad going in front of the correct people. OpenAI describes this as “Describe the conversations, topics, or keywords where your products or services may be relevant; these hints guide matching but aren’t exact-match targeting rules.”
Fine Budget Controls
You can set very precise cost controls for your ad campaigns; see below for more information.
Date/Time Management
OpenAI Ads Manager allows simple but effective date/time controls for ad campaigns. This allows your ads to run at times you wish and to not run at other times.
Location Targeting
You have access to DMA (Designated Marketing Area) targeting for your ChatGPT ads, allowing you to set areas to include and areas to blacklist your ads from appearing in.
Anyalitics
OpenAI also tracks analytics such as spend, impressions, clicks, cost-per-click, and more. All viewable within the ads manager.
The Cost of ChatGPT Ads
Pricing-wise, it’s always tricky with digital advertisements; you could spend a lot of money on a relatively small amount depending on your industry, strategies, and goals. The two currently available objectives for an ad campaign are clicks or reach. OpenAI claims to have conversions available soon.
A reach campaign to get out in front of a large audience will cost less than a clicks campaign, which will target people who are likely to click on the ad to go to your landing page.
For both campaign types, you can set a maximum total budget or a maximum daily budget, but more precise pricing controls exist
For reach campaigns, you can set a maximum CPM (Cost per 1000 impressions) bid between $0.01 and $60.
For clicks campaigns, you can set a maximum CPC (Cost Per Click) bid between $0.01 and $100.
Demand-Based Pricing
The cost you will need to pay to get your ads out there is going to be dependent on your industry, competitors, current advertising demand, the number of ChatGPT users, and more. You can see how if you don’t have a strategy, you can quickly find yourself spending thousands on advertising without getting much real ROI.
That’s why it’s so important to have an agency that knows what they are doing to manage your ads. No matter what platform you are using to market your advertisements, there will be bargains to save money, and ways to spend much more than needed. Obviously, if you get to the point where you are spending $100 on a lead that generates you $80, then advertising isn’t worth doing at all.
At Bean Media Productions, we have immense experience running large and small ad budgets across several different platforms at once. If you are interested in promoting your business on ChatGPT, Google, Social Media, or any digital platform, contact us, and we can set up a digital marketing strategy that efficiently achieves your goals.