ChatGPT Ads · United States
ChatGPT Ads
in United States.
The only market where the restricted verticals can be approved, and the only one where ads run on by default.
The three dates that get confused
Ads serving to users, self-serve buying opening to local advertisers, and where your billing entity may be based are three different facts. Most coverage merges them.
Ads serving to users
February 9, 2026
The launch market. OpenAI began testing ads in ChatGPT in the US for logged-in adult users on the Free and Go tiers.
OpenAI newsroom, “Testing ads in ChatGPT”, originally published 2026-02-09
Self-serve Ads Manager
May 5, 2026
OpenAI announced the beta self-serve Ads Manager. The rollout was gradual and verification-gated rather than a single switch, so the announcement date is not the date every advertiser got in.
OpenAI, “New ways to buy ChatGPT ads”, 2026-05-05
Minimum daily budget
$25
OpenAI’s published USD figure. The daily minimum attaches to the ad account’s billing currency, not the country you target. A daily budget is a seven-day average rather than a cap: OpenAI may spend up to 2× the daily budget on a given day and up to 7× across seven days.
OpenAI, “Daily Budgets” (read 2026-09-17)
What is specific to United States
Personalised ads
Available, and the US is the only market reported to run ads on by default with an opt-out. The EU and the UK are consent-gated.
Digiday, Krystal Scanlon, 2026-06-08
Restricted verticals
Financial services, healthcare and medicine, and legal services may be approved for US advertisers. They are generally prohibited outside the US — the single biggest US-versus-everywhere commercial difference.
OpenAI, “Ad policies” (updated 2026-09-10)
Starting bid OpenAI recommends
$3–5 maximum CPC.
PPC Land, 2026-05-05
Ad load
26% of ChatGPT responses carried a sponsored ad. Originally published as a US desktop figure for June 2026; a later release restated it without the geographic qualifier. Panel composition undisclosed — directional only.
Similarweb 2026 Generative AI Landscape (2026-07-22), via PPC Land, 2026-08-17
Where ads fire
For leading advertisers the median ad-firing turn moved from turns 7–8 to turns 14–22 between May and June 2026. Scoped to a top-advertiser subset, not a platform median. Ads land at consideration, not discovery.
Similarweb, Liat Sagiv, 2026-06-15
US-only formats in test
Sponsored Agents are being tested with select US advertisers, and the ChatGPT Ads app in the Shopify App Store launched for US merchants on 2026-09-16.
OpenAI, “Reimagining advertising with AI”, 2026-09-16
Rules that apply here
Not legal advice — the sources are named so you can take them to someone who gives it.
No ChatGPT-specific disclosure regime
There is no US equivalent of the EU DSA ad-transparency rules. Existing FTC native-advertising and endorsement guidance applies, but it assumes an ad is a discrete, labellable unit and maps poorly onto a placement inside a conversation. OpenAI carries the surface-level labelling burden: it states ads are clearly labelled as sponsored and visually separated from the response.
OpenAI Help Center (read 2026-09-17); commentary: Center for Democracy and Technology, Seiyoon Ko, 2026-09-11
True in every market, including this one
Who sees ads
Ads appear on the Free and Go plans only. Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Edu accounts are ad-free, and OpenAI does not show ads to accounts identified as belonging to people under 18.
OpenAI Help Center, “Ads in ChatGPT” (read 2026-09-17)
Where ads never appear
No ads in Temporary Chats, none in the ChatGPT Atlas browser during the test, none near sensitive or regulated topics including personal health, mental health and politics, and no political advertising at all.
OpenAI Help Center, “Ads in ChatGPT” (read 2026-09-17)
Which verticals you can run
During the test, ads are primarily limited to consumer verticals — lifestyle and household goods, local services, travel and experiences, digital products and education. Financial services, healthcare and medicine, and legal services may be approved for advertisers in the US and are generally prohibited outside it. Alcohol, tobacco, cannabis and THC are disallowed everywhere.
OpenAI, “Ad policies” (updated 2026-09-10)
New accounts may be home-country locked
A new self-serve account may be able to advertise only in its home country at first. OpenAI: “Some new self-serve ad accounts can initially advertise only in their home country… Selecting other countries does not override this restriction.” It lifts after identity verification and a spend threshold.
OpenAI, “Create Campaigns for ChatGPT Ads” (read 2026-09-17)
There are no published benchmarks
OpenAI publishes no performance benchmarks: “As an early platform, ChatGPT Ads does not yet have performance benchmarks across advertisers, industries, or campaign types.” Treat every CPC or CTR figure you read — including ours — as a planning assumption.
OpenAI Ads FAQ (read 2026-09-17)
What we could not confirm
Every ChatGPT-ads page on the internet states things nobody has verified. These are ours, listed rather than hidden. Our own ad-capture panel has only ever run in India — we have not observed a ChatGPT ad in United States ourselves.
- Any US-specific fill rate or ad-load figure measured first-party. The 26% figure is a vendor panel with undisclosed composition.
- Whether self-serve carries any minimum lifetime or campaign-total spend. No source states there is none.
- Whether the reported $500 new-advertiser ad credit is currently offered, and on what terms. It is not on ads.openai.com as read 2026-09-17.
The ads we have captured, with screenshots and the prompts that triggered them, are in the ads library. How we measure is in our methodology.