How to Advertise on ChatGPT: A Small-Business Setup Guide

You advertise on ChatGPT by creating an advertiser account in OpenAI's Ads Manager, verifying your business, adding billing, building a campaign with a goal, creative and a landing page, and sending conversion events back so you can see what the clicks produced. Start with a small, capped test, not a big launch. Paid placement is separate from organic ChatGPT answers: an ad does not buy you a recommendation inside the answer itself.

This guide is for Canadian and US small-business owners. It follows the official OpenAI workflow as published in November 2026. Ads on ChatGPT are still rolling out, so availability, pricing and tools can change. Check OpenAI's own pages before you commit money.

TL;DR

• Create your account at ads.openai.com, set country, currency and time zone carefully (they cannot be changed afterward), then finish billing and business verification. Ads do not serve until that is done.
• Pick one goal, one offer and one landing page. Targeting uses context hints, not keywords, and OpenAI says delivery in specific conversations is not guaranteed.
• Set up conversion measurement before the first dollar is spent, using the OpenAI Pixel, the Conversions API, or both.
• Run a capped test with a budget you can afford to lose, then decide from your own lead data.
• Ads are labeled "Sponsored" and do not influence ChatGPT's answers. We cannot promise results, and nobody honestly can yet.

Table of Contents

• What ChatGPT ads are, and who sees them
• Step 1: Check that your business is ready
• Step 2: Create the advertiser account
• Step 3: Pick one campaign goal
• Step 4: Understand targeting before you plan the audience
• Step 5: Write the creative
• Step 6: Build a landing page that converts
• Step 7: Submit for review, and know when spending starts
• Step 8: Set up conversion measurement first
• Step 9: Run a capped test
• Perspective
• Where Launch & Found fits
• FAQ
• Sources

What ChatGPT ads are, and who sees them

An ad in ChatGPT appears below a response. OpenAI labels these ads "Sponsored" and visually separates them from ChatGPT's answers, and states that advertising does not influence the answers ChatGPT gives. That is the line to keep in your head: you are buying a placement, not a mention.

Not everyone sees ads. According to OpenAI's Help Center, ads are not shown to users on Plus, Pro or any Business plan, or to accounts identified as under 18. So your audience is people using the free and lower-cost tiers. For a local contractor or clinic, that is a real slice of consumers. For a company selling to executives who use paid business seats, it is a thinner slice. Think about who your customer is before you spend.

On scale, OpenAI reported on October 21, 2026 that ChatGPT Ads was available in 89 countries, with more than 100,000 advertisers having run campaigns. Availability is expanding in waves, which is why you confirm your own country and business type inside the platform instead of trusting a blog post from three months ago.

Step 1: Check that your business is ready

Before you open Ads Manager, get these in order:

1. A real website with a clear next step. A phone number, a booking form, a quote request. If your site is a brochure that never rings the phone, ads will only make that more expensive.
2. A way to answer fast. Leads from a new channel go cold quickly. Decide who responds and how quickly.
3. A baseline. Know how many leads and sales you get each month now, and from where. Without it you cannot tell whether the test helped.
4. A budget you can lose. Treat the first test as paid research.
5. Business details on hand. Legal business name, website, and a credit card for billing.

If your site, tracking or offer is the weak point, fix that first. Our website design and build work and SEO are built around exactly that groundwork.

Step 2: Create the advertiser account

The official workflow, per OpenAI's Ads Manager account setup guide, runs like this:

1. Go to ads.openai.com and sign in, or create an OpenAI account.
2. Optionally enter your website URL.
3. Create an advertiser account.
4. Set your country, currency and time zone. These cannot be changed after the account is created.
5. Set up billing with a credit card, and invite teammates if needed.

The currency choice matters for Canadian owners. If you set the account in Canadian dollars, your budgets and reports are in CAD. If you choose US dollars, you are working in USD and your card may add currency conversion. Decide on purpose, and do it with whoever pays the bills. OpenAI's suggested starting bid is quoted in US dollars, so keep CAD and USD separate when you plan.

Expect a business verification step too. Third-party documentation describes verification through an identity provider and billing as prerequisites before ads can serve. Treat the exact screens as something to follow live in Ads Manager, since they change.

Canada and the US: confirm separately

Availability and eligibility are not the same everywhere, and they move. Before you plan a campaign, look at the availability list in OpenAI's Help Center for your country and confirm your business type is accepted when you create the account. A US-registered business and a Canadian-registered one should each check their own status. If you serve customers on both sides of the border, plan the account around the legal entity that will pay.

Step 3: Pick one campaign goal

OpenAI's campaign setup offers objectives for Views, Clicks and Conversions, billed either per valid click or per 1,000 impressions served. In plain terms:

For a first test, most small businesses should choose Clicks, then move to Conversions once tracking proves it records real leads. Pick one action that matters: a quote request, a booking, a phone call. Not five.

Step 4: Understand targeting before you plan the audience

Targeting on ChatGPT is not like search ads. You do not bid on keywords. Instead, you give context hints at the ad group level. OpenAI says these hints guide matching but are not exact-match rules, and do not guarantee that your ad appears in specific conversations.

What that means in practice:

• Describe the topic your customer is asking about, in the way they would ask it.
• Do not expect the tight control you get from a Google Ads keyword list.
• Keep ad groups narrow, one service or problem each, so you can read the results.

OpenAI also says conversations are kept private from advertisers and customer data is not sold, per its ads principles. You will not see what people typed. You will see what they did after clicking.

Step 5: Write the creative

The ad sits next to a helpful answer, so it has to read as helpful too. A few rules we work by:

• Lead with the customer's problem, not your company name. "Furnace stopped on a cold night?" beats "Smith Heating, since 1998."
• One offer per ad. A free quote, a booking slot, a specific service.
• Say where you work. For a local business, the city or region belongs in the copy.
• Match the promise to the page. If the ad says "same-day quotes," the landing page must say it and the team must deliver it.
• Follow the platform's ad policies. Read them in the Help Center before you submit. Ads that are rejected waste days.

Good photos and short video help wherever the format allows images, and original, on-location material beats stock. That is the work our media production team does for businesses in London and across Southwestern Ontario. Check which creative formats your account supports in Ads Manager, because OpenAI has been adding formats in stages.

Step 6: Build a landing page that converts

The click is the cheap part. The page decides whether it pays off.

A landing page for an ad test should:

1. Match the ad's wording in the headline.
2. Show the offer and one clear action above the fold, readable on a phone.
3. Load fast and avoid pop-ups that block the form.
4. Carry proof: reviews, photos of your actual work, licences where they apply.
5. Have a short form, or a click-to-call button that you can track.

Do not send traffic to your home page if the ad is about one service. A dedicated page for each offer is easier to measure and almost always converts better than a general page.

Step 7: Submit for review, and know when spending starts

Ads are reviewed before they run, and your account has to be ready first. In practice, spending can begin only when these are all true:

• Your advertiser account is created and any business verification is complete.
• Billing is set up, since billing information must be established before any ads will serve.
• Your campaign is launched and your ad passes review.
• Your ad is eligible and wins placements in a conversation that matches your context hints.

That last point is why "launched" does not mean "spending." A narrow topic can deliver slowly. Plan for a ramp-up period, and do not judge a test after two days.

Step 8: Set up conversion measurement first

This is the step most owners skip, and the one that decides whether the test teaches you anything.

Per OpenAI's conversion measurement guide, you create a data source in Ads Manager and send conversion events using the OpenAI Pixel, the Conversions API, or both. A conversion is reported when OpenAI receives a matching event from your connected data source, inside the attribution window, and can tie it to an eligible ad click. Each click carries a reference called oppref, added to the end of your landing page URL, which the Pixel stores in a first-party cookie so later actions can be matched to it. OpenAI notes that using the Pixel and Conversions API together is more resilient, and that you should use the same event ID when sending one conversion both ways so it is not counted twice.

In plain English: put the pixel on your site, define what counts as a lead (a form submission, a booking, a purchase), and test it yourself before launch.

Also measure outside the platform:

• Phone calls. Many local leads never touch a form. Our guide to call tracking for ads shows how to see which ads make the phone ring.
• Your own analytics. Tag the traffic and confirm leads show up in your reports. Our walkthrough of GA4 conversion tracking covers the setup.
• Your CRM or inbox. Ask every new lead how they found you, and record it. Platform numbers and real sales rarely match exactly, so check both.

If you already run search ads, the same discipline applies. Our guide to Google Ads conversion tracking explains what a clean setup looks like.

Step 9: Run a capped test

You do not need a big budget to learn something, but you do need a rule written down before you start.

1. Set a total cap. Pick a number for the whole test, not just per day. Check the minimum daily budget for your account's currency in Ads Manager, since OpenAI sets it and can change it.
2. Plan for click costs. OpenAI recommends a starting maximum bid of $3 to $5 USD per click for click campaigns. If your account is in CAD, convert that range yourself and confirm in the platform.
3. Run long enough. Give it several weeks, not days, so you see a pattern.
4. Change one thing at a time. Creative, then landing page, then context hints.
5. Decide the success test in advance. For example: cost per qualified lead against what you pay for a lead today from other channels.

What counts as a good result depends on your margins. A lead that costs C$150 is cheap for a roofing job and ruinous for a C$40 haircut.

A worked example of the math: say a plumbing company's average job brings in C$600 in gross profit, and one in four qualified leads becomes a job. It can afford up to C$150 per qualified lead and break even. Anything below that is profit, and anything above is a loss. Those numbers are illustrative, so replace them with yours.

Perspective

Most business owners ask us "how do I get on ChatGPT?" when the better question is "where does this fit next to what already brings in my leads?"

Our view: a new ad channel is a test, and a test needs a goal, a cap and clean tracking. We approach ChatGPT ads that way, as planning and testing scoped to your business fit and to the eligibility your account actually has. We do not promise availability, rankings or results, because nobody can yet.

The same basics we use on Google Ads and Facebook and Instagram ads carry over: a page that earns the click, tracking you trust, and a budget you decide in advance. If those are missing, no platform fixes it.

Launch & Found

Where Launch & Found fits

We are a marketing agency in London, Ontario, working with businesses across multiple industries in Canada and the US, with London and surrounding Ontario service areas as our home base. We help businesses assess and plan ChatGPT ads tests, with campaign work scoped around current platform availability and eligibility. We also run Facebook and Instagram ads, Google Ads, websites, SEO and photo and video production, so the ad, the page and the creative can be planned together.

Scope and pricing are by custom quote after we assess fit, and ad spend is separate from agency fees. If you want to know whether a ChatGPT ads test makes sense for your business, talk to Launch & Found. For a broader read first, see our overview of ChatGPT ads for small businesses.

FAQ

Can I pay to be recommended in ChatGPT's answers?

No. Paid ads appear below the response and are labeled "Sponsored." OpenAI states that advertising does not influence the answers ChatGPT gives. Organic mentions are a separate matter, and no one can buy or guarantee them.

Is ChatGPT advertising available in Canada?

OpenAI has been expanding ChatGPT Ads country by country, and it reported availability in 89 countries as of October 21, 2026. Eligibility depends on your country, business type and account status, so check OpenAI's current availability list and your Ads Manager sign-up. Do the same separately for the US.

How much does it cost to advertise on ChatGPT?

OpenAI bills by valid click or per 1,000 impressions, depending on your objective, and suggests a starting maximum bid of $3 to $5 USD per click for click campaigns. Minimum daily budgets and other terms can change, so confirm them in Ads Manager for your account's currency. Our agency fees are separate from ad spend and quoted after we assess fit.

How do I know if the ads are working?

Set up a data source in Ads Manager and send conversion events with the OpenAI Pixel, the Conversions API, or both. Then compare platform numbers with your own call tracking, analytics and lead records. Judge the test on cost per qualified lead, not clicks alone.

Sources

• ChatGPT Ads expands to 26 new countries (OpenAI)
• Ads in ChatGPT: The Basics (OpenAI Help Center)
• Ads Manager Account Setup (OpenAI Help Center)
• Creating campaigns for ChatGPT Ads (OpenAI Help Center)
• Conversion Measurement (OpenAI Help Center)
• OpenAI Ads Tracking for WooCommerce (Sweetcode)

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