Advertising has officially arrived at ChatGPT. OpenAI has moved from controlled testing to deploying ChatGPT Ads and its own Ads Manager in beta , a move that completely changes the business model of the popular AI assistant and positions it to compete directly with Google Ads and Meta Ads for digital marketing budgets.
Behind this decision are very specific objectives: to reach billions of dollars in advertising revenue in the coming years, to make an increasingly expensive AI infrastructure profitable, and to open the door for more companies to buy ads within the chatbot without going through large agencies.
What is ChatGPT Ads Manager and why is it important?
OpenAI has launched ChatGPT Ads Manager as a self-serve platform that allows businesses to create and manage campaigns directly within ChatGPT. Until recently, participating in ad testing required a minimum budget of $250.000 and the support of large, certified agencies, excluding most advertisers.
With this new approach, the company has lowered the entry barrier to a minimum investment of $50.000 and opened registration to any company with a presence in the United States, provided it meets the beta access requirements. This positions ChatGPT Ads closer to traditional ad management platforms, although it remains geared toward advertisers with significant financial resources.
The financial ambition is no less significant: OpenAI has informed its investors that it aims for approximately $2.500 billion in advertising revenue by 2026 and aspires to reach $100.000 billion by 2030. To achieve this, it needs to both scale its user base and convince marketing departments that ChatGPT can be a serious performance channel, not just an experiment.
This shift transforms ChatGPT into more than just a service subsidized by venture capital and subscriptions: in practice, it becomes an ad-based monetization machine , with a model that inevitably recalls what has already been seen in other major internet players.
How the bidding model works and where the ads are displayed
ChatGPT's advertising system combines several pricing models. On the one hand, it maintains a high CPM (cost per thousand impressions) , which in the initial phase was around $60 and occasionally dropped to around $25 in previous tests. On the other hand, OpenAI has incorporated cost-per-click (CPC) campaigns , with bid recommendations ranging from $3 to $5 per click.
The auction logic is reminiscent of what Google Ads has been using for years: the advertiser sets a bid , the system evaluates which ad is most relevant to the context of the conversation, and, in real time, decides which creative appears. The winner pays an amount aligned with the second-highest bidder, following the classic second-price auction model that the market is already familiar with.
A key difference is that on ChatGPT, advertisers don't work with explicit keywords like in a traditional search engine. Instead, they indicate the types of context or topics they're interested in, and the AI ​​itself analyzes the conversation thread to decide whether or not to show an ad, based on estimated relevance and the campaign objective.
Regarding placement, ads only appear for users of the Free and Go plans . The higher-end paid plans—Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, Education, and team variants—remain ad-free. Furthermore, some free users have the option to reduce or avoid ads in exchange for limiting the number of free daily messages , reinforcing the idea of ​​a freemium model where time, privacy, and an ad-free experience become the currency.
Where are ChatGPT Ads available and what about Spain and Europe?
For now, ChatGPT Ads' geographic expansion is cautious. Commercial rollout is focused on the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand , both for inventory purchases and for the user experience itself, with ads integrated into conversations.
In Spain and much of Europe, the situation is different: creating campaigns specifically targeting these markets is not yet permitted , even though the ad manager and parts of the technical infrastructure are in internal testing. For European advertisers, this means that ChatGPT Ads remains, for the time being, more of a channel to monitor than a tool for daily use.
This geographical limitation is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it means that Spanish startups and brands cannot yet leverage ChatGPT's local inventory. On the other, it opens a window of opportunity for those operating in English-speaking markets from Europe who have the capacity to invest: by entering earlier, they can access lower CPMs and less competition, as happened in the early years of Facebook Ads and Google Ads.
While awaiting the platform's arrival in the European Union, the usual recommendation for Spanish businesses is to continue relying on established channels like Google and Meta , while keeping an eye on OpenAI's progress in order to react quickly if an opening to the European Economic Area is announced.
Competitive advantages over Google Ads and Meta Ads
ChatGPT Ads' greatest strength lies not so much in its price as in the user's mindset . When someone visits ChatGPT to ask "which CRM should I use for my startup" or "which email marketing tool is right for me," they are clearly in the research phase and have a relatively high purchase intent.
On Google, a large portion of searches are transactional or navigational, and ads compete for visibility on the results page. On social media, advertising coexists with passive and distracted scrolling , where the user is rarely thinking about making an immediate purchase decision. In contrast, in an AI chat, the person is usually looking to solve a specific problem, plan a complex purchase, or compare options.
This scenario allows advertising to be presented as a contextual suggestion rather than an interruption. If you're planning a trip, mention a limited budget, and are concerned about insurance or bank fees, the algorithm might decide to show an ad for a no-fee credit card or travel insurance detailing its coverage. The potential value for the advertiser is clear: reaching the user precisely when they are forming their decision.
In contrast, Google offers more competitive CPM and CPC, segmentation capabilities based on decades of historical data , and extremely mature reporting tools. Meta, for its part, offers massive audiences, advanced demographic segmentation, and highly developed visual formats. ChatGPT enters the fray with a unique conversational context and users actively engaged in decision-making, but its measurement systems are still in their infancy.
Current limitations: reporting, costs, and channel maturity
One of the most criticized aspects by the marketing community is the poor reporting in this first phase . Instead of a real-time dashboard with full attribution, OpenAI has started by sending weekly reports in CSV format, forcing advertisers to process the information themselves and hindering rapid campaign optimization.
To address this shortcoming, the company has activated a conversion pixel that can be installed on advertisers' websites to measure visits, completed forms, and sales attributed to ChatGPT Ads. In addition, a Conversions API (CAPI) is under development , which will allow for sending server-side events and improving the quality of measurement, bringing it closer to what other major platforms already offer.
Even so, the volume of historical data is limited, and the platform is in active beta, with frequent changes . This means that the optimization algorithms haven't yet benefited from years of learning, and some campaigns may be affected by technical adjustments mid-run, something that doesn't appeal to brands that rely on predictable performance.
Another obstacle is the pricing level . A CPM of around $60 requires a very strong justification of the return on investment, especially for startups with tight budgets. Even with recommended CPCs of $3 to $5, the cost per acquisition can skyrocket if the conversion rate is poor or if the buyer's journey is long and complex.
All of this places ChatGPT Ads in a clearly experimental phase: an emerging channel with high potential, but medium-high risk for those who need very finely tuned metrics and robust attribution before scaling up budget.
Privacy, marketing cookies, and ethical concerns
The arrival of advertising on ChatGPT cannot be understood without considering another parallel change: the default activation of marketing cookies for free users. With this measure, OpenAI shifts from a relatively passive approach to a much more aggressive commercial tracking model, aimed at mapping how, when, and how much non-paying users utilize the service.
Although the company claims that advertisers do not have access to the content of conversations or personally identifiable information , the metadata trail generated (connection times, session duration, features used, frequency of use) allows for the creation of highly detailed profiles. These profiles are used, among other things, to determine the best time to push subscription offers for paid plans.
This shift raises a delicate debate: privacy—including end-to-end encryption in messaging services—is beginning to be perceived as a privilege tied to payment . Those who remain on the free plan accept, by default, a higher level of tracking and exposure to ads, while users of Plus or Enterprise plans enjoy a cleaner experience with less marketing data collection.
Privacy advocates warn that, even if search queries aren't read word for word to sell ads, the combination of usage patterns, location, device, and interaction frequency can be very revealing about each user's professional and personal needs . In a European context, these types of practices are closely scrutinized under the GDPR, which partly explains OpenAI's caution in extending the commercial aspect of the product to the EU.
Do advertisements affect the reliability of the answers?
OpenAI insists on three basic principles: ads do not modify the content of organic responses , advertisers do not see the conversations, and the company itself maintains complete control over where in the interface each ad appears.
In practice, this translates to advertising blocks visually separated from the text generated by the model, without mixing paid suggestions with organic recommendations. However, some experts point out that the boundary between organic and sponsored content can only be thoroughly verified through independent, external audits, something that is not currently part of the system's official design.
The underlying question is whether, as pressure to meet advertising revenue targets increases, the temptation to integrate advertising more deeply into responses will become too great. Critics point out that in other sectors, the evolution of advertising models has tended to prioritize financial performance over transparency, and they fear that this pattern will be repeated in AI chatbots.
For now, the security measures include restrictions for those under 18 , who will not see advertising, and the exclusion of paid professional plans. The ethical debate, however, remains open and will likely intensify if the format becomes more popular and controversial cases arise of responses that appear to unduly favor certain advertisers.
How to set up a ChatGPT Ads campaign step by step
For brands wanting to test the channel in countries where it's available, the sign-up process is relatively straightforward, though subject to beta access requirements and a minimum budget of $50.000 . Once past that hurdle, setting up a campaign follows a familiar process for any digital media professional.
The first step is to log in to the Ads Manager page with your OpenAI corporate account and register a valid payment method. From there, the advertiser accesses an interface where they can create new campaigns, manage creative assets, and view the reports that the platform releases.
Next, click on the "Create campaign" option . In this flow, you define the main objective (impressions, clicks, conversions), the total budget and daily limits, as well as the planned duration. This is also the time to select whether you want to bid on CPM, CPC, or, when available, cost per action (CPA).
The third step involves adding the ad details . You can upload creatives in bulk using templates or integrations with technology partners, or you can write the content directly in the tool, adapting it to the conversational formats that best suit the chatbot environment.
Finally, the campaign is launched and the measurement elements are configured: installation of the conversion pixel, use of UTM parameters in URLs, connection to the future Conversions API, and any proprietary analytics system that allows understanding what users do after interacting with the ad. Given the current limitations of the OpenAI dashboard , many advertisers choose to set up their own complementary attribution scheme.
What does ChatGPT Ads mean for Spanish-speaking startups and businesses?
For startups and SMEs in Spain and Latin America, ChatGPT Ads represents both a signal of market trends and a highly conditional early adopter opportunity . If the company operates in the US, Canada, Australia, or New Zealand, it makes sense to allocate a portion of the marketing budget—for example, 5-10%—to experiment with this new channel.
B2B SaaS companies, those selling developer tools , or those offering services that require significant research before signing up are the most likely to find their ideal client on ChatGPT. These are the types of users who ask comparative questions, request provider listings, and compare opinions before making a decision.
However, if the primary market is in Spain or other Spanish-speaking countries and there isn't a strong commercial presence in the territories where ChatGPT Ads already operates, it doesn't seem reasonable to base the 2026 strategy on this channel . For now, it's more sensible to continue maximizing Google Ads, Meta Ads, and other local digital formats, while continuously monitoring how the advertising inventory within the chatbot evolves.
In any case, companies should start preparing creative content adapted to the conversational context : copy that fits naturally into a help dialogue, valuable content that answers frequently asked questions, and proposals that don't come across as disguised banners. Those who approach ChatGPT Ads with a simple display mindset may find themselves with disappointing returns.
An extra level of discipline in measurement is also essential. With still-basic reporting and a constantly evolving ecosystem, documenting everything—from the messages used to the results of each A/B test—will be crucial so that, when the channel matures and expands into Europe, Hispanic brands that have closely followed its evolution will have a head start.
ChatGPT Ads and its Ads Manager signal a shift in the monetization of conversational AI: the free experience is increasingly becoming a space dominated by advertising and data tracking, while the paid version offers privacy and ad-free access as added value. In this scenario, Spanish and European companies would do well to understand the rules of the game as soon as possible, even if they cannot yet fully participate, because when the channel becomes widely available, those who already understand its logic will find it easier to capitalize on the best opportunities.
