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ChatGPT adsGuide · 13 min read

How to advertise on ChatGPT in Europe: field notes from a live account

Businesses in the Netherlands, Belgium and most of Europe can now buy ads in ChatGPT. Here's how to set up a campaign step by step, and what we learned running a live account for a client.

By Etienne Rozenblad · Founder & CEO, Tjenno AIFacts checked on 10 October 2026 · 23 sources
On this page
  1. Can you advertise on ChatGPT? Who can, and who sees the ads
  2. Step 1: Set up your Ads Manager account
  3. Step 2: Choose your objective, budget and bid
  4. Step 3: Write context hints instead of keywords
  5. Step 4: Write the ad and get it through review
  6. Step 5: Set up measurement before you spend
  7. Field notes: two weeks of a live account
  8. Before you launch: a checklist
  9. FAQ

The short answer

Yes. Businesses in the Netherlands, Belgium and most of Europe can advertise on ChatGPT through OpenAI's self-service Ads Manager at ads.openai.com. From account to first clicks:

  1. Create an advertiser account, add billing and complete business verification.
  2. Create a campaign: objective, countries and a daily budget of at least €15.
  3. Describe the conversations your ad fits in "context hints". There are no keywords.
  4. Write short ads that link to a page OpenAI's review crawler can open.
  5. Set up conversion tracking, with consent, before you spend real money.

Ads appear below ChatGPT's answer for people on the Free and Go plans, labelled as sponsored. They don't change the answer. Below: how we set up a live client account, and what went wrong.

Can you advertise on ChatGPT? Who can, and who sees the ads

OpenAI started testing ads in the US on 9 February 2026. On 18 August it announced the expansion to 31 European markets, and since 31 August advertisers there can use the self-service Ads Manager, without going through OpenAI's Ads Solutions team or a partner. The Netherlands and Belgium are both on OpenAI's list of countries with self-service Ads Manager. The legal entity that advertises and is billed must be based in one of those countries.

In this first phase, OpenAI's ad policies limit ads mainly to consumer categories such as lifestyle and household goods, local services, and travel and experiences, plus digital products and education. Outside the US, financial and health services are generally prohibited and legal services are not allowed. Alcohol, tobacco, gambling, dating and political ads are currently not allowed at all.

On the user side, according to OpenAI's help centre:

  • Ads only appear on the Free and Go plans, not on Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise or Edu.
  • They appear below the end of a response, clearly labelled as sponsored and kept separate from the answer.
  • No ads for accounts identified as under 18, none in Temporary Chats, and none near sensitive or regulated topics such as personal health, mental health and politics.
  • Advertisers never see conversations, only aggregated numbers such as views and clicks.

And OpenAI's ad principles state that ads do not influence the answers ChatGPT gives. An ad buys you a place next to the answer, not in it. Getting named in the answer itself is a different job, covered in our guide to getting recommended by ChatGPT.

Step 1: Set up your Ads Manager account

Sign up at ads.openai.com with your OpenAI account (your ChatGPT login works) or a new one. OpenAI suggests that one person creates the advertiser account and invites the others. Three settings come up straight away and can't be changed later: country or region, currency and time zone. Choose the country where your business is registered.

  • Names. An account name (internal), a brand name (shown in ChatGPT) and a legal name (for billing and verification). Changing the brand name later triggers a new brand review and pauses your ads until the new name is approved.
  • Billing. Add a credit card and any required billing details. Campaigns can't deliver until billing is set up.
  • Business verification. OpenAI verifies your business identity, ownership and affiliations. The review can take up to 7 business days, so start it before you build campaigns.

Plan for it. Our client had to complete business verification in Ads Manager on top of the normal ad review. And OpenAI notes that some new self-serve accounts are at first limited to delivery in their home country, so check this before you promise a launch date abroad.

Step 2: Choose your objective, budget and bid

A campaign holds the objective, budget, dates, countries and platforms (the ChatGPT app and mobile web on iOS and Android, and desktop web). Under it sit ad groups (one theme each, with their own context hints and bid strategy), and under those the ads.

Objective. There are three, and you can't switch afterwards. Views is billed per 1,000 impressions (CPM). Clicks is billed per valid click (CPC). Conversions optimises towards a standard conversion event such as a lead or purchase, billed per click or per 1,000 impressions; you never pay per conversion. Conversions needs working tracking first (step 5), so for a first test Clicks is the simplest: you only pay when someone clicks through to your site.

Budget. The minimum daily budget depends on your billing currency: €15 a day in euros, $25 in US dollars. It's an average over seven days, not a fixed daily cap: on one day OpenAI can spend up to twice your daily budget, and over seven days up to seven times it. For stricter control of total spend, OpenAI points to a campaign-total budget.

Bid. Each ad group gets a bid strategy. "Maximize results" lets OpenAI set and adjust bids to get as many clicks or conversions as your budget allows, but it doesn't guarantee a cost per click. "Manual: Max bid" sets the most you'll pay. For click campaigns OpenAI recommends starting with a maximum of $3 to $5 per click. Ads compete in what OpenAI calls a relevance-weighted, second-price auction: relevance counts as well as price, and you can end up paying less than your maximum. Our average in Ads Manager was €2.10 against a €2.60 maximum.

Step 3: Write context hints instead of keywords

There are no keywords in ChatGPT ads. Each ad group gets context hints: plain-language descriptions of what you offer, who it helps and when it's useful. To pick an ad, OpenAI's system weighs the context of the conversation, your ad text, your landing page and your hints. OpenAI is explicit that hints are not exact-match keywords or targeting rules, and that they don't guarantee your ad appears in a particular conversation.

[What you offer] for [who], useful when [situation], with [specific detail].

Take OpenAI's own example for running shoes: "cushioned everyday running shoes for beginners training for their first 5K" tells the system far more than "running shoes" would. Write one natural phrase about one idea per hint and keep it accurate. Hints describe your offer; they can't exclude people, places or times.

Targeting in Europe. OpenAI offers custom audiences, but advises against them in campaigns aimed at the European Economic Area or Switzerland, because personalised ads are not available there for now. So in the Netherlands and Belgium you choose where and on which devices, not who. The conversation decides which ad appears, and your hints, ad text and landing page are your levers.

Step 4: Write the ad and get it through review

A ChatGPT ad has a fixed shape: brand name and favicon, a title, a line of copy, a square image and a link. OpenAI's specs:

  • Title: 16 to 24 characters recommended, 50 at most.
  • Copy: 32 to 48 characters recommended, 100 at most.
  • Image: square PNG or JPG, no larger than 1,200 x 1,200 pixels, publicly accessible.
  • Landing page: the most relevant page for the offer, such as a product or content page, not your homepage. You can add UTM tags.

In our account ChatGPT cut titles off from about 25 characters in some places, so we kept them short. Put the key word first. OpenAI recommends many varied ads, with several title and copy variations per offer; we tested four.

Automatic rewriting. Our Ads Manager offered a setting that lets OpenAI rewrite and translate ad text automatically. We switched it off. If you want to approve every word that runs in your language, do the same, and either way look for this setting before you publish.

Review. Every ad is checked against OpenAI's ad policies before it goes live. Be truthful, make sure ad and landing page describe the same offer, and make sure OpenAI can see your page: ads or landing pages "that cannot be reviewed or evaluated by our systems are not eligible to run."

That last rule caught us. Two of our four ads were rejected at first because OpenAI's review couldn't open the landing page. OpenAI checks landing pages with a crawler called OAI-AdsBot, and its guidance for advertisers says you must allow it. Check robots.txt (allow OAI-AdsBot, and OAI-SearchBot as OpenAI recommends), your firewall, CDN and bot protection (no 403 errors or challenges), and any CAPTCHA, login or regional block in front of the page.

We resubmitted both ads, and one now links to the course page instead of straight to a form. If you think a rejection is wrong, appeal in Ads Manager; OpenAI calls that the fastest path.

Step 5: Set up measurement before you spend

Ads Manager updates impressions, clicks and CTR about every 15 minutes; spend can lag 7 to 8 hours. Conversions only show up if you send them, and for more resilient measurement OpenAI suggests using both of its methods:

  • The OpenAI Pixel, a script on your site. It reads a click reference called oppref from the landing page URL and stores it in a first-party cookie, so a later lead or sale can be linked to the click. If your page redirects or sends people to a form elsewhere, make sure that reference survives the trip.
  • The Conversions API, where your server sends the conversion. Use the same event ID in both, so it's counted once.

Consent. According to OpenAI's developer documentation, the Pixel sets consent to true by default unless you set it to false or it finds a stored denial. OpenAI's help centre also asks advertisers to obtain any consent the law requires before sending data. So connect the Pixel to your cookie banner. In our set-up it only loads after the visitor accepts advertising cookies. The trade-off: the Pixel doesn't measure conversions from visitors who decline.

  • Attribution window. Choose a 7, 14 or 30-day click window, and whether to count view-through conversions within 1 day. Conversions can take 24 to 48 hours to appear.
  • GA4. Add UTM tags to every ad URL. Our clicks arrive as source chatgpt, medium cpc, in their own channel, "ChatGPT Ads". GA4's default channel group has no channel for ChatGPT ads, so create one in a custom channel group. That keeps paid clicks apart from unpaid ChatGPT visits, which GA4 puts in its default AI Assistant channel.

OpenAI is testing a direct GA4 connection in Ads Manager, but in the current beta it doesn't yet map GA4 events to your campaigns; OpenAI says event mapping is coming soon. For now, UTMs are the reliable route.

Field notes: two weeks of a live account

Since 28 September we've been running ChatGPT ads for a Dutch client that sells an online professional training course, aimed at a Dutch-speaking audience in the Netherlands and Belgium. Etienne set up the account and manages it. These are the numbers in Ads Manager on 10 October 2026.

€530.88spent since 28 September
256clicks from 41,471 impressions, a CTR of 0.62%
€2.10average cost per click in Ads Manager, against a €2.60 maximum bid

Source: Ads Manager of the account, 10 October 2026.

SettingWhat we choseWhy
ObjectiveClicksStart here: you pay per click, not per impression, and it doesn't need conversion tracking.
CountriesNetherlands and BelgiumMatch the countries to the language of your ads; here, a Dutch-speaking audience.
PlatformsAll: ChatGPT app and webOnly exclude a device when your data gives you a reason.
BidManual, maximum €2.60 per clickA maximum bid caps your cost per click, and in the auction you can pay less.
Daily budget€50 at the start, now €15€15 is the minimum in euros. Keep spend low until your tracking is confirmed.
TargetingContext hints onlyPersonalised ads are not available in the EEA; the conversation decides.
Rewriting and translationOffSwitch it off if you want to approve every word that runs.
TitlesShortChatGPT cut titles off from about 25 characters in some places, so put the key word first.
ImageSquare, at least 256 x 256 pxOpenAI requires square images, at most 1,200 x 1,200 px.
TrackingPixel after consent, UTMs, own GA4 channelRespect consent, and keep paid clicks apart from unpaid ChatGPT visits.

Zero measured conversions. Ads Manager shows 0 conversions so far. We don't read that as "ChatGPT ads don't work", at least not yet. With the Pixel loading only after consent and a click reference that has to survive the path to the conversion, zero first means "check the tracking". So before you raise a budget, check the chain: does the Pixel fire after consent, is the conversion event connected to the campaign, does oppref survive the path to the form, and what do the same visitors do in GA4?

Next we'll measure which of the four ads earns the best CTR and cost per click, what these visitors do on the course page and, once tracking is confirmed, the cost per lead. Only then can we judge it for this client.

Launch credit. Ads Manager showed this account a launch promotion: spend €500 before 12 October and get €500 in ad credit. The account qualified. Read the terms first: under OpenAI's ad credit terms, credits can't be transferred, have no cash value and, unless the offer says otherwise, expire 90 days after they're issued.

Before you launch: a checklist

  1. Check that you qualify. A business based in a supported country, with an offer in an allowed category.
  2. Start business verification early. It can take up to 7 business days.
  3. Let OAI-AdsBot in. robots.txt, firewall, CDN, bot protection, CAPTCHAs and logins.
  4. Link each ad to the page that explains the offer. Ad, image and page describe the same thing.
  5. Keep titles to 16 to 24 characters, with the key word first.
  6. Write context hints as plain sentences: what you offer, for whom, and when it helps.
  7. Decide on automatic rewriting and translation before you publish.
  8. Connect the Pixel to your cookie banner and tag every URL. Then make a test conversion and check that it arrives.

ChatGPT ads are part of our ads service, and Etienne runs those campaigns himself. Prefer to do it yourself? In a 60-minute consultancy call (€150, excl. VAT) we go through your set-up before you launch.

Sources

Facts checked on 10 October 2026.

Portrait of Etienne
About the authorEtienne Rozenblad

Etienne runs SEO and GEO for clients such as Slaapkops and Wrap je Keuken, and tests every tactic on Tjenno AI's own sites first. Former agency owner with a bachelor's in Commercial Economics.

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FAQ

Questions about advertising on ChatGPT

Still a question? Mail hello@tjenno.ai

Can you advertise on ChatGPT in the Netherlands or Belgium?

Yes. Both are on OpenAI's list of countries where self-service Ads Manager is available, and the legal entity that advertises and is billed must be based in one of those countries. Your offer also has to fall in a category OpenAI's ad policies allow.

What is the minimum budget for ChatGPT ads?

The minimum daily budget depends on your billing currency: €15 a day in euros and $25 a day in US dollars. A daily budget is an average over seven days, so a single day can cost up to twice that amount.

Do ChatGPT ads influence ChatGPT's answers?

No. OpenAI states that ads do not influence the answers ChatGPT gives. Ads appear below the answer, clearly labelled as sponsored and kept separate from it.

Who sees ads in ChatGPT?

People on the Free and Go plans. Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Edu accounts don't get ads, and OpenAI doesn't show ads to accounts identified as under 18, in Temporary Chats or near sensitive topics such as personal health, mental health and politics.

Can you target audiences with ChatGPT ads in Europe?

Not on personal data. Personalised ads are not available in the EEA or Switzerland for now, so OpenAI matches ads to the current conversation, using signals such as your context hints, ad text and landing page. You can choose countries and devices.

Why was my ChatGPT ad rejected?

Common causes are a landing page that OpenAI's review crawler, OAI-AdsBot, can't open, or ad copy or a landing page that doesn't follow OpenAI's ad policies, for example when ad and page don't describe the same offer. Fix the issue and resubmit, or appeal in Ads Manager if you think the decision is wrong.

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