OpenAI Ads Manager: the complete guide to ChatGPT Ads Manager Beta

Tarun Kapoor Updated 21 August 2026 18 min read

OpenAI Ads Manager Beta — searched as often as “ChatGPT Ads Manager” — is the self-serve platform where ChatGPT Ads are built, launched and measured. This is the full operator's guide: what the platform can actually do, the three account settings that are permanent, the five-step setup with its real failure modes, a tour of the interface including the two menus that hide most of the controls, how reporting and exports work, and the multi-account rules that catch agencies out.

What you can actually do in Ads Manager Beta

OpenAI describes three core workflows. It is worth reading the list closely, because two of the three contain capabilities most walkthroughs never mention.

It is a beta product and OpenAI is explicit that some capabilities are limited today and more will be added over time. That is not boilerplate — the bidding, targeting and reporting controls all changed materially in August 2026 alone.

Three settings you cannot change later

This is the section to read before you touch the sign-up form, because these choices are made in the first five minutes and cannot be undone.

Practical consequences worth thinking through before you submit:

• Time zone drives reporting boundaries. If your team reports on US Eastern and the account is set to UTC, every daily number will be misaligned against your other channels, permanently.
• Currency drives your minimum daily budget. The floor is set per billing currency — $25 USD, £15 GBP, 25 CAD, 25 AUD, 25 NZD, 40 BRL, 150 MXN, 2,500 JPY, 25,000 KRW.
• Country drives eligibility. Pick the country of the entity that will be invoiced, and confirm it is a market where Ads Manager is available before you begin.

Confirm all of the following before submitting account setup: country or region, currency, time zone, legal business name, advertiser website, and billing details.

Before you start — what to have ready

The setup flow asks for a handful of business details that are faster to gather in advance than to hunt for mid-form. Have these ready:

• Legal business name (matching whatever's on your incorporation paperwork).
• Business website URL.
• Brand logo at a clean square aspect ratio for the favicon. Have the file accessible.
• Industry classification for your business.
• Country, currency, and time zone for the account.
• Billing address, including state/region and postal code.
• Invoice delivery email — usually your AP or finance address, not your personal inbox.
• Credit card for the payment method.
• An OpenAI account. If you don't have one, you can create it during sign-up, but it's faster if you already have one.

Step 1 — Access Ads Manager Beta and create your account

Navigate to Ads Manager Beta and start the sign-up flow. One detail that matters here: only one person per business should create the advertiser account. Once it's created, that account owner invites the rest of the team. Multiple people on the same business creating duplicate accounts is the single most common preventable setup problem.

Decide upfront who the "account creator" is. In most companies this is whoever owns paid media operationally, not the legal entity owner. The account creator's email becomes the address OpenAI uses to send approval and review notifications.

Step 2 — Complete onboarding and Persona verification

Onboarding has three sub-steps:

1. Business details. Business name, website, logo, industry.
2. Account details. Country, currency, time zone, and any other required fields. You agree to OpenAI's Terms and acknowledge the Privacy Policy at this step.
3. Identity verification via Persona. Persona is the third-party identity-verification service OpenAI uses. You'll answer additional questions to verify the business and yourself as the account creator.

After Persona, your account application enters review. The review is done in a rolling queue, which means there is no published SLA. From the campaigns we've helped onboard, expect anywhere from same-day to a couple of weeks depending on industry, completeness of the application, and queue depth.

You will know you're approved when an email lands at the account creator's address confirming platform access.

Step 3 — Complete account information

Once approved, before any campaign delivers, you must complete the account info that's visible in the ad unit itself. Navigate to Settings → Account info and verify:

• Account name — exactly as you want it to appear as the advertiser name in the ad unit.
• Logo — exactly as you want it to appear as the favicon.

OpenAI is explicit that ads will not serve unless this step is complete. Don't skip past it assuming it's already filled in from onboarding.

Step 4 — Set up billing and payment

Billing setup is two sub-steps:

1. Create a billing profile. Business name (for invoicing — can differ from your account name), invoice delivery email, full billing address with state/region and postal code.
2. Add a payment method. Credit card details, billing address.

Both must be set before campaigns can deliver. The invoice delivery email is the address that receives statements and finance-related communication — point it at your AP or accounting inbox, not the account creator's personal email, otherwise statements get lost.

Step 5 — Invite team members

After billing, you can invite the rest of the team. Navigate to Settings → Users → Invite and add email addresses. Inviting users is straightforward; the part to think through is the permission set you grant.

A reasonable starting structure for a small team:

• Owner — the account creator. Has full access including billing.
• Marketer / operator — can create and edit campaigns, ad groups, ads. Cannot change billing.
• Analyst — view-only access to reporting.
• Finance — billing and invoicing only.

Exact permission names live inside Ads Manager Beta and are updated as the product evolves. The principle of least privilege still applies: don't give campaign-creation rights to people who only need to look at reports.

The interface, level by level

Ads Manager mirrors the three-level structure every media buyer already knows, and the controls that matter are mostly hidden behind two menus. Learning where they live saves more time than any tactic on this page.

The three levels

The two menus that hide everything

• The three-dot menu on the Campaigns, Ad groups and Ads pages. This is where Edit campaign / Edit ad group / Edit ad, Edit columns, and Export live. Landing page query parameters are set from here, not from the creation flow.
• Tools → Conversions. Conversion events, data sources, Pixel diagnostics, and automatic advanced matching all live here rather than in campaign settings. If you are hunting for a measurement control and cannot find it, it is in Tools.

Columns and segments do different jobs

A distinction that trips up almost everyone: Edit columns adds metric columns — including individual conversion events, found under Conversions & events, and the optional VTA (1d) view-through column. Segment controls Device and Country breakdowns only; it does not add conversion-event columns. If you are looking for a per-event breakdown and reaching for Segment, you will not find it there.

Reading performance

Metrics currently available at all three levels: impressions, clicks, spend, CTR, avg CPC, avg CPM, and conversions where conversion measurement is set up. For eligible accounts, Ads Manager may also show supplemental one-day view-through conversions, reported separately as VTA (1d).

Three views of the same data

• Table view — the default, on the Campaigns, Ad groups and Ads pages.
• Insights charts — select the chart icon next to the three-dot menu, click View insights, then choose impressions, clicks, spend or any combination, and set a date range.
• CSV export — three-dot menu → Export. Export current table view gives cumulative metrics for the visible rows; select rows first and use Export cumulative values to limit it. For day-by-day data choose Export daily values, which is a different export, not a filter.

Product-feed reporting is not a feed inventory

For product-feed campaigns the Products tab is an insights-backed reporting view, not a complete listing of your catalog. Products appear only after an active campaign delivers and generates reporting data. Use the product count shown during ad-group setup to confirm feed readiness and eligibility — a product missing from the Products tab has usually just not served yet, which is a different problem from a product missing from the feed.

Running multiple advertiser accounts

Whether you are an agency with five clients or one company with three brands, the model is the same: each advertiser requires its own account. There is no parent-child agency structure today.

The good news is that the restriction is only on creation. After an account exists, the same user can be invited as a member or administrator of multiple advertiser accounts and switch between the accounts they have access to. So one operator can work across every client from a single login — they just cannot have created every account from a single address.

Operationally, this means:

• Each client account uses the client's legal business name, logo, and billing details.
• Each client goes through their own Persona verification.
• Each account is created from a distinct email address, then the agency team is invited in as additional users.
• Billing is per-client, not pooled across the agency.
• Country, currency and time zone are set per account and are permanent — get them right for each client entity.

A company can also hold multiple advertiser accounts for legitimate reasons — different brands, separate legal entities, or independent operating teams. That is supported and expected.

What not to do while you wait

• Do not submit a duplicate application. Duplicate applications and duplicate ad accounts do not bypass review, and they create confusion about which is the correct advertiser account. Continue from the existing account and respond to any verification or setup prompts.
• Do not expect an expedite. OpenAI states it is unable to expedite account review or ad review requests at this time. Build the queue wait into your launch plan rather than into your escalation plan.
• Do not assume verification means approval. Verification and account review are separate steps — completing an identity or business verification flow does not always mean the account is ready to run campaigns. Watch the Ads Manager account status and any in-product prompts.
• If you exited verification early, return to the flow from Ads Manager when it is available and use accurate, current documents. Submitting duplicate or inconsistent information slows review.

Allow time for verification across multiple clients — staggering submissions by a few days helps if you need to manage queue position for an important launch.

Where Ads Manager is available

Ads Manager availability varies by country, and it is the first thing to check — there is no point completing verification for a market you cannot buy in yet.

India is the interesting row: it appears in OpenAI's minimum campaign spend table at 725 INR but is not yet listed in the Ads Manager availability table — usually the shape of a market about to open. OpenAI has also announced expansion to 31 European countries. If you are outside the available markets you can register interest through OpenAI's advertiser interest form; country availability continues to evolve as testing expands.

After setup — building your first campaign

A campaign in Ads Manager Beta defines your overall objective and budget. Each campaign contains a campaign title, an objective, a conversion event (for Conversions-objective campaigns), a budget, start and end dates, countries to target, platforms to target (optional), and custom audiences to include or exclude (optional).

1. Choose an objective

Your objective determines how ads are priced and how delivery is optimized, and it cannot be changed after creation — if you need a different objective you create a new campaign.

2. Set the budget — and understand which type you picked

• Daily budget: the amount you want to spend each day. It is a delivery target, so actual spend may run above or below on an individual day. This is the right starting point for a new account because pacing stays observable.
• Campaign-total budget: the total you want to spend across the campaign's full duration. This is the stricter control on total spend — but note carefully that it is a spending limit, not a pacing control. It is not distributed evenly across your campaign dates, and spend can accumulate quickly depending on how well your ads match eligible conversations.

3. Choose countries — and, in the US, go finer

Ads Manager Beta supports campaign-level country targeting, and in the United States it also supports state, designated market area (DMA) and ZIP code targeting. Location availability varies by country, so search for a location in the campaign location picker to confirm it is supported rather than assuming — OpenAI also publishes the current location catalog as a downloadable CSV.

4. Choose platforms

Platform targeting controls which ChatGPT surfaces your campaign can deliver on. In the Campaign dialog, use the Platforms multi-select dropdown (surfaced in some releases as Eligible platforms) to include one or more of iOS App, Android App, or Web — where Web includes both desktop web and mobile web.

Use it when conversion quality diverges by device: a mobile checkout with a high drop-off rate, or a B2B demo form that realistically only completes on desktop. One asymmetry to plan around — Insights currently group device reporting into Mobile and Desktop, and mobile web is counted under Mobile. So you can target more precisely than you can currently report. OpenAI has said more detailed platform reporting is planned.

5. Build the ad group and write context hints

1. Create your first ad group. This is where context hints live.
2. Write five to fifteen context hints describing the audience-intent-topic combination this ad group targets. One ad group, one intent.
3. Choose a bid strategy. Maximize results is now selected by default for eligible new ad groups and lets ChatGPT Ads set bids automatically toward your campaign goal; the alternative is Manual: Max bid. Maximize results prioritizes result volume and does not guarantee a specific CPA, CPC or ROAS target, so use manual if you have a hard efficiency ceiling.
4. Create the ads: title, copy, image, landing page. Add UTMs, or configure dynamic landing page query parameters with the supported macros — {campaign_id}, {ad_group_id}, {ad_id}, {ad_account_id}.
5. Launch and watch. Allow 24–48 hours for attributed conversions to appear in reporting.

Best practices for campaign structure

• Structure campaigns around distinct business goals or initiatives.
• Use separate campaigns for meaningfully different objectives, regions, or product categories.
• Keep campaign naming clear and consistent so reporting stays legible at 20 campaigns, not just at two.
• Create multiple ad groups within each campaign to test different themes, value propositions, or messaging approaches.

If your campaign isn't serving

Four things account for most non-delivery, and they are worth checking in this order before you touch bids:

1. Ad account verification and billing are complete.
2. The campaign and the ads are active, not paused.
3. The campaign dates include today.
4. The ads have completed review.

For the full strategy behind the sequence above, read Context Hints: The Definitive Guide and How to Write Context Hints That Convert. If you would rather not operate this yourself, our ChatGPT Ads agency service runs the whole sequence inside your own account.

OpenAI Ads Manager FAQ

Tarun Kapoor

Founder & CEO, Context Hints

Twelve years of media buying across GroupM, WPP, Ogilvy & Mather, and Neil Patel Digital. Onboarded advertiser accounts across more platforms than he cares to remember.