OpenAI Ads Manager Beta: The 5-Step Setup Walkthrough

Tarun Kapoor Updated May 21, 2026 10 min read

Setting up an OpenAI Ads Manager Beta account is a five-step sequence: create the account, complete onboarding and Persona verification, fill in account information, set up billing, and invite team members. Each step has a specific failure mode that catches new advertisers off guard. This guide walks through all five with the timing notes, common rejections, and the small details that decide whether you ship on Monday or wait two weeks.

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.

If you're an agency managing multiple advertisers

Each business advertiser requires its own account. There is no parent-child agency structure today. If you manage five client brands, you create five Ads Manager Beta accounts — one per client — following the five steps above for each.

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.
• The agency team members are invited as additional users on each client account.
• Billing is per-client, not pooled across the agency.

Allow time for the verification step across multiple clients — staggering submissions by a few days can help if you need to manage queue position for important launches.

After setup — your first campaign

Once all five setup steps are complete, you're ready to launch. The first-campaign sequence inside Ads Manager Beta is:

1. Create a campaign and pick an objective (Reach for CPM or Clicks for CPC).
2. Set the daily budget and schedule.
3. Create your first ad group. This is where context hints live.
4. Write five to fifteen context hints describing the audience-intent-topic combination this ad group targets.
5. Set the max bid — OpenAI recommends $3-5 USD starting CPC; default CPM is $60.
6. Create the ads in the group: title, copy, image, landing page. Make sure the landing page URL has UTMs.
7. Launch and watch.

For the full strategy behind that sequence, read Context Hints: The Definitive Guide and How to Write Context Hints That Convert.

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.