ChatGPT Ads News and Updates: Every Change, Dated and Sourced
By Keshav Parsai 13 min read
In brief
The latest ChatGPT Ads news, newest first: country launches, budget and targeting changes, new account rules. Every update dated and sourced to OpenAI.
Last verified 2 October 2026. Version 1.2. Updated weekly, whether or not anything changed.
OpenAI updates its advertiser documentation without announcing it. Help centre articles carry an "Updated" timestamp and change underneath it, so a page you read in July and quote in September may no longer say what you quoted. Trade coverage is worse, because those articles get rewritten in place with the original publication date left on them.
That produces a category where almost every guide is confidently wrong about something, and nobody can tell which part, because nothing is dated at the claim level.
This page is the record. Each entry carries a date, a source, a tier, and where it applies, what it superseded. Entries are never edited after publication. Corrections are appended as new entries and the original is struck rather than deleted, because a changelog you can rewrite is not a changelog.
Tiers. Confirmed means OpenAI documentation or an OpenAI announcement. Reported means credible third-party coverage we have not been able to verify against a primary source. Our measurement means we ran the check ourselves and state the method.
October 2026
2 October — location levels now include cities "where available"
Confirmed · OpenAI Help Center, [Create Campaigns for ChatGPT Ads](https://help.openai.com/en/articles/20001210-create-campaigns-for-chatgpt-ads)
The campaign documentation now says campaigns can target "states or regions, cities, markets, and postal codes where available", with availability varying by country. It still publishes no per-country list. The same page confirms that Insights can be segmented by Platform across the five platform targets, and that for campaigns targeting the EEA or Switzerland, advertisers should avoid custom audiences while ads personalization is unavailable there.
Supersedes our 12 September statement that city is not a targeting level and that platform has no reporting dimension. The EEA and Switzerland restriction, previously a single third-party report, is now confirmed.
September 2026
By 30 September — campaign-total budget pacing documented
Confirmed · OpenAI Help Center, [Budget Pacing](https://help.openai.com/en/articles/20001515-budget-pacing)
Campaign-total budgets are paced against remaining budget and schedule: delivery slows when ahead of pace and continues when behind so it can catch up. The pacing period runs to the end date, capped at 365 days, or a default 60 days with no end date. Pacing does not guarantee the budget lasts to the end date.
Supersedes the earlier description of the campaign-total budget as a spending limit rather than a pacing control.
25 September — account, brand and legal names split
Confirmed · OpenAI Help Center, [Ads Manager Account Setup](https://help.openai.com/en/articles/20001213)
Accounts now carry three separate names. Account Name is internal and changes freely. Brand Name is shown on ads, and changing it triggers brand review and pauses serving until approved. Legal Name is used for billing and verification, and changing it restarts business review. The same guide says anyone managing several advertisers should create a separate account for each, and caps account creation at logins belonging to fewer than 10 accounts.
23 September — Southeast Asia and Taiwan; 63 countries
Confirmed · OpenAI, [ChatGPT Ads expands to Southeast Asia and Taiwan](https://openai.com/index/chatgpt-ads-expands-southeast-asia-taiwan/)
ChatGPT Ads began rolling out in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and Taiwan, with self-service Ads Manager open to eligible businesses from day one and partner access through the OpenAI Ads Solutions team, dentsu, Havas Media, Omnicom Media, Publicis Groupe, WPP and technology partners. The availability page lists 63 countries. The Minimum Campaign Spend table gained IDR, MYR, PHP, SGD, THB, TWD and VND rows; 19,000 VND is now the lowest floor on it.
September — Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the UAE added
Confirmed · OpenAI Help Center, [Ads Manager Availability](https://help.openai.com/en/articles/20001245-ads-manager-availability)
Not on the list at our 13 September check; on it before the 23 September expansion, taking the list from 52 to 56. No announcement accompanied the change, so we cannot date it more precisely. The availability page also now states that the legal entity that will advertise and be billed must be based in an available country.
Supersedes the UAE open item below, and every statement on this site, dated before October, that UAE businesses could not self-serve.
September — home-country restriction on new self-serve accounts
Confirmed · OpenAI Help Center, [Create Campaigns for ChatGPT Ads](https://help.openai.com/en/articles/20001210-create-campaigns-for-chatgpt-ads)
Some new self-serve accounts can initially advertise only in their home country. Selecting other countries does not override it. Eligibility for other supported countries follows approved identity verification and a required spend at home. Not dated in the documentation; first seen at our 2 October check.
Early September — daily budgets become seven-day averages
Confirmed · OpenAI Help Center, [Daily Budgets](https://help.openai.com/en/articles/20001413-daily-budgets)
A daily budget is now the average daily spend over a Sunday-to-Saturday week. A single day can spend up to twice the budget, and the week cannot exceed seven times it. Existing campaigns switched automatically. On fixed bidding, the daily budget must be at least the highest effective ad-group bid. Separately, the campaign documentation now names the impression objective Views, alongside Clicks and Conversions, with Conversions billed as oCPC or oCPM.
12 September — measurement reporting expands
Confirmed · OpenAI Help Center, [Measure Results](https://help.openai.com/en/articles/20001214-measure-results)
Ads Manager now documents event-specific conversion columns, Order Created Sales and ROAS, a 24-to-48-hour delay for attributed conversions, and separate one-day view-through conversions for eligible accounts. View-through conversions do not affect CPA, post-click conversion rate, bidding, billing or conversion optimisation.
The same update documents dynamic landing-page macros for {campaign_id}, {ad_group_id}, {ad_id} and {ad_account_id}, with precedence from Ad URL down through Ad, Ad Group and Campaign. This supersedes our 12 September claim that only static URL parameters were available.
10 September — ad policies v1.6
Confirmed · [OpenAI ad policies](https://openai.com/policies/ad-policies/)
Version 1.6 clarifies OpenAI's right to decline or remove advertising where it conflicts with the company's advertising principles, business interests or competitive position. The policy page also records that v1.5 opened legal services in the United States to case-by-case review for advertisers licensed in the jurisdiction where the ad is shown. Legal services outside the US remain prohibited.
Supersedes the legal-services line in the 15 July entry below. That entry remains as the historical state of policy v1.3.
August 2026
31 August — self-service expands to 52 countries, including India
Confirmed · OpenAI announcement and Help Center
OpenAI launched direct self-service Ads Manager access across India, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. The maintained availability page now lists 52 countries. OpenAI also reported that tens of thousands of advertisers were using ChatGPT Ads, with the business at a $1 billion annualised revenue run rate, and described CPC and outcome-optimised buying, Pixel, Conversions API, product feeds and custom audiences.
Supersedes the nine-country beta-era list recorded on 13 August and the closed-India state recorded on 14 August. Those entries remain below as historical snapshots, not current guidance.
25 August — Advertising Terms published
Confirmed · [OpenAI Advertising Terms](https://openai.com/policies/advertising-terms/)
The published terms set a 30-day fee-dispute window, limit adjustments to non-transferable makegoods or credits, cap OpenAI's liability at six months of fees subject to stated exceptions, and provide a written complaint route for covered editorial-adjacency issues. Any adjacency remedy remains at OpenAI's discretion and is limited to a makegood or credit.
24 August — Ad Tools Terms published
Confirmed · [OpenAI Ad Tools Terms](https://openai.com/policies/ad-tools-terms/)
The terms govern optional conversion and audience tools, restrict uploaded audience data to eligible first-party data, and incorporate the Ad Tools Data Processing Addendum.
19 August — Ad Tools DPA takes effect
Confirmed · [OpenAI Ad Tools Data Processing Addendum](https://openai.com/policies/ad-tools-dpa/)
For most covered ad-tools processing, OpenAI and the advertiser act as independent controllers. OpenAI acts as processor only for Restricted Processing, which includes audience matching and opt-out data in specified jurisdictions. This is not the standard controller-processor structure many procurement teams expect.
14 August — OpenAI emails Indian users about advertising
Reported · BestMediaInfo
OpenAI notified Indian ChatGPT users of a privacy policy update covering advertising, setting out how ads work, the controls available, and that ads appear for Free and Go subscribers but not Plus or Pro. The email quoted Indian pricing at ₹399 a month for Go and ₹1,999 for Plus. It stated that advertisers do not receive user chats, only aggregated performance data, and that ads do not influence answers.
At the time of the email OpenAI had not announced an advertising rollout for India, and its availability documentation did not list India. Not confirmed by OpenAI. We have not observed an ad serve to an Indian user.
13 August — Mexico moves from Coming Soon to Available
Confirmed · OpenAI Help Center, [Ads Manager](https://ads.openai.com/) Availability
The advertiser-eligible country list now shows nine countries all marked Available: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Japan, Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Supersedes the 8 August state of the same page, which listed Mexico as Coming Soon. No announcement accompanied the change. We caught it on a scheduled re-check.
8 August — Targeting catalogue counted
Our measurement
We pulled OpenAI's geotargets file from developers.openai.com/ads/openai-geotargets.csv and counted it: 42,110 rows, of which 41,488 are United States postal codes. The file lists 249 countries as selectable targets, including India, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Germany and France, none of which serve ads.
Sub-national targeting exists for the United States at postal code level, Japan by prefecture, South Korea by metropolitan city and province, New Zealand by region, Canada by province and territory, Australia by state and territory, and the United Kingdom by nation. Every other country is a single row.
Why it matters: the catalogue is a targeting picker, not an availability list, and reading it as the latter is currently the most common way a buyer in an excluded market reaches a false conclusion.
July 2026
31 July — Troubleshooting documentation updated
Confirmed · OpenAI Help Center, [Troubleshooting Common Issues](https://help.openai.com/en/articles/20001217-troubleshooting-common-issues)
The revision that added the crawler finding. OpenAI lists landing pages that block OpenAI user agents or IP addresses as a cause of ad rejection, which couples paid delivery to a decision usually made by a security team.
Also documented in this revision: image rules of PNG or JPG, square, no larger than 1200 by 1200 pixels, publicly accessible with a URL that opens directly to the image, hosted on public Google Drive, AWS S3, CloudFront, or the advertiser's own domain or CDN. Reporting lags delivery by up to seven hours, and advertisers should allow 24 hours before flagging a delivery issue.
30 July — Advertiser basics documentation updated
Confirmed · OpenAI Help Center, Ads in ChatGPT
Revised audience wording: ads are not shown to users on Plus, Pro or any Business plan, or to users OpenAI predicts are under 18.
Supersedes earlier wording that named Education plans explicitly and specified logged-in status. Both dropped in this revision. Any page still describing the ad-eligible audience as "logged-in Free and Go users, with Education excluded" is quoting a version of this document that no longer exists.
The same revision lists the ad unit fields, advertiser name, favicon, title, copy, landing page and image, and states no character limits.
15 July — Ad policies v1.3
Confirmed · [OpenAI ad policies](https://openai.com/policies/ad-policies/)
Advertising restricted to consumer categories: household and consumer goods, local services, travel and experiences, digital products and education. Disallowed: gambling, alcohol, tobacco, dating and adult content, recreational drugs, counterfeit goods, political content, legal services.
Financial and health advertisers may be approved case by case with proof of licensure, across a defined list. Ads for financial services outside the United States are generally prohibited, and the same applies to health services. The case-by-case route is a US carve-out, which is the detail most summaries of this policy drop.
No ads run beside conversations about personal health, mental health or politics, or in sensitive user journeys.
May 2026
5 May — Entry commitment removed
Confirmed · OpenAI
The 200,000 USD entry commitment was removed.
This is the single most misquoted change in the category. It is routinely reported as "OpenAI removed the minimum spend requirement entirely," which is wrong. The entry commitment and the campaign floor are different things, and the campaign floor remains: 25 USD per day per campaign in the United States, 15 GBP in the United Kingdom, 2,500 JPY in Japan, 25,000 KRW in South Korea, 25 AUD, 25 CAD and 25 NZD respectively, 40 BRL in Brazil and 150 MXN in Mexico.
Pages still asserting no minimum spend are describing a product that does not exist.
Open items we are tracking
Not changes. Questions with no documented answer, listed so the absence is on the record.
| Question | Status as of 2 Oct 2026 |
|---|---|
| Creative character limits | Not documented by OpenAI. Third-party claims range from 16 to 50 characters for the title and disagree by more than half |
| Which markets support city and other sub-national targeting | "Where available", unenumerated |
| When ads personalization, and custom audiences, open in the EEA and Switzerland | No date |
| The spend required before a new account can target outside its home country | Not published |
| Performance benchmarks | OpenAI states none exist across advertisers, industries or campaign types |
| Approval rates and review timelines by vertical | Not published by OpenAI or by any third party |
| Ads-Free option take-up rate | Not published |
How this page is maintained
Checked weekly against OpenAI's advertiser documentation, the ad policies page, the Ads Manager Availability page and the geotargets file. The version line at the top is updated on every check, including checks that find nothing, because a changelog that only updates when something changed cannot be distinguished from one that has been abandoned.
Entries are appended, not edited. If we get something wrong, the correction appears as a dated entry and the original stays visible.
Cite this page
This timeline is free to cite and link. Suggested citation:
InPromptAds, "ChatGPT Ads News and Updates: Every Change, Dated and Sourced", https://www.inpromptads.com/blog/chatgpt-ads-changelog/ (checked weekly against OpenAI's documentation).
For a specific change, link to the page and quote the entry's date and its OpenAI source. Spotted a change we have not logged? Tell us.
Quick answers
When did OpenAI remove the ChatGPT ads minimum spend? OpenAI removed the 200,000 USD entry commitment on 5 May 2026. It did not remove the campaign minimum, which remains 25 USD per day per campaign in the United States, with a published floor for each of 30 billing currencies.
Which countries can advertise on ChatGPT? As of 2 October 2026, OpenAI lists 63 self-service advertiser countries, after the September additions of Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the UAE and the 23 September Southeast Asia and Taiwan expansion. The nine- and 52-country lists recorded below are historical. Every market has a page in our country directory.
Has OpenAI announced ChatGPT ads in India? Yes. India joined OpenAI's self-service Ads Manager availability list in the 31 August 2026 expansion.
Who does OpenAI not show ads to? Per documentation updated 30 July 2026, users on Plus, Pro or any Business plan, and users OpenAI predicts are under 18. Earlier wording naming Education plans and logged-in status was superseded.
Sources
- ChatGPT Ads Help Center
- Measure Results
- Ads Manager Availability
- OpenAI Ad Policies
- OpenAI Advertising Terms
- OpenAI Ad Tools Data Processing Addendum
Related reading
- ChatGPT ads eligibility by country — the two lists, maintained on the same cadence
- What has to be true before you can run a ChatGPT ad
- ChatGPT Ads by country: minimum budgets and rules
- ChatGPT Ads in India and the UAE
Changelog of this changelog
2 October 2026. v1.2 added the September and October entries: Southeast Asia and Taiwan, the four Middle East additions, the home-country restriction, seven-day daily budgets, campaign-total pacing, the three account names, and city and platform documentation. Replaced the India and UAE open items, both resolved.
13 September 2026. v1.1 added the August advertising terms and DPA, policy versions 1.5 and 1.6, and the September measurement expansion.
15 August 2026. v1.0 published, seeded from entries dated 5 May to 14 August 2026.
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Keshav studies how AI systems retrieve, verify, and cite brand information. At InPromptAds, he leads source research and turns platform documentation into practical guidance for advertisers.
