ChatGPT Ads reach Europe: What now lies ahead for your marketing

You want to show up where your customers prepare their decisions. For many of them, that now includes a conversation with ChatGPT: which software suits us, which provider delivers quickly, what does a relaunch cost? Since the end of August, an ad can appear below exactly these answers, in Germany too. When we first published this article in July, the channel could not yet be booked here. Today, you can set up your first campaign yourself.

And you are still early. OpenAI itself still runs the advertising programme as a beta and, by its own account, does not yet have benchmarks across industries and campaign types. If you get to know the channel now, you will have a head start when the slots become more contested. Here you get the status as of October 2026: how ChatGPT Ads work, how to run them step by step, what they cost and what data protection law in Germany says about them.

Since when have ChatGPT Ads been available in Germany?

The road there was fast in 2026. In January, OpenAI announced advertising tests, and on 9 February the test started in the US. After a pilot phase until April, OpenAI opened self-service access there, which according to Digiday initially required a minimum budget of 50,000 US dollars. OpenAI has since dropped this hurdle. By August, eight more markets had been added. According to Digiday, the United Kingdom was the first in Europe, in June.

On 18 August, OpenAI then announced the launch in 31 European countries, including Germany, France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands and Austria. The ads have been running here since 24 August. In the first week, advertisers could only book via OpenAI’s Ads Solutions team and agency and technology partners; since 31 August, Ads Manager has also been open for self-service.

OpenAI calls Europe the largest expansion of its advertising programme to date. According to the company, tens of thousands of advertisers have now advertised in ChatGPT, and ChatGPT reaches 1.2 billion people every week. Both figures are worldwide. OpenAI does not publish how many people in Germany see ads. Even so, one thing is clear: this channel is not going to disappear again.

How advertising works in ChatGPT

Advertising in ChatGPT is not a Google Ads clone. You do not book keywords with match types. For each ad group, you enter so-called context hints, i.e. short descriptions of the conversations, topics and intents your offer fits. OpenAI stresses that these hints are not exact-match keywords and do not guarantee delivery in particular conversations. If someone asks ChatGPT for the right shoe for their first half marathon, your offer can appear as a sponsored ad below the answer.

The ad itself is simple: the advertiser’s name and logo, a title, a short text, an image and the destination page. It sits below the answer, is labelled “Sponsored” and is visually separated from it. Which ad appears depends on the context and intent of the conversation, your landing page, the title and text of the ad, and your context hints. For retailers, there are also product ads from a product feed with image, price and star ratings.

Behind this is a principle that OpenAI calls “answer independence”: ads do not influence what ChatGPT answers. Whether this holds permanently in practice will have to be shown by independent tests. For you, it already means: you cannot buy your way into a good answer. The answer stands, and your ad appears below it. That is exactly why the quality of your organic visibility remains the lever that counts.

How to run ChatGPT Ads

If you want to advertise in ChatGPT in Germany, you have two routes: self-service in Ads Manager at ads.openai.com and, for larger budgets, OpenAI’s sales team. According to Digiday, the agency partners for the European launch included Publicis, Omnicom, WPP, Havas, Dentsu and MediaPlus. If you know Google Ads, the structure will feel familiar: campaign, ad group, ad.

Step by step to your first campaign

1. Sign in with your OpenAI account at ads.openai.com. The company that advertises and receives the invoices must be based in an enabled country. Germany, Austria and Switzerland are among them.
2. Create the ad account. You cannot change the country, currency and time zone afterwards. If you wish, Ads Manager builds a first ad draft for you from your website URL.
3. Add your credit card and billing details. No campaign delivers without billing set up.
4. Create the campaign: objective, daily budget, duration, countries and, if you wish, platforms such as iOS, Android or desktop. Below that come ad groups with context hints and a bid, and within them the ads. OpenAI recommends several clearly different variants of title and text.
5. Submit the ads. They only run once OpenAI has reviewed and approved them.

Bids, budget and billing

You choose one of three campaign objectives. With Views, you pay per thousand impressions (CPM); with Clicks, per valid click (CPC). With the Conversions objective, the system optimises for an event such as a purchase or a lead. Billing is still by clicks or impressions. You set your maximum bid at ad group level, and a relevance-weighted second-price auction determines the winner. So in addition to the bid, how well your ad fits the conversation also counts.

The daily budget is an average over seven days. On any single day, OpenAI can spend up to twice the amount, and over the whole week at most seven times the daily budget. For accounts in euros, the minimum budget is €15 per day.

Targeting and the limits in the EU

You target by country and, where available, by region, city and postcode. On top of that come your context hints and custom audiences from your own customer lists. For campaigns in the EEA and Switzerland, however, OpenAI expressly advises against custom audiences as long as personalised ads are not available there. In Germany, your ad therefore runs purely contextually. It has to convince from the conversation situation alone, without a user profile in the background. That is closer to good search engine advertising than to social media targeting.

One point for companies that sell across borders: new self-service accounts may initially only be allowed to advertise in their own country. OpenAI only enables other countries once identity verification is complete and the account has spent enough in its home market.

Who sees your ad

Ads only appear for users of the Free and Go plans. Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Edu remain ad-free, and Free users can choose an ad-free option with fewer messages per day. Accounts that, based on age information and age prediction, probably belong to minors do not get any advertising.

There are also no ads in temporary chats or in the ChatGPT browser Atlas. In logged-out areas, only ads suitable for all age groups appear. OpenAI does not show ads around personal health, mental health and politics. OpenAI does not currently allow political advertising, and providers from health and finance need separate approval.

Measurement: pixel, Conversions API and consent

In Ads Manager, you see impressions, clicks, costs, click-through rate, average CPC and CPM, and conversions. For conversions, you integrate the OpenAI Pixel on your website, the Conversions API on your server, or both. Only then can you calculate the ROAS of your campaigns properly. For analysis in your web analytics, you also append UTM parameters to the destination URL.

The pixel stores the click reference “oppref” in a first-party cookie. Under Section 25 TDDDG, the German Telecommunications Digital Services Data Protection Act, storing and reading such information on the end device is only permitted with consent if it is not strictly necessary for the requested service. For advertising tracking, you therefore generally need consent, and OpenAI itself requires all legally required consents to be obtained.

The pixel therefore belongs in your consent management platform. How to set this up in a legally compliant way is explained in our article on cookies, consent and the TDDDG, and if you want support with the setup, our team for conversion tracking can help.

Data protection: generic and personalised ads

In the EU, personalised advertising needs a sound legal basis under the GDPR, which according to Digiday is one reason why Europe came later than the US. OpenAI distinguishes between generic and personalised ads and bases the two types on different legal bases in Europe. For the advertising launch, the company adjusted its privacy policy for Europe in August.

Generic ads have been running since the launch in August. They are based on the current conversation and on basic context such as approximate location and language. OpenAI bases them on legitimate interest and, according to its own statements, does not create user profiles for them. Personalised ads are additionally to evaluate previous chats, memories, device information and usage data, and only with consent, i.e. on an opt-in basis.

As of 10 October 2026, according to OpenAI, personalised ads are not yet available in the EEA and Switzerland. The data protection commissioners in Hamburg and Berlin expect them to launch “shortly”. On 2 October, they warned of considerable risks for data protection and personality rights, because people often confide very personal matters to ChatGPT. They advise users to check the ad personalisation settings, switch off memories and not enter confidential information.

For you as an advertiser, this means: a large part of your reach will remain contextual even after personalised ads launch, because by no means all users will consent. You never get to see individual conversations anyway. OpenAI only shares aggregated performance data such as views and clicks with advertisers and, according to its own statements, does not sell user data.

In addition to the GDPR, there is the Digital Services Act. It requires online platforms to label advertising clearly and prohibits advertising based on profiling using sensitive data or targeted at minors through profiling. Much of what OpenAI is implementing in Europe corresponds to exactly these rules. That keeps the channel reputable.

What this means for your marketing: the placement you can’t buy

Now comes the part that often gets lost. Advertising in ChatGPT does not make organic visibility less valuable, but more so. Because now that paid slots exist, the organic mention is the only placement that cannot be bought. If ChatGPT names your brand in the actual answer because you are the best source on the topic, that is a vote of confidence that no advertising budget in the world can create.

The field for this is called generative engine optimisation, i.e. targeted work on visibility in AI answers. If you have already laid the groundwork on AI visibility and generative engine optimisation (article in German), you are also better positioned for the ad channel, because both build on the same foundations: clear, well-structured content and landing pages that answer a question directly.

And the ads themselves? Treat them as a test channel with a small budget. When Google AdWords launched in 2000, the early advertisers were able to get to know the channel before it became contested and expensive. With ChatGPT Ads, you are at exactly this point right now.

ChatGPT advertising: how to prepare now

The first three steps cost no ad budget and also make your brand more visible in organic AI answers.

The first step is your baseline. Ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google in AI Mode the questions that matter for your business and document where your brand appears today. Without this starting point, you cannot demonstrate progress later. Our AI visibility check gives you a technical starting value.

Second: let the AI crawlers onto your site. Check in your robots.txt that bots such as GPTBot and OAI-SearchBot are allowed to read your important pages. For ads, OAI-AdsBot is added, as described in the box above. Our AI crawler check shows you whether a rule or a firewall is locking GPTBot out. It does not check OAI-AdsBot; you add the entry for it yourself.

Third: write citably. AI systems prefer clearly structured content that answers a question directly. An example: instead of “We offer bespoke solutions”, write “Depending on its scope, an online shop relaunch typically takes three to four months.” A model picks up such unambiguous sentences and ignores vague marketing prose. The same mechanism is behind automations such as data-driven FAQ blocks that improve your AI visibility in marketing (article in German).

Fourth: think in intents and start small. Note down the typical conversation situations in which your offer fits and make sure there is a suitable landing page for each. These become your context hints and destination pages. Then start with one campaign, one country and a daily budget you can let run for a few weeks without worrying, and with clean conversion tracking from the start. If you want support with this setup, our digital marketing consulting helps you with AI visibility and channel strategy.

Frequently asked questions about ChatGPT Ads

Can I already run ChatGPT Ads in Germany?

Yes. ChatGPT Ads have been running in Germany since 24 August 2026, and since 31 August you can book them yourself in Ads Manager at ads.openai.com. The prerequisite is that your company, as the advertiser and invoice recipient, is based in an enabled country. Germany, Austria and Switzerland are among them. Larger advertisers can also book via OpenAI’s sales team or an agency.

How much do ChatGPT Ads cost?

There are no fixed prices. You bid in an auction and, depending on the campaign objective, pay per thousand impressions (CPM) or per click (CPC). For accounts in euros, the minimum budget is €15 per day. For click campaigns, OpenAI’s help centre recommends a maximum bid of 3 to 5 US dollars per click as a starting value. According to OpenAI, there are no cross-industry benchmarks yet. For a comparison with search ads, see our overview of what Google Ads cost.

Who sees advertising in ChatGPT?

Users of the Free and Go plans, provided their account is not classified as belonging to a minor. Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Edu remain ad-free, as do temporary chats. The ads sit below the answer, are labelled “Sponsored” and are separated from it.

How does targeting work with ChatGPT Ads?

Via context hints instead of booked keywords, plus countries, regions and platforms. Advertisers describe the conversations and intents their ad fits. In the EEA and Switzerland, personalised ads are not yet available, and OpenAI advises against custom audiences there. In Germany, your ads therefore run contextually.

What is the difference between ChatGPT Ads and GEO?

ChatGPT Ads are paid placements labelled “Sponsored”. Generative engine optimisation (GEO) aims to have your brand named in the organic AI answer without paying for it. The two complement each other: GEO builds the credibility that no advertising budget can buy.

How do I best prepare?

First, measure where your brand appears in AI answers today. Allow GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot and, for ads, OAI-AdsBot in your robots.txt, write clearly structured and citable content and plan landing pages along typical customer questions. Then start with a small test campaign and consent-based conversion tracking.

Next step: start small. Begin with a baseline, crawler access and a small test campaign, and expand your organic AI visibility in parallel. If you do not want to set up campaign and tracking on your own, our team supports you in performance marketing.

Sources on the rollout, prices and data protection: OpenAI, “ChatGPT Ads expands across Europe” (18 August 2026, updated 31 August 2026); the OpenAI help articles “Ads in ChatGPT”, “Ads Manager Availability”, “Ads in ChatGPT: The Basics”, “Create Campaigns for ChatGPT Ads” and “Advertiser guidance for allowing OpenAI web crawlers”; Digiday of 19 August 2026 on launch date, markets and agency partners; the press releases of the data protection commissioners in Hamburg and Berlin of 2 October 2026 (in German); OpenAI on the new ad format of 5 October 2026. All information as of 10 October 2026.