How to Create Ads for ChatGPT: A Step-by-Step Guide (2026)

Most guides to this format describe it. This one builds one, and shows you the actual images at each step, because the part that decides whether a ChatGPT ad works is the square, and a guide with no pictures cannot teach you what a good square looks like.

Quick boundary first: LocalAds is not an OpenAI partner, does not place ads, and cannot guarantee any placement. We make the creative you upload. Everything below is dated and sourced so you can check it.

Last verified: 2026-08-17. This channel is changing month to month. Primary sources: OpenAI Ads Manager, Ads in ChatGPT: The Basics, Create ads for ChatGPT Ads, Testing ads in ChatGPT.

Before you start: can you actually buy?

Advertiser accounts are open in eight markets as of 2026-08-17: the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, and Brazil. The UK, Japan, South Korea, and Brazil were added in the August 2026 wave. Mexico was announced alongside them and is reported as not yet open.

Two things get confused constantly here, so be precise about which one applies to you:

If you are in India, you cannot buy yet even though your customers may already be seeing Sponsored cards. Full market breakdown in ChatGPT ads examples and specs.

You also need to be in an allowed vertical. Health, finance, and legal are restricted. Consumer goods, retail, travel, education, and digital products are the core.

The seven steps

Step 1: Pick the conversation, not the keyword

ChatGPT ads do not run on exact-match keywords. Targeting works from context hints: topics, needs, and situations that describe the conversation you want to appear beside. There is no guarantee of delivery against any specific prompt.

The practical exercise: write out 30 to 50 things a real customer might type before buying your product, then group them by how far along they are.

For a leakproof underwear brand, that looks less like "buy period underwear" and more like:

• "what actually works for overnight leaks"
• "period underwear vs pads for heavy days"
• "is period underwear worth it"
• "how many pairs of period underwear do I need"

Those four are different awareness stages and they want different creative and different copy. Group them, then build one square and one copy line per group. That grouping is your campaign structure.

Step 2: Write the title in 16 to 24 characters

This is the constraint that breaks people. You are not writing a headline block. You are writing roughly four words.

OpenAI's own campaign guidance points to a 16 to 24 character title. Some third-party guides publish 50, which appears to be what the upload form accepts rather than what the card displays before truncating. Write to 24 and you never find out the hard way. The full reconciliation is in ChatGPT ads specs.

The pattern: name the thing the person in that conversation actually wants. Skip the brand name, because the card already shows it.

Step 3: Write the copy line in 32 to 48 characters

One line. Not a primary-text block, not three benefits and a CTA.

The tone rule matters more here than on any other channel. The card sits inside an answer someone asked for and trusts. Copy that sounds like a billboard breaks that context and gets ignored. Copy that reads like a specific, useful suggestion does not.

Step 4: Make the square

This is where the ad is won or lost, so it gets the most space.

The image is 1:1, minimum 256x256 pixels, with around 512x512 as the practical target, in JPG, PNG, or WEBP. It renders small. The card supplies its own title and copy, which means the image does not need words and usually should not have them.

Here is a square that works:

The product fills most of the frame, the background is quiet, and there is a single small annotation rather than a headline. Shrink this to 512 pixels and you still instantly know what is being sold. That is the whole test.

Now three ways it goes wrong.

Wrong 1: the image carries copy the card already gives you.

A perfectly good Meta static. In a ChatGPT card it is duplicated effort: the headline competes with the card's own title field, and the Try it button is decoration because the whole card is already clickable. At 512 pixels the headline is the first thing to become unreadable.

Wrong 2: too many objects in one square.

A three-way comparison with labels under each item. This works in a feed where people stop and read. In a small card it becomes three unidentifiable shapes and some grey smudges. Any creative whose message depends on reading small labels is the wrong creative for this placement.

Wrong 3: beautiful, but the product is tiny.

Genuinely nice photography. But the product here is the socks, and they occupy maybe five percent of the frame in low light. Scaled into a card, this reads as a dark rectangle. Atmosphere is not free in a placement this small; the product has to dominate.

The rule that covers all three: if you cannot tell what is being sold from a thumbnail, the square has failed, no matter how good it looks at full size.

One more practical point. If your creative library is all 4:5 feed statics and 9:16 stories, none of it is the right shape, and recutting a 4:5 to a square usually crops the product badly or leaves burnt-in text stranded. It is faster to generate a square set than to salvage the old one.

Step 5: Point it somewhere that answers the question

Someone clicking a Sponsored card came out of a conversation with a specific question in their head. Sending them to your homepage makes them start over, which is the single most common waste of budget on this channel.

Match the destination to the conversation group from Step 1. If the group was "period underwear vs pads for heavy days", the landing page should address heavy days in the first screen, not a general brand story.

Step 6: Set your context hints

Load the topic groups from Step 1 as your context hints. A few things worth knowing:

• Targeting is contextual and semantic, not keyword bidding.
• OpenAI does not give advertisers users' chats, history, or memories.
• Ads reach logged-in adults on the Free and ChatGPT Go tiers. Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Education are ad-free, so this is a free-tier audience.
• There is no delivery guarantee for any particular prompt, which is why one square per topic group beats one square for everything.

Step 7: Budget, then launch

Buying is CPC and CPM. Reported starting points are around a $25 minimum daily budget and a $3 to $5 recommended maximum CPC, with CPMs cited between roughly $18 and $65 depending on the topic cluster. These come from third-party reporting rather than OpenAI, so confirm current numbers inside Ads Manager before committing spend.

Practical first-campaign shape: pick your two strongest conversation groups, one square and one copy line each, run at the daily minimum long enough to get past noise, and judge the square before you judge the targeting. On a placement this small, the image is the biggest single variable.

Five mistakes worth avoiding

1. Writing the copy first, then trimming it to fit. Truncated sentences read as errors. Write to the budget from the start.
2. Reusing feed creative unchanged. Wrong ratio, duplicated text, illegible at card size.
3. One creative for every topic group. Contextual targeting spreads you across different conversations; one image cannot be relevant to all of them.
4. Homepage as the destination. The click came from a specific question.
5. Hype adjectives. "Revolutionary" and "unlock your potential" burn characters you do not have and clash with the surrounding answer.

Where LocalAds fits

LocalAds turns a product URL into 1:1 square creative built from your real product page, so packaging, colours, and claims stay accurate rather than being invented from a text prompt. The square at the top of Step 4 is unedited LocalAds output. For the Shopify-powered shopping unit, the same product grounding is what keeps feed images clean and correct.

To restate the boundary plainly: we generate the creative and the short copy. You upload them to OpenAI's Ads Manager and run the campaign. We are not an OpenAI partner and cannot guarantee placement. If your blocker is "I do not have square, on-brand, accurate creative for this placement", that is the part we solve. If you are outside the eight open markets, the same set is what makes you ready the day access opens.

FAQ

How do I create an ad for ChatGPT? Group the conversations you want to appear in, write a title of 16 to 24 characters and a copy line of 32 to 48 characters for each group, produce a clean 1:1 square image of at least 256x256 pixels, point it at a landing page that answers that specific question, load your topic groups as context hints, and launch from OpenAI's Ads Manager at around a $25 daily minimum. The square is the part that decides performance.

What image size do I need for ChatGPT ads? A 1:1 square, 256x256 pixels minimum, with roughly 512x512 as the practical target, in JPG, PNG, or WEBP. Because the card supplies its own title and copy fields, the image should be clean and legible when small rather than carrying baked-in headlines.

Can I reuse my Meta ad creative for ChatGPT ads? Usually not. Meta statics are 4:5 or 9:16 and lean on burnt-in headlines, badges, and CTA buttons. In a small square card that already provides its own copy, that reads as cluttered and often becomes illegible. Recutting also tends to crop the product badly. Generating a square set is normally faster than salvaging the old one.

How much do ChatGPT ads cost? Buying is CPC and CPM. Third-party reporting cites roughly a $25 minimum daily budget, a $3 to $5 recommended maximum CPC, and CPMs between about $18 and $65 depending on the topic cluster. OpenAI has not published these figures directly, so confirm current values in Ads Manager.

Who sees ChatGPT ads? Logged-in adults on the Free and ChatGPT Go tiers. Paid tiers, meaning Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Education, are ad-free.

Can I create ChatGPT ads from India? Not as an advertiser, not yet. Advertiser accounts are open in eight markets and India is not among them, although Indian users are reported to be starting to see Sponsored cards on the Free and Go tiers. Indian brands selling into eligible markets can run there today; otherwise the useful move is having square creative ready for when access opens.

How many creatives do I need? At least one square and one copy line per conversation group from Step 1. Because targeting is contextual rather than keyword-based, a single creative cannot stay relevant across genuinely different conversations.

The takeaway

Seven steps, but they are not equally weighted. The character limits are a constraint you learn once. The square is the work. Build an image that still says what it is selling at thumbnail size, write four words that name what the person wants, and send the click somewhere that answers their actual question. Then re-check OpenAI's own pages before you spend, because this channel is still moving.

Related reading:

• ChatGPT Ads Specs 2026: Every Character Limit, Reconciled
• ChatGPT Ads Examples and Specs: What Actually Runs Inside ChatGPT
• ChatGPT ads creative from your product URL
• 30 ChatGPT Ad Copy Examples That Actually Convert