🚨 UK brands can now buy ChatGPT ads. Here's what you need to know...

We promised we'd keep you posted on this one, so here's the full picture: what's now available, how the platform works, what the early performance data says, and whether you should be testing it.

What's now live for UK advertisers

The self-serve platform UK brands are getting is more capable than the one US advertisers started with in May, because we've joined after months of rapid product development. On day one you get CPC bidding (OpenAI suggests $3 to $5 a click to start) alongside CPM reach campaigns, daily or campaign-total budgets, country-level targeting, and conversion measurement if you've set up the JavaScript pixel or Conversions API.

Compare that with February's US launch: a spend floor reported at around $200,000 and a $60 CPM. Both walls have come down. The six-figure spend floor is gone, replaced by a $25-a-day minimum campaign budget, and CPMs have dropped to around $25 as more advertisers arrived. It's cheaper to test now than it probably will be once the auction matures and the market works out what this inventory is worth.

How the ads actually work

Someone asks ChatGPT a question. If a sponsored product or service is relevant to that conversation, a single ad appears at the bottom of the response, clearly labelled and visually separate from the answer. Each ad carries your advertiser name, logo, a title, a short description, an image and a landing-page link.

Ads only show to people on the Free and Go tiers. Anyone paying for Plus, Pro or Business never sees one, and under-18s never see ads at all. And OpenAI is keeping the ad load deliberately light: by its own numbers, around 85% of users are eligible to see ads but fewer than 20% encounter one on any given day. Good for users, and it means inventory is scarcer than the headline user numbers suggest.

The creative is tiny: a few words of title and a line of description do all the work. Think "Free UK delivery", not a paragraph of brand story.

The targeting model is the exciting bit

There are no keywords. You give OpenAI "context hints": plain-English phrases describing the conversations where your product belongs. Imagine you sell running shoes. Your hints might cover marathon training plans, beginner running advice, dealing with shin splints. When someone has that conversation, you're eligible for the placement.

That's targeting against what someone is trying to achieve right now, mid-conversation. It's closer to true intent than a keyword has ever been, and it rewards brands who deeply understand their customers' questions. Not coincidentally, that's the same muscle that earns you citations in AI answers organically. The paid and organic sides of AI visibility are converging on the same skill.

The privacy line is sensible too. No individual conversation data reaches advertisers, reporting is aggregated only, and OpenAI is clear that ads never influence what ChatGPT actually says.

Before you spend a penny

Two practical things to get right first. Set up measurement before launch, not after: conversion reporting only works once conversion events are flowing through the pixel or Conversions API. And OpenAI's OAI-AdsBot crawler must be able to reach your landing pages for verification, so if your site blocks unknown bots, sort that before your first campaign.

What the performance data says

Promising but not yet proven. Criteo, one of OpenAI's launch partners, reports AI-referred conversion rates approaching twice those of traditional search in categories like consumer electronics and home and garden. Impressive, but that's Criteo reporting on its own clients, and independent verification doesn't exist yet. Average click-through rates sit around 0.68%, with the best brands reaching 1.5% or so.

Treat every number as directional. The stronger signal is the trajectory: the pilot passed $100 million in annualised revenue within six weeks, the partner ecosystem (Criteo, Adobe, StackAdapt, LiveRamp) is assembling fast, and OpenAI is hiring ad teams in London. This platform is being built to last.

Should you test it?

If you're a UK brand whose customers research conversationally, holidays, software, finance, fitness, anything considered, run a small test this quarter. Falling CPMs plus a maturing auction means the cheap learning window won't stay open forever. We've seen this film before with Google Shopping, Performance Max and TikTok. Early, curious and measured beats late and panicked every time.

If budgets are tight and Google and Meta still have headroom, it goes on the roadmap rather than the media plan. But it goes on the roadmap.

And whichever side of that line you're on, the bigger point stands. Your customers are already asking ChatGPT for recommendations. Paid gets you into the conversation. Being the brand the AI cites organically keeps you there. The brands winning in 2026 are working on both, and we're helping clients do exactly that. 👊🏻

Want our take on whether a ChatGPT ads test makes sense for you? Get in touch with the team >>