How to Advertise on ChatGPT: Step-by-Step Setup Guide

Setting up a ChatGPT ad campaign becomes easier once you understand the process. OpenAI Ads Manager Beta lets you create campaigns, build ads, set budgets, and review performance.

A few early decisions, especially your campaign objective and ad group structure, can affect how the campaign runs later. Once those are clear, the rest of the setup is easier to manage.

Quick Overview

Step 1: Create Your Ads Manager Account

The first step is to create an account in OpenAI Ads Manager Beta. This is where ChatGPT ad campaigns are created and managed.

During account setup, you provide basic information about the business that will be advertising. This can include:

• Business name
• Website
• Logo
• Industry
• Country
• Currency
• Time zone

Before completing setup, review these details carefully.

Complete Verification and Billing

Advertiser verification and billing are also part of the account setup.

Billing information can include your business details, invoice email, and payment method. Completing these steps early is useful, especially when a campaign is planned around a specific launch date.

Step 2: Choose How You Want to Create the Campaign

Once the account is ready, you can start creating campaigns.

Ads Manager Beta provides two main approaches:

• Guided creation
• Bulk upload

Guided Creation

Guided creation takes you through campaign setup directly inside Ads Manager.

You create the campaign first, then add ad groups and ads within the interface.

This approach is easier when you are:

• Building your first campaign
• Managing a small number of campaigns
• Learning where each setting belongs
• Reviewing each field manually

Bulk Upload

Bulk upload is designed for larger campaign structures.

Instead of creating every campaign, ad group, and ad individually, you prepare the required information in the supported structure and upload it together.

For example, a company running campaigns across several products or markets may find bulk upload more practical.

For one or two campaigns, however, guided creation keeps the process simpler.

Step 3: Set Up Your Campaign

Before creating an ad, it helps to understand the basic structure:

Campaign → Ad Group → Ad

Each level has a different role.

Campaign
The broader advertising setup. It contains settings such as the objective, budget, dates, and locations.

Ad Group
A section inside the campaign focused on a specific customer need, theme, or use case.

Ad
The actual sponsored creative that contains the headline, description, image, and landing page.

For example:

Campaign: Manufacturing Software

Ad Group: Inventory Management

Ad: An advertisement promoting the inventory-management feature.

Once this structure is clear, the remaining setup becomes easier to follow.

Choose Your Campaign Objective

The campaign objective tells Ads Manager what type of result the campaign is designed around.

Current approaches include:

CPM

CPM is based on impressions and is suited to campaigns where visibility or reach is the main focus.

CPC

CPC is based on valid clicks and is more suitable when the campaign is intended to bring visitors to a website or landing page.

oCPC

oCPC stands for conversion-optimized CPC.

Advertisers still pay for valid clicks, while delivery is optimized toward clicks that are more likely to lead to the selected conversion event.

A simple way to understand them is:

Visibility or reach → CPM

Website visits → CPC

Tracked action after the click → oCPC

Choose the objective according to the main result you want from the campaign.

Choose Your Budget

Next, decide how campaign spending should be controlled.

Ads Manager supports:

Daily budget
The amount allocated for daily campaign delivery.

Campaign-total budget
The maximum amount allocated across the full campaign.

A campaign-total budget sets an overall limit, while a daily budget provides more regular control over daily spending.

For a first campaign, a daily budget can be easier to monitor.

Set Campaign Dates

Choose when the campaign should begin and, when needed, when it should end.

For example, a manufacturer promoting an offer around a trade show may choose dates around that event. A SaaS company running an ongoing product campaign may use a longer schedule.

Campaign dates determine when the ads are eligible to run.

Choose Your Locations

Next, select the markets where the campaign should be eligible to deliver.

Available geographic controls can vary by market.

Choose locations based on where the business actually sells or serves customers rather than adding larger areas only to increase possible reach.

Step 4: Create Your Ad Groups

Ad groups are used to separate different customer needs, products, or use cases inside the same campaign.

For example, imagine a company selling manufacturing ERP software.

Its campaign could be:

Campaign: Manufacturing ERP Software

The company might then create:

Ad Group 1: Inventory Management

Ad Group 2: Production Planning

Both groups promote the same ERP software, but each one focuses on a different problem the buyer may be trying to solve.

What Are Context Hints?

Context hints are descriptive phrases that the advertiser adds inside an ad group. They help describe the types of conversations, needs, or situations where the ads in that group may be relevant.

The advertiser creates these hints by thinking about the problems the product solves and how a potential customer might describe those problems.

For example, suppose the ad group is:

Inventory Management

A manufacturer may have problems such as:

• Raw materials are stored across several locations.
• Stock is difficult to check before production begins.
• Warehouse inventory is hard to keep updated.

Those problems can be turned into context hints such as:

• tracking raw materials across multiple warehouses
• checking stock before planning production
• managing inventory across factory locations

These phrases are entered as part of the ad-group setup. They are not the headline or description that users see in the actual ad.

They also do not work like exact-match keywords. For example, the advertiser might use:

tracking raw materials across multiple warehouses

while a user could ask:

“How can a factory keep track of materials stored at different locations?”

The words are different, but the underlying need is similar.

So the basic idea is:

Customer problem → Context hint → Relevant ad group

Set Your Bid

The ad group also contains bidding settings.

A bid is the maximum amount an advertiser is willing to bid in the ad auction.

For example, CPC campaigns use maximum CPC bidding, while CPM campaigns use impression-based bidding.

Keep these two settings separate:

Budget = how much the campaign can spend

Bid = how much the advertiser is willing to bid in the auction

Step 5: Create Your Ads

Once the ad groups are ready, you can create the actual ads.

A ChatGPT ad can include:

• Advertiser or brand name
• Logo or favicon
• Headline
• Description
• Image
• Landing page

The ad should match the need represented by its ad group.

For example, if the ad group focuses on inventory management, a broad headline such as:

Grow Your Business Today

does not clearly explain the offer.

A more specific headline such as:

Manufacturing Inventory Software

creates a clearer connection.

Understand the Full Connection

The campaign structure could look like this:

Campaign: Manufacturing ERP Software

↓

Ad Group: Inventory Management

↓

Context Hint: tracking raw materials across factory locations

↓

Ad: Manufacturing Inventory Software

↓

Landing Page: Inventory-management feature page

Each part has a different purpose.

The campaign covers the broader advertising initiative. The ad group focuses on one customer need, while context hints describe situations connected to that need.

The ad then communicates the offer, and the landing page provides more information.

Match the Landing Page to the Ad

The destination should closely match what the ad promotes.

For example:

Inventory-management ad → Inventory-management page

is more direct than:

Inventory-management ad → General homepage

Someone clicking the ad should be able to quickly find the information they expected.

Create Different Ad Variations

More than one ad can be used within the same ad group.

For example, one inventory-management ad could focus on raw-material visibility, while another highlights warehouse stock management.

Both still relate to the same ad-group theme, but they test different messages.

Step 6: Review and Submit Your Campaign

Before submitting, review each level separately.

Campaign

Check:

• Objective
• Budget
• Dates
• Locations

Ad Group

Check:

• Ad-group theme
• Context hints
• Bid

Ad

Check:

• Headline
• Description
• Image
• Landing page

Also make sure advertiser verification and billing are complete.

Review the Landing Page

The destination should be:

• Live
• Reachable
• Relevant to the ad
• Consistent with the offer

A broken or unrelated landing page can cause problems even when the rest of the campaign is set up correctly.

Submit for Review

Once everything looks correct, submit the campaign for review.

Review timing can vary. Therefore, campaigns tied to a specific launch date should be prepared early enough to leave room for possible review issues.

Step 7: Check Whether Your Ads Are Serving

Submitting the campaign does not automatically mean the ads are already delivering.

After submission, check the status inside Ads Manager.

If an ad shows Not serving, look at possible causes such as:

• Advertiser verification
• Billing
• Campaign budget
• Campaign dates
• Campaign status
• Ad review
• Landing-page access
• Policy issues

For example, increasing the budget will not fix a campaign that cannot run because billing is incomplete.

Find the actual delivery problem first before changing the campaign strategy.

Step 8: Monitor Performance and Make Adjustments

Once the ads begin serving, Ads Manager starts providing performance data.

Metrics can include:

• Impressions
• Clicks
• Spend
• CTR
• Average CPC
• Average CPM
• Conversions, when measurement is configured

Instead of reviewing only the campaign total, look at each level separately.

Campaign Level

Campaign reporting shows the broader picture, including overall spend and delivery.

Ad-Group Level

Ad-group reporting helps compare different customer needs or use cases.

For example:

Inventory Management

may perform differently from:

Production Planning

This gives you a clearer idea of which area is generating more activity.

Ad Level

Finally, compare the individual ads.

Differences in the headline, image, benefit, or landing page may produce different results.

Make changes based on what the data shows rather than changing several campaign settings at the same time.

A Simple ChatGPT Ads Campaign Example

Suppose a SaaS company sells ERP software to manufacturing businesses.

The software helps manufacturers manage inventory, production, and day-to-day operations. The company now wants to promote its inventory-management features.

Campaign

Campaign Name: Manufacturing ERP Software
Objective: CPC
Budget: Daily budget
Location: Target market

The campaign covers the broader ERP product.

Inside it, the advertiser creates an ad group specifically for inventory management.

Ad Group: Inventory Management

This group focuses on manufacturers that need better control over raw materials and stock.

Common problems might include:

• Raw materials are difficult to track.
• Stock is spread across several warehouses.
• Production teams cannot easily check available inventory.

Based on these problems, the advertiser could add context hints such as:

• tracking raw materials across factory locations
• checking stock before production
• managing warehouse inventory

The Ad

Next, the company creates the actual advertising message.

Headline: Manufacturing Inventory Software

Description: Keep raw materials, stock levels, and inventory activity organized in one system.

Here, the context hints help describe what the ad group is about, while the headline and description form the actual advertising message.

Landing Page

The ad could link directly to the company’s Inventory Management feature page.

This gives the campaign a clear structure:

Customer Need → Ad Group → Context Hint → Ad → Relevant Landing Page

The same approach can work across other industries. A SaaS company might organize ad groups by use case, while a manufacturer could separate them by product type or buyer need.

Common Questions

Can a ChatGPT Ads campaign be paused after launch?

Yes. Campaign delivery can be paused when ads need to stop temporarily. This can be useful while reviewing performance, updating an offer, or making campaign changes.

Do ChatGPT Ads support multiple campaigns?

Yes. Advertisers can use separate campaigns for different products, markets, objectives, or offers. Keeping major initiatives separate can also make performance easier to compare.

Can multiple people manage the same Ads Manager account?

Yes. Team members can be added when different people are involved in campaign management, billing, creative, or reporting.

Is a separate landing page needed for every ad?

Not necessarily. Several ads can use the same landing page when it closely matches their message. A separate page can make more sense when ads promote different products, services, or use cases.

Are multiple ads allowed within the same ad group?

Yes. Multiple ads can be used within an ad group to compare different headlines, messages, images, or creative approaches. They should still relate to the same overall ad-group theme.

Can different products be advertised from the same account?

Yes. Different products or services can be organized within the same advertiser account. Separate campaigns or ad groups can help keep their messaging, budgets, and performance easier to manage.