As a digital marketing agency that specialises in growth partnerships, it’s unsurprising that emerging platforms bring both excitement and caution. Looking at the marketing landscape in 2026, it’s clear that AI has been fully embraced and, thankfully, is here to stay.
With ChatGPT becoming a household name, we’ve seen more users interact with it as both a copilot for work and home-life efficiencies. As well as an emerging search engine platform used as an additional discovery route for products, reviews, services, and FAQs.
ChatGPT announces plans to test in-platform advertising.
As with any platform, its marketing potential grows as its audience grows. In January 2026, OpenAI announced its plans to test advertising in ChatGPT, followed swiftly by a pilot launch in the United States.
With a successful adoption in the US, OpenAI announced in May 2026 that the pilot would expand into the UK in the “coming weeks”, making it the first in the European market.
Fast forward to mid-June 2026, and UK businesses began receiving access invites to the Ads Manager Beta, with OpenAI announcing the full roll-out on August 11th.
You can review the full timeline article here.
The ChatGPT Advertising Platform – What can you do on it?
With a new tool available for Stacksmiths, it was a no-brainer to experiment with the platform in August 2026 and test it end-to-end in its current launch state.
Understandably, another discussion around ChatGPT and the use of AI will likely fall to the bottom of the internet. But with the launch of their Ad Manager, is it less “Sue, Sue, Sue” and more “New, New, New”?
Firstly, let’s talk features and how to use them.
ChatGPT Ad Manager Platform
Once you’ve signed up, which is as straightforward as it can be, especially if you have an existing ChatGPT account. The platform itself has the usual items you’d expect if you’ve experienced a self-service ad management platform, including:
- Campaign Builder – Your general main entry point for creating your ads, which follows a similar structure to Meta and Google with a Campaign > Ad Group > Ad hierarchy.
- Tools – This section houses Conversions, Feeds, Change History and Audiences. We expect to flesh this out into more nuanced sections in the future, with the possibility of audiences and feeds standing alone, and conversions housed in a more structured reporting section.
- Billing – Business as usual and as expected, with somewhat more accessible navigation and ease of use when assessing spend and invoices.
- Settings – This is one of the spaces where we feel the ChatGPT Ads Manager really shines. It’s a common perception, and rightfully so, that inviting users to access ad accounts on Google and Meta, navigating single-page permissions and portfolios, and managing the split between Admins and Managers can be clunky. OpenAI has created a standalone ‘Users’ section that lets you invite users to the platform without the fuss.
Overall, the platform is as clean as the rest of the ChatGPT suite, with a very ‘standard’ toolkit that feels fluid and intentional. Without the bloat of platforms such as Google Ads and Meta. The layout is great for smaller businesses looking to self-serve some ads and experiment with the platform, but likely too simplified for experienced users to create and review intricate campaigns.
The Pixel & Tracking Setup on ChatGPT Ads
To OpenAI’s credit, the conversion setup tool is one of the simplest across similar platforms, with a step-by-step guide and a great interface that lets you view and manage the events you’re tracking.
We created the following events as a trial, all of which we successfully linked to Tag Manager without issues and tracked and confirmed through both Tag Manager and their Event Stream ‘Pooling’ tool.
Events:
- Phone Tap – When someone initiates a call from the number on our website.
- Email Tap – When someone initiates an email prompt from our website.
- Form Submission – Someone submitting details requesting a callback.
The pooling tool is a strong addition to the platform and was a highlight here. Letting you switch on ‘live tracking’ of events to scrutinise or test your conversion event, similar to Google’s debug mode.
Setting up ChatGPT Ad Campaign
The ad creator is the real meat and potatoes of the platform, with OpenAI designing a campaign creation tool that has a low entry point now, but a potential high ceiling in the future.
Campaign Type – The campaign creator offers two different campaign types: your standard ‘search’ campaign, and one that optimises your product feed, which you can implement via the following methods:
- CSV or TXT file
- Hosted URLS
- SFTP connection
For Stacksmiths, and most professional services, the ‘Standard’ campaign type is your go-to for creating your first campaign.
Objectives – Three objectives are currently available, with Reach, Clicks and Conversions residing as your options. As a rule of thumb, conversions are your go-to outside of a pure awareness campaign but likely come with a higher cost per click than the others.
At this stage, you can either link an existing conversion event or create a new one if the campaign outcome requires it.
This strong feature removes some of the ambiguity other platforms have when choosing your campaign objective.
Outside of the traditional audience builder, exclusions, budget and schedule, you’re also able to assign the platforms you want to target or exclude. Including, Android, iOS App and Web.
Setting up ChatGPT Campaign Ad Group
The ‘Ad Group’ section of ChatGPT is basic in execution, allowing you a little input over your ad destination and bid strategy, with a controlled cost-per-click alternative option available.
Now, this is the interesting part that helps separate it from similar platforms: ChatGPT does away with matched broad, phrase and exact-match keywords. Instead using optional ‘Context hints’ that allow you to help position your ads towards conversations, topics and some keyword positioning and services that may be relevant.
This isn’t used as an exact-match targeting rule, but it helps the platform place your targets in meaningful places.
This is likely the trickiest part of the platform, because it requires the user to reflect on the following questions:
- What conversations is my business in?
- What conversations do I want to be in?
- What are people asking about my business/business area?
- What are users at the discovery phase of the funnel enquiring about my product or service?
With full transparency, we have shared our input below as a framework you can use.
“Conversations where UK business owners, directors and marketing leaders are looking for a strategic digital agency, full-service marketing agency or long-term growth partner. Relevant needs include improving an underperforming website or marketing strategy, generating more qualified leads, increasing online visibility, strengthening a brand, launching a new website, improving SEO or PPC performance, and bringing disconnected marketing, creative, web and technology activity together.
Also relevant when a business is dissatisfied with its current agency, lacks internal marketing resource, needs additional expertise alongside an existing team, or wants one accountable partner covering strategy, website design and development, SEO, paid search, content, social media, branding, creative, video and bespoke software.
Stacksmiths is particularly relevant to ambitious SMEs and established organisations seeking clear strategic direction, transparent communication, stronger digital foundations and measurable business growth. Based in Essex and working with businesses across London, the South East and the wider UK.”
Setting up ChatGPT Campaign Ad & Creative
This part highlights the platform’s simplicity and its inability to be creative with formatting. The options here are basic, with little control over the execution of the creative in its placement beyond the following options:
- Ad Title
- Ad Descriptions
- Ad Destination
- Ad Images
The positive: this is quick to duplicate to create variants at scale. But it lacks the following options, which we feel are a baseline requirement for this launch.
- Asset Customisation
- Deeper Product Customisation
- Assets with Movement
- Carousels
- Asset Positioning
As a platform, the core features are as expected, with a few image formats to play with, but very few variables that have movement, such as video. If your brand has an expansive asset library, including short-form content, your paid media budget is likely better optimised across platforms with strong performance metrics for video and storytelling.
ChatGPT Ads – Reporting the hard truth
How does it compare to other paid search platforms like Google or Meta ads? At this stage, it doesn’t. The platform has launched in a great introductory state, allowing brands to dip their toes in and experiment with the platform. The current entry-point, cost-per-click pricing, due to limited competitive exposure, and easy plug-and-go structure makes it accessible. But there’s a fundamental feature that we feel, at this stage, leads to wasted ad spend for users whose primary focus is search functionality
The reporting and exposure control are poor. Quite understandably, there’s nuance here around GDPR and digital privacy laws. But as a user, my first thought is simply, “What led to this click or conversion?” and “What conversations are happening that we’re being shown for?”
At this stage, the question remains unanswered. As of September 2026, you can’t see the conversation topics your ad appears alongside, control them, or understand the keywords or phrases that best serve your ad.
This frustrates advanced users who want to get under the hood of their campaign and further optimise it as it gathers data.
As a digital marketing agency, Stacksmiths manages ad campaigns for a variety of clients on different budgets. And because each client wants to understand their return on investment, conversations often focus on the ad manager’s targeting and budgeting efficiency.
As performance marketing presents itself in 2026, it’s unlikely that the ability to provide clicks, impressions, and simplistic conversion data will be enough to satisfy both businesses and digital agencies until OpenAI expands its reporting platform.
ChatGPT Ads – Final Pros & Cons
Through hands-on experimentation, we’ve curated a list of pros and cons for the platform that we hope gives early adopters enough information to decide whether OpenAI’s ChatGPT Ads Manager is for them in September 2026.
Pros of ChatGPT Ads
- The Ad Manager’s interface is clean and responsive.
- Campaign creation is simple, allowing new users to dip their toes in.
- Setting up your shopping campaign product feed is simple and intuitive compared to other platforms.
- The pixel setup is a dream compared to other platforms.
- Accessing invoices and billing documents is very simple.
- Account creation required minimal authorisation or third-party tools.
- User management is very straightforward.
Cons of ChatGPT Ads
- You have minimal control over where your budget is spent.
- The reporting is very basic, limiting your ability to understand your audience or which part of your ad structure is truly working.
- The minimum cost per day (for us) was around £15.00 per day. This is quite high for some smaller businesses looking to experiment.
- No video ad creative capability. (yet)
- Navigation structure needs continued polish.
If our list of pros and cons has convinced you to give ChatGPT’s new Ad Manager platform a try, and you’re ready to commit ad budget to enhance your brand’s exposure through a growing AI platform, give us a call, and we’ll put the kettle on.
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