01 — Honest
New channel, honest framing
Up front, because it belongs to this channel: ChatGPT Ads went live in Germany on August 24, 2026. Nobody here has "years of experience" with them, including us, and whoever claims otherwise is telling stories. What we do have: first client campaigns in the OpenAI Ads Manager, the US benchmarks since the February launch on our radar, and twenty years of experience wiring up new ad channels properly before budget flows.
That is exactly our role in this phase: setup, measurement, and honest framing. We will share the learnings from the running campaigns openly as soon as the data holds up.
02 — Discipline
How advertising in ChatGPT works
Ads appear for users on the Free and Go tiers below the end of an answer, clearly labeled as sponsored and separated from the answer text. Plus, Pro, Business and Edu accounts stay ad-free. The format is the chat card: short title, up to 100 characters of copy, image, favicon and destination URL. A single ad per answer, no ad block, no banner carousel.
That changes the logic compared to Google and Meta: click-through rates are low by construction, but the click comes out of a highly specific question context. The US numbers since February show exactly this pattern: few, but purchase-ready clicks. We unpacked the details in our blog post on the German launch.
03 — Foundation
Tracking: the state today, soberly
The OpenAI Ads Manager is the counterpart to Meta's Business Manager, just much younger. In Germany it is simply called "Anzeigenmanager", still carries a beta label and can be set up self-service in a few steps. Inside: campaigns, ad groups, ads, plus seven basic metrics from impressions to one rolled-up conversion number. For measurement there are three paths, and we set up all three:
- oaiq pixel: OpenAI's JavaScript pixel for browser events, the counterpart to the Meta pixel. It belongs in the tag manager, not loose in the theme.
- Conversions API: server-side event delivery, analogous to the Conversion APIs of the established platforms. Important, because a young channel needs every signal.
- UTM discipline: consistent parameters on every destination URL so GA4 and the CRM report the channel cleanly. Conventions as encoded in our UTM composer.
And the honest caveat: the attribution gap is real. Early US analyses suggest only about half of ChatGPT-driven conversions arrive in the click session, the rest later via direct visits and branded searches. On top, the Ads Manager reports events with a lag of several hours. And before the first euro flows, we check the crawler permissions: OpenAI’s OAI-AdsBot must get past robots.txt and bot protection (Cloudflare and friends), otherwise even the ad preview in the Ads Manager fails. To judge this channel you need a measurement base that thinks beyond last click, the way we build it in our Tracking & Analytics stack.
04 — Alignment
GEO and product feed: the organic base
Paid visibility in ChatGPT makes the most sense when the organic base is in place. The same systems that deliver ads also cite sources and show products: whoever is citable via GEO and, as a shop, provides an OpenAI product feed shows up twice, paid and organic. Whether your site is ready is something our free GEO checker shows in one minute.
05 — Honest
Who should start now
The US development argues for an early but controlled start: at the February launch, CPMs sat around 60 dollars with a high minimum spend; since May the minimum is gone and prices have roughly halved. Testing early means learning while auction pressure is low. But with test budgets, not the annual budget.
A good fit now: products that need explanation and a research-driven purchase, shops with a clean feed, brands with a clear category question ("best X for Y"). Better to wait: very small budgets, pure impulse buys, anything without a working measurement pipeline.
Where we stand: We are not selling a gold rush. ChatGPT Ads are a test channel with unusually interesting early indicators. We tell you beforehand which budget produces a reliable answer, and afterwards honestly what came out of it.
06 — Outlook
Coming soon: our first results
The first campaigns are live. As soon as there is enough data for a serious analysis, we will publish the numbers on our blog: costs, click and conversion behavior, attribution findings and what we would do differently. If you do not want to wait or are planning your own campaigns: the intro call is available now.
Advertise on ChatGPT before everyone does?
Tell us briefly what you offer and which channels are running. We will tell you honestly whether ChatGPT Ads make sense for you now or whether the budget does more elsewhere. Free intro call, 30 minutes.