ChatGPT beta ads now live in the UK

As more and more users turn to AI tools in search for products and services, it was only a matter of time before platforms started to offer advertising to businesses to fund their infrastructure. OpenAI began testing ads inside ChatGPT in February 2026 and the Beta Ads Manager is now available to a select number of countries with the UK being one of them. 

• How the rollout has played out so far
• What the ads actually look like
• How does targeting work in OpenAI advertising?
• Our take on running ads on ChatGPT
• Interested in trying out ChatGPT ads?

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How the rollout has played out so far

The US version of this story moved quickly. What began as an invite-only pilot requiring six figure spend commitments turned, within a few months, into a fully open platform that almost any business could access. Google took years to build the kind of ad infrastructure OpenAI has put together in a matter of months, which says a lot about the pressure behind the scenes to turn ChatGPT's enormous user base into revenue.

The UK rollout followed shortly afterwards, with sponsored placements beginning to appear for eligible users from 4th June. OpenAI opened its Ads Manager Beta to UK advertisers on 19th June 2026, giving businesses access to the self-serve platform for ChatGPT ads.

What the ads actually look like

Ads appear at the bottom of ChatGPT's responses, clearly labelled as sponsored and kept separate from the answer itself. OpenAI has been deliberate about drawing a firm line between what ChatGPT tells you and what a brand has paid to show you, and that separation is central to how the platform is being positioned to both users and advertisers.

Ads currently show up for logged in adult users on the Free and Go tiers in the following countries:

• United Kingdom

• United States

• Australia

• Japan

• Canada

• Korea

• New Zealand

Paying subscribers see none of it. That's a deliberate choice, and one worth noting. OpenAI is effectively testing its ad model on the users least likely to kick up a fuss if something goes wrong, while protecting the paying customers who fund most of its subscription revenue.

How does targeting work in OpenAI advertising?

When setting up your account, you'll need to add your website. ChatGPT uses the contextual information it finds there to help match your ads with relevant users. At campaign level, you're also asked to describe the conversations, topics or keywords where your products or services might come up. OpenAI is clear that these are hints rather than exact match rules, so it's more about giving the system a sense of direction than defining precise triggers.

You can choose which countries to target and which to exclude, though this only works at country level. There's no option to narrow things down to a city or region.

Contextual hints can also be added at ad group level, giving you a bit more control over how individual ads are matched within a wider campaign, even if the underlying targeting logic stays fairly broad.

Beyond that, the only other targeting option currently available is building audiences to include or exclude from your own first-party data. If you're comparing this to what you'd get from Google or Meta, the honest read is that OpenAI's platform is still at an early stage. There's no demographic or interest based targeting yet, and no lookalike audience building beyond what you can create with your own data. For now, success depends more on how well you can anticipate the language your customers actually use than on building out detailed audience segments.

Our take on running ads on ChatGPT

The programme is still very much in beta testing, so there are lots of tools and functionality missing in comparison with the platforms most businesses already use. Even so, our honest view is that there is a genuine opportunity to recapture some of the traffic that has been lost in traditional search since the adoption of AI tools. 

That opportunity comes with a trade-off. Running ads on a platform this early will involve a fair bit of trial and error, so if you can't afford to lose a bit of money while you learn what works, it's probably worth waiting until the platform matures. On the flipside, if you’re confident that this is where your audience has migrated to, now might just be the perfect time to test it and see. New ad platforms that are still finding their feet tend to provide lower cost-per-clicks than established platforms. Early Facebook and TikTok advertising followed a similar pattern, where costs climbed steadily once bigger budgets moved in.

Where we'd urge some caution and expectation management is on measurement. Reporting depth and audience targeting will be very basic compared with Google or Meta, so this is exploratory spend for now rather than a channel you can fine-tune with precision.

The businesses that get the most out of it will be those with a genuinely strong grasp of the questions their customers ask when they're close to making a decision, since ChatGPT’s ad matching relies on conversational context rather than the keyword targeting most marketing teams are used to.

Interested in trying out ChatGPT ads?

ChatGPT advertising is still finding its feet, but that's exactly why now is the moment to start testing. Our team can help you work out whether it's the right fit for your business, build a campaign that speaks the way your customers actually search, and keep a close eye on performance while the platform matures.

Speak to our paid advertising experts to learn more.

 

 

 

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