The news
On 21 October 2026, OpenAI extended advertising in ChatGPT to 26 more countries, bringing the total to 89. The new markets include 14 in Latin America, among them Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Peru, as well as Nigeria, South Africa, Serbia, Ukraine, Cambodia, Bangladesh and Pakistan. They follow launches across Europe in August and in Southeast Asia and Taiwan in September.
Businesses can buy the ads through technology partners or set up campaigns themselves in OpenAI's Ads Manager. OpenAI's help centre lists self-service as available for companies based in Jordan, all six Gulf states, Egypt and most of Europe, including Spain, Italy, France and Germany. The legal entity that advertises and pays the bill must be based in one of the listed countries.
OpenAI says more than 100,000 advertisers have run campaigns since ads began just over eight months ago, and that more than 1.2 billion people use ChatGPT each week. Ads appear only on the Free and Go plans. Plus, Pro and Enterprise stay ad-free. According to OpenAI, ads are labelled, kept separate from ChatGPT's answers and do not influence them, and advertisers do not see people's conversations.
OpenAI says new ad formats, campaign objectives, buying options and ways to measure results come next.
What it means for you
- If you sell to consumers, ChatGPT is now a paid channel you can test next to Google and Meta, reaching people while they compare options.
- A business registered in Jordan or the Gulf can open an account and run its ads itself, without going through an agency.
- Ads cannot buy a place in ChatGPT's answers. OpenAI says the answers are not influenced by advertising.
- People on the paid Plus, Pro and Enterprise plans never see the ads, so you reach Free and Go users only.
What to do now
- Check OpenAI's Ads Manager availability page to confirm that your company's country is listed.
- Start with a small test budget on one product or service, and compare the cost of each lead with your other channels.
- Make sure the page your ad links to loads quickly on a phone and lets people buy, book or call straight away.
How Didset can help
We build AI assistants and automations that reply to new leads and follow them up, so the people your ads bring in get an answer quickly.
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