Ads in ChatGPT expand to 26 new countries, now 89 in total

What's new

OpenAI announced on October 21, 2026, that ads in ChatGPT are expanding to 26 new countries, bringing the total to 89. The new additions include Nigeria and South Africa, as well as Serbia, Ukraine, Cambodia, Bangladesh and Pakistan. Businesses in these countries can buy ads through technology partners or directly through OpenAI's Ads Manager tool.

Ads are not new to ChatGPT. Ads Manager opened as a self-serve beta in May 2026. According to Pulse 2.0, ChatGPT Ads was available in more than 40 countries by the end of August through OpenAI's ad team, agencies and technology partners, and self-serve access in Ads Manager was expanded to India, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, among other regions. OpenAI said in August that the ads had reached an annualized revenue run rate of $1 billion in under 200 days after launch.

The sources do not say whether Denmark is covered by this particular expansion.

What's smart

Advertisers do not target with keywords, as is familiar from search engines. Instead, they write contextual prompts, meaning descriptions of the kinds of conversations the ad fits. According to OpenAI, as relayed by the source, advertisers do not have access to users' chats, history, memory or personal information.

Getting started is also easy: Businesses create campaigns at ads.openai.com using their ChatGPT login, and all ads must be approved before they go live. Payment is by credit card, which is charged when spending reaches a threshold of about $25. Advertisers can bid on impressions (cost per thousand), clicks or conversions. For click campaigns, a starting bid of $3-5 per click is recommended.

Note that the daily budget is averaged over 7 days, so spending on a single day can reach up to double the daily limit. The country, currency and time zone of an ad account cannot be changed after it is created.

Cheaper or better?

For ordinary users, the price does not change, but ads are shown only to users on the Free and Go plans. Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Education are ad-free, and ads are not targeted at users under 18.

For advertisers, the picture is unclear. OpenAI has not published country-by-country pricing or evidence that the ads perform equally well in every market. Targeting, measurement and local payment options in Africa are unclear. The figures of $25 and $3-5 per click come from a single South African source and may vary from country to country.

eMarketer expects chatbot ads to make up less than 3 percent of total AI-related ad spending in 2026, and calls the channel a structured test rather than a core channel. Techbooky recommends that businesses test whether the traffic leads to sales, rather than assuming conversational ads beat search or social media.

What it's good for

The ads are for businesses that want to reach users in the middle of a conversation about a topic that fits their product. According to Techbooky, more than 1.2 billion people use ChatGPT weekly worldwide, so the reach is large, although the figure does not apply specifically to Nigeria or South Africa.

According to Pulse 2.0, CPC (cost per click) and outcome-optimized bidding accounted for the majority of campaigns, making them the two most-used entry points. For a small business, it works best as a limited test with a small budget, closely tracking whether the clicks actually end in sales.