🛠️ The ChatGPT ads setup you can finish this week
Welcome back to AI Marketing News!
On September 16, OpenAI changed how you build a ChatGPT ad. You can build a campaign by typing a prompt, the ad can open a conversation with your business, and it plugs into Shopify and HubSpot.
Three things make this worth trying today:
OpenAI's sign-up page is offering $500 in ad credit to anyone who spends $500, but only if you sign up by Sep 30.
The free ChatGPT Ads app for Shopify, which runs your campaigns from inside your store, opens to merchants outside the US today, Sep 23.
And the list of countries where you can open a self-serve account went from the US alone in June to 56 this week, so most of you reading this can get in now.
Below are 4 steps anyone in a supported country can do this week, in order, and a fifth you apply for. 👇
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🌍 Step 1: Check you can get in, and who you'll reach
This takes about 3 minutes.
Country rule: self-serve Ads Manager is open in 56 countries as of this week, and the legal entity that advertises and gets billed has to be based in one of them (OpenAI Help Center). In June, the list was the US. Today it includes the US, Canada, the UK, Ireland, Australia, India, Brazil, Mexico, Germany, the UAE, Japan and most of the EU. If your country isn't on it, there's an interest form on the sign-up page.
Who sees your ad: Free and Go users only. Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Edu users never see ads, and neither does anyone under 18. The ad sits below the end of a response, labeled sponsored and visually separated, and it doesn't show in the Atlas browser or in Temporary Chats (OpenAI Help Center).
That's still a big pool. ChatGPT was closing in on 1B weekly users by late July, up from 900M in February (PYMNTS). Just don't count all of them as reachable, because the paid tiers are out.
What targeting uses: the current chat, basic location and language, and past chats and memory if the user has personalization on. You never get their chats, history, memories, name or email. So there are no retargeting lists and no lookalikes built from your CRM.
🎯 The move: sign up at ads.openai.com before Sep 30 if you'd spend $500 anyway. Spend $500 and OpenAI adds $500 in credit.
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⌨️ Step 2: Hand the plugin your landing page
The new Ads Manager plugin lives inside ChatGPT. You type what you want in plain English and it creates, updates and analyzes campaigns, and it can turn a website or a brief into a campaign (Search Engine Land). It also suggests copy and imagery based on your landing page and your objective, and you review and edit everything before it runs.
Try it as one message, filling in the brackets:
Build: a campaign from [landing page URL]
Objective: [leads / sales / sign-ups]
Daily budget: $[x]
Audience: people asking about [the problem you solve]
Before you create anything: show me 3 headline and description pairs
What to fix in its draft: claims you can't back up, prices that changed since you last touched the page, and the call to action. The plugin reads your landing page to write the ad. Fix the page first, then prompt.
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🔁 Step 3: Switch on text customization
Text customization is an opt-in setting. When it's enabled, it adapts your existing headlines and descriptions to fit the context of the conversation and automatically translates the copy into the user's preferred language (OpenAI).
Why this matters for you: a lot of you sell to customers who don't chat in English. One ad, translated on the fly for each conversation, is the job you'd have paid a freelancer for.
What to give it: short, plain headlines with one claim each, so the meaning survives a rewrite. Keep the offer and the price out of the headline if they change often.
The older interactive feature is still there too. A user can tap the three-dot menu on any ad and choose "Ask ChatGPT," which shares the ad into their chat so they can ask about it. That's separate from the Sponsored Agents in Step 5, where your business answers.
🎯 Use it for: any product with customers in more than one language.
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🔌 Step 4: Plug it into where your customers already are
Two integrations shipped with the announcement. Pick the one that matches your business.
Shopify: the ChatGPT Ads app is free to install. You connect an existing ChatGPT ad account or create one from inside Shopify, your product catalog syncs to Ads Manager automatically, you build ads from that catalog in a few clicks, campaigns run on a Shopify pixel and conversion events, and reporting stays inside Shopify. US merchants can use it already. Everywhere else ChatGPT ads run, it opens today, Sep 23.
HubSpot: the connection is available on every HubSpot plan, including the free CRM, but it's in beta and a Super Admin has to opt your account in (HubSpot). You'll need an active ChatGPT Ads account, an API key from the OpenAI ads dashboard, Ads publishing permissions, and your ad blocker off during setup. Once it's connected you can create campaigns, track them next to your other ad channels, and attribute contacts and deals to ChatGPT spend, with UTMs added automatically. The path is Settings → Marketing → Ads → Connect account → ChatGPT Ads → log in with ChatGPT → pick the account → turn on auto-tracking.
⚠️ A word on the Shopify app: it's three weeks old, and as of this week it shows 2.7 stars from 11 reviews, with most of the one-star reviews about account connection and catalog sync. Eleven reviews is a tiny sample. But the check is cheap, so connect it, then open Ads Manager and confirm your catalog is actually there before you spend a dollar.
💎 Best use: e-commerce → Shopify. Lead-gen and services → HubSpot. Neither → Ads Manager on its own is fine.
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💬 Step 5: If you get into Sponsored Agents, load it before it talks
This is the new ad format, and it's the one you apply for. After a user sees your ad, they "can choose to start a clearly labeled conversation with a business-sponsored agent," explain what matters to them, ask follow-up questions, and follow a link to your site when they're ready (OpenAI). The conversation is separate from ChatGPT's own answers and from the chat the user was in. It's testing with select US advertisers, and there's an interest form for everyone else.
Why it matters: this is the first ad unit where your business does the answering instead of ChatGPT. For a small business, that's the sales conversation you usually lose because nobody was there to have it.
What to prepare now: four things, so you're ready if you get picked.
The 5 questions: the ones customers ask before they buy
The price answer: the honest answer to "how much," including what changes it
The one next step: book, buy or sign up. Pick one
The never list: things it must not promise, like delivery dates, refunds or results
⚠️ Don't: treat it as a chatbot that can say anything. It's an ad, it's labeled as one, and it speaks for you.
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🧯 What this doesn't change
Reach: ads reach Free and Go users only, and only inside ChatGPT. Among US desktop users of AI assistants, ChatGPT's share fell from 70% in January to 50% in June, with Gemini at 30% (Search Engine Land). Half that audience is somewhere else.
Price: OpenAI didn't announce new pricing. The $3-5 click figure is from earlier this year (Search Engine Journal).
Copy: the suggested copy is a draft. The landing page it read is the thing to fix.
Credit: the $500 needs $500 spent first.
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🗓️ Do this week
Check the list: 56 countries, and the billed entity has to be in one
Sign up: ads.openai.com, before Sep 30 if you'll spend the $500
Fix the landing page: it's the brief the plugin reads
Prompt one campaign: small daily budget, review the 3 pairs, publish one
Connect the store or the CRM: the Shopify app or the HubSpot beta, then confirm the catalog synced
Register interest: Sponsored Agents, and write your 5 questions now
☝️ The one-sentence version
OpenAI turned ChatGPT ads into a prompt-and-review workflow that plugs into Shopify and HubSpot and is open in 56 countries, so set up one small campaign this week and get your answers ready for the day the ad can talk.
Hit reply and tell me: which of the five steps would you actually run first?
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📚 Sources
That’s all for today. Thanks for reading. Now…
Go BIG or go home!
~ Josh from “AI Marketing News”
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