After attending OpenAI's webinar, Set Up Your ChatGPT Ads for Success: Five Best Practices for Creating Campaigns Designed to Perform, a single takeaway stood out: ChatGPT is emerging as another advertising channel, with campaign setup and optimization features that will feel familiar to marketers using Meta, Google, X or TikTok. If it’s not yet on your radar, it might be time to take a look.
While the platform is still developing, its advertising capabilities create new opportunities worth exploring. Like any emerging channel, the initial priority should be establishing a foundation, understanding what is driving results, and scaling based on performance rather than assumptions.
Here are five key takeaways from the webinar and what they mean for advertisers:
1.) Tracking
Any digital marketer knows you have to have clean and reliable data to manage ads. ChatGPT is no different. OpenAI recommends setting up conversion measurement through its Pixel, Conversions API (CAPI), or both. Using both is recommended for the cleanest possible data.
The setup process includes creating a data source, installing the Pixel or configuring server-side events, selecting a base event, and defining conversion events. CAPI requires a separate API key. Once set up, OpenAI provides an event quality score to help advertisers evaluate the quality of incoming data and identify gaps.
Before launching, verify that purchase events, order values, and other key actions are being passed correctly. When using both tracking methods, ensure duplicate events are deduplicated. Treat event quality scores as diagnostic tools, not proof that every conversion is attributed accurately.
2.) Learning
Similar to other advertising channels, OpenAI recommends consolidating campaigns to avoid excessive fragmentation, allowing sufficient time and budget for learning, and using automated bidding. The webinar highlighted the Maximize Results bidding approach.
This follows a broader performance marketing principle: excessive campaign fragmentation can limit the data available to optimize individual campaigns.
Resist the temptation to immediately build separate campaigns for every audience, product category, or creative concept. Start with a focused campaign structure and clear conversion objectives. As data collects, evaluate whether separate campaigns are justified by differences in performance, margins, or business goals.
The important question isn't how many campaigns you can launch, but whether each campaign has enough budget and conversion data to support optimization. Automated bidding can help optimize toward the selected objective, but it doesn't guarantee the lowest cost per acquisition or profitable results.
3.) Optimization
ChatGPT Ads offers different optimization objectives: reach, clicks, and conversions associated with impressions or clicks. These objectives serve different purposes. A campaign built to generate awareness should not be evaluated the same way as one designed to drive purchases. Understanding your performance objective and how it lines up with your campaign goal is essential, just like on any other marketing channel.
It's also important to understand the attribution distinction. OpenAI's current documentation describes click-through conversions and, where available, view-through conversions as separate reporting metrics. Click-through conversions are used for conversion optimization, while view-through reporting provides additional context about conversions following eligible impressions.
Selecting a conversion objective does not automatically mean a campaign will produce profitable sales. Advertisers will need to understand how ChatGPT attributes conversions and how those results compare with other channels.
4.) Ad Setup
Advertisers can enter the website they want to advertise into the Ads Manager, which uses AI to crawl the site and generate advertising options. These include headlines, copy, images, and destination links based on the website's content. You then have the option to tweak these suggestions to your liking.
While automation can accelerate the process, it isn't perfect. We recommend reviewing and refining copy, links, and creative to ensure accuracy, maintain brand voice, and keep the campaign focused on its intended goal.
5.) Product Feeds
Product feeds are particularly relevant for ecommerce advertisers. Connecting a catalog helps keep product details current, supports ad creation at scale, and connects products with relevant purchase content.
OpenAI offers a Shopify integration that connects a store's product catalog and commerce-event data to ChatGPT Ads Manager. The integration supports product-feed syncing, catalog-based ads, and conversion measurement through the connected OpenAI Pixel.
Accurate product titles, descriptions, pricing, availability, and landing pages give advertising systems better information to work with and create opportunities to match products to consumer needs. As with Google Shopping and Performance Max, feed quality can directly affect how effectively advertisers present their products to potential customers.
What advertisers should do next
ChatGPT Ads is a developing channel, and its long-term role in the paid media mix will depend on actual performance data. For brands considering the platform, we recommend starting with accurate tracking, a clean product feed, a focused campaign structure, and a budget that allows meaningful testing without compromising established revenue channels.The goal isn't simply to add another advertising platform. It's to determine whether ChatGPT can become a measurable, incremental source of profitable growth. \
Gray Loon Marketing helps brands investigate new advertising opportunities, as well as traditional marketing channels, to build performance-driven and scalable campaigns. If you’re interested in learning more about ChatGPT ads, or any other digital platform, drop us a line!
Garrett Spahn, Performance Marketing Manager, GSpahn@GrayLoon.com
Helpful resources
ChatGPT Ads Manager — Get started and set up an advertising account.
OpenAI Ads Help Center — Setup, tracking, and campaign documentation.
OpenAI Advertising Policies — Review advertising requirements and restrictions.
*The article reflects the September 24, 2026, webinar and OpenAI's available documentation. Platform features, integrations, and advertising capabilities may evolve as ChatGPT Ads develops.
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