ChatGPT Ads in Europe: Who Can Advertise — and Who Cannot

On 24 August 2026 OpenAI opened ChatGPT Ads in 31 European markets, Germany and Austria included. Self-service access to the Ads Manager followed at the end of August. For the first time in years there is a genuinely new performance channel — along with the usual guides explaining it before having read it.

The useful part of this news is not that you can now advertise. It is who cannot.

The exclusions first

In the current phase OpenAI permits essentially four categories: household and consumer goods, local services, travel and experiences, and digital products and education.

Three regulated areas are explicitly limited to the US, with case-by-case review and proof of licensure. The ad policies state that ads for financial, health and legal services outside the US are generally prohibited.

For small and mid-sized businesses in Europe that means concretely: tax advisors, insurance brokers, financial advisers, law firms, medical and dental practices, physiotherapy and clinics cannot currently use ChatGPT Ads. Permanently excluded are alcohol and tobacco, gambling, weapons, dating, cannabis products, political advertising, and individual job or property listings.

For mixed businesses the primary business model decides. A trade business that occasionally arranges financing is uncritical. A financial intermediary with a side business is not.

What the channel costs

The minimum daily budget in the euro area is €15 per campaign, and CHF 20 in Switzerland. That is roughly €450 of media budget per month — per campaign. Since OpenAI recommends putting different objectives, regions and product categories into separate campaigns, that multiplies quickly.

For click-based campaigns OpenAI recommends starting at a maximum cost per click of USD 3 to 5. Buying is on an impression, click or conversion-optimised click basis in a relevance-weighted second-price auction.

Before comparing that against other channels, it pays to establish your own baselines — close rate, contribution margin, allowable cost per lead. Our ad budget calculator handles the final step and shows the result in three scenarios.

There are no keywords

The biggest conceptual difference from Google Ads: there is nothing to bid on.

Instead of search terms you provide context hints at ad group level — descriptions of the situations in which an offering is useful. OpenAI's own example: not "running shoes" but "cushioned everyday running shoes for beginners training for their first 5K". These are explicitly not exact-match rules and not a guarantee of delivery, but context for the system.

There is also a European particularity: personalised ads are not initially available in the EEA or Switzerland. Delivery here is purely contextual, based on the ongoing conversation. If you expect retargeting logic, it is not there.

Who sees the ads

Ads appear only for users on the Free and Go plans. Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Edu see none, nor do accounts identified as under 18, nor temporary chats.

That is a serious planning factor. If your only B2B target is decision-makers inside large companies on Enterprise accounts, this channel will not reach them.

The technical stumbling block

OpenAI reviews every landing page before approval and uses its content for relevance assessment. That requires the OAI-AdsBot crawler to reach the page — it must not be blocked in robots.txt, nor by a firewall, bot protection, CAPTCHA or login.

There is explicitly no manual bypass through support. In practice this is where most campaigns get stuck before they ever start.

Frequently asked questions

What results are realistic?

There is currently no honest way to quantify that. OpenAI itself states that ChatGPT Ads has no benchmarks yet across advertisers, industries or campaign types. Anyone quoting specific CTR or CPC figures for this platform today has invented them.

How long does approval take?

OpenAI gives no fixed timeframe. Account review runs in a rolling queue, expediting is not possible, and duplicate applications do not help — they only create confusion about which account is the right one.

Does this replace Google Ads?

No. It is an additional channel in an early beta, with different mechanics and no track record. It makes sense as a time-boxed test alongside existing campaigns, not as a replacement.

What about data protection?

OpenAI states that it does not share conversations with advertisers and never sells user data. For conversion measurement, OpenAI requires that data is only sent with the necessary consents. What that means for pixels and your own audience lists under GDPR belongs with your own legal advisers before deployment.

What you can do today

1. Check the category first. If your main business is financial, health or legal services, the rest is moot.
2. Work out whether €15 per day per campaign fits your plan — in the ad budget calculator, with your real numbers.
3. Check whether your audience is plausibly on ChatGPT Free or Go.
4. Open your landing page to OAI-AdsBot — robots.txt, WAF and bot protection.
5. Create the ad account on your own company and card. Country, currency and time zone cannot be changed later.

If you want to know whether your offering passes review before investing time: how we set this up is described under ChatGPT Ads — or talk it through in a first call.