ChatGPT opens paid ads to Australian buyers

What OpenAI launched and what is still US-only

OpenAI moved ChatGPT advertising from a closed agency pilot to a publicly accessible self-serve platform on 16 September 2026, announcing two new products alongside the Ads Manager beta that had been running since May: Sponsored Agents and a Shopify app.^[1] The pilot ran with partners including Dentsu, Omnicom, Adobe and Criteo before OpenAI opened cost-per-click (CPC) bidding to the broader market.

Sponsored Agents is the more striking of the two new formats. A user clicks an ad and is taken directly into a branded AI conversation, making it the first such format from any answer-engine. It remains in a limited alpha test with select advertisers in the United States and is not yet open to Australian buyers.^[1]

The Shopify app, developed by OpenAI and free to install, launched on 3 September 2026 for US merchants and carries a 4.0 rating from 3 reviews in the Shopify App Store.^[4] International access, including Australia, opens on 23 September 2026.^[1]

Format, labelling and pricing

Ads in ChatGPT appear below the AI's response, carrying the advertiser name, favicon, title, description, landing page URL and an image asset, and are visually separated from the organic answer.^[3] The placement is fixed: nothing in the paid inventory sits inside or alongside the words ChatGPT generates.

Fidji Simo, Vice President of Product at OpenAI, said that ads do not influence ChatGPT's answers, which are optimised based on what is most helpful to users, and that ads are always separate and clearly labelled.^[5]

The Ads Manager supports both impression-based (CPM) and click-based (CPC) billing, with recommended starting bids of $3 to $5 USD per click and a relevance-weighted second-price auction selecting which ads appear.^[3] In a second-price auction, the winning bidder pays the amount of the second-highest bid rather than their own maximum, a model familiar to anyone who has bought Google Search or Meta inventory.

Subscribers on Plus, Pro and Business plans see no ads. The inventory targets free and lower-cost tiers, which represent the bulk of ChatGPT's user base.

Australian access: who can buy now and how

Australia is confirmed in OpenAI's 71-market self-serve rollout, making ChatGPT ads purchasable immediately through the Ads Manager at ads.openai.com.^[2] Any business can create an account, set bids and run campaigns today, with no requirement to be an approved agency partner.

For e-commerce brands already on Shopify, the app offers a lower-friction route. It connects a merchant's Shopify catalogue directly to the ChatGPT Ads platform, removing the need to build creatives from scratch inside the Ads Manager. Australian Shopify merchants join the international rollout from 23 September 2026.^[1]

Sponsored Agents remains the one gap for Australian buyers. Until OpenAI extends that alpha beyond the United States, local advertisers can only buy the standard below-response placement.

Two entry points, different mechanics

OpenAI went from a closed pilot in early 2026 to a beta self-serve Ads Manager with CPC bidding in May, then to full self-serve access and two new formats in September, roughly nine months from private test to open market.^[1] Google took longer to open search advertising to self-serve buyers in the early 2000s, though the comparison is imperfect in both directions.

Australian media buyers now face two separate entry points into ChatGPT inventory. Amazon's demand-side platform (DSP), a programmatic buying platform that lets advertisers purchase display and video inventory across multiple publishers, was already running ads inside the interface before OpenAI opened its own Ads Manager. Each route carries different targeting logic, auction mechanics and creative requirements.

OpenAI said in its product announcement that it is introducing new AI-powered experiences to make ads more useful for people and advertising easier for businesses.^[1] Sponsored Agents, if it opens internationally, will be a more pointed test of whether users will actively engage with a branded AI conversation after clicking a ChatGPT ad. OpenAI has not given a date for that expansion.