OpenAI opens self-serve ChatGPT Ads Manager to any US business, reportedly drops $50K minimum

OpenAI’s self-serve ChatGPT Ads Manager opened to any US business this week, with the company reportedly dropping a previous $50,000 minimum ad-spend requirement that had kept it aimed at large buyers.

The Ads Manager, first launched in beta on May 5, lets businesses buy sponsored placements that appear as labeled blocks below ChatGPT responses. OpenAI says it reached more than 600 advertisers and about $100 million in annualized ad revenue within six weeks of its original pilot, which ran in February and March.

Named advertisers include Best Buy, Lowe’s and VistaPrint; the earlier pilot also included Target, Albertsons and Williams-Sonoma. Ads are shown only to adult users on the Free and Go tiers, while Plus, Pro, Business and Enterprise stay ad-free.

Targeting draws on conversational context signals rather than keywords, and OpenAI says ads do not influence ChatGPT’s answers. Categories including gambling, betting, lotteries and cash-prize gaming are barred.

Removing the spend minimum matters because it turns a program built around big-box retail pilots into an open advertising channel – the kind of self-serve funnel that scaled search and social advertising into large businesses. The minimum-spend change has not been posted to OpenAI’s main newsroom, and the revenue and advertiser figures are the company’s own, not independently verified.

The rollout spans the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, with the UK, Brazil, Japan, South Korea and Mexico named as expansion markets in earlier OpenAI posts.