Advertisers in more than 40 countries can now purchase ChatGPT Ads directly through self-serve Ads Manager. OpenAI published the announcement on August 31, 2026, confirming that self-service purchasing through Ads Manager was opening the same day across Europe, India, the Middle East, and North Africa.
The expansion coincides with ChatGPT Ads reaching $1 billion in annualized revenue run rate in under 200 days after launch. The platform is now used by tens of thousands of advertisers and continues to expand globally.
Self-Serve Access Now Open Across Four New Regions
Self-service access to ChatGPT Ads launched across India, Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa on August 31, allowing advertisers to purchase placements directly via Ads Manager across those regions.
Sponsored placements began appearing across 31 European markets on August 24, 2026, with OpenAI Ireland Limited named in the European privacy policy as the controller for users in the EEA and Switzerland, routing any complaints through the Irish Data Protection Commission.
Personalization was withheld at the European launch, leaving conversation context, general location, and device type as the targeting signals available in those markets. Advertisers in newly expanded European markets can currently access the platform through the OpenAI Ads Solutions team, agency partners, or technology partners, with self-serve access through Ads Manager to follow.
The ChatGPT advertising initiative originally launched in the United States on February 9, 2026, designed to support broader access to advanced AI features. The latest expansion follows the rollout of ChatGPT Ads in the United Kingdom, Mexico, Brazil, Japan, and South Korea earlier in August, and comes after OpenAI recorded more than 25% growth in daily ad revenue since the start of August.
Custom Audience Controls Get Broader Identifier Support
OpenAI loosened the operating rules governing custom audiences inside ChatGPT Ads Manager since July, in a product update circulated to advertisers in the platform's beta during the week beginning Monday, August 31, 2026.
Advertisers can now add, remove, or replace audience members without rebuilding an audience from scratch, mix different identifier types in a single request, and create audiences exceeding 5 million members. OpenAI also lowered restrictions around exclusion audiences, provided more granular estimates of audience size, and added Google Advertising ID (GAID) as a supported identifier.
Previously, audiences below 25,000 matched users could not be used for any campaign function. Audiences too small to target can now be used to exclude users from campaigns.
Conversion Matching Expands Across Pixel and Conversions API
OpenAI added more fields to improve conversion matching across the Measurement Pixel and Conversions API. The Pixel now supports hashed phone, first name, last name, region, and postal code; the Conversions API supports plural list fields for hashed email, phone, external ID, first and last name, country, city, region, and postal code, and Android GAID for mobile.
Advertiser-side identifier collection sits on a separate legal footing from platform-side personalization, and the update does not address how the expanded field set interacts with consent requirements in newly launched European markets.
Carousel Reporting Separates Visibility From Billing
When a product feed campaign serves in the multi-product carousel ad unit format, reporting now includes carousel card impressions and clicks in Ads Manager, along with product-level fields in the public Insights API. A carousel card impression is counted when an individual product card becomes viewable. Those impressions are separate from billable ad impressions and are not included in billable impression counts. Complete data is available beginning August 20, 2026, on a rolling 30-day basis.
Ads Manager Plugin Enables Natural-Language Campaign Management
The ChatGPT Ads Manager plugin allows advertisers to create, manage, and analyze campaigns from ChatGPT or Codex. Its described scope covers turning a website or a written brief into ready-to-launch ads through plain-language instructions, generating creative variants, updating live campaigns, troubleshooting delivery problems, reviewing performance, and returning prioritized recommendations.
The plugin previews recommended changes and asks for confirmation before applying them; a human-in-the-loop gate on write actions that places the product on the cautious side of a line the advertising industry has been drawing throughout 2026.
Impression-Based Conversion Optimization Model Coming
OpenAI stated it will introduce a new conversion optimization model that optimizes through the inclusion of view-through conversions. The model allows for optimization based on conversions from both ad clicks and ad views. With this campaign type, billing is impression-based while delivery optimizes toward the advertiser's selected conversion goal. More details will be shared as the campaign type rolls out more broadly.
Practical Implications for Advertisers
For advertisers evaluating ChatGPT as a performance channel, the combination of expanded geographic reach, GAID support in both the Pixel and Conversions API, and relaxed exclusion-audience thresholds lowers the entry barrier for audience-based targeting strategies that were previously limited to large first-party data holders. The separation of carousel card impressions from billable impressions reduces reconciliation risk for product-feed campaigns. Advertisers in newly opened European markets should consult their legal and consent management frameworks before deploying the expanded identifier fields, given that personalization signals remain restricted in those markets at launch and consent requirements differ by jurisdiction.
OpenAI has set a target of $2.5 billion in advertising revenue for 2026, part of a broader picture in which total company revenue is tracking toward an annualized figure above $40 billion.
