OpenAI has expanded the ChatGPT Ads Manager with a new overview tab, suggested ad drafts, and a redesigned static ad card format, adding to the custom audiences feature announced earlier this week. OpenAI notified advertisers of the updates via a direct email communication on or around July 9, 2026, according to the OpenAI Help Center and confirmed by the ChatGPT Ads documentation.
New Overview Tab in Ads Manager
The overview tab allows advertisers to monitor account health, review recommended tasks that can help improve campaign performance, and analyze key performance metrics in a larger, more flexible trend chart. The tab gives advertisers a consolidated starting point for assessing campaign status without navigating between multiple views.
Suggested Ad Drafts
When a campaign could benefit from broader content coverage to optimize delivery, advertisers may see the option to select "Add new ad" in their campaign view. The feature uses existing website metadata to pre-fill an ad draft with an image, title, and description for the advertiser to review, edit, and assign to a campaign and ad group. OpenAI confirmed in its help documentation that the tool does not generate new copy or imagery using AI, it pulls from content already present on the advertiser's website.
One early adopter, Anthony Higman, founder of paid media agency Adsquire, flagged a known glitch in the tool: accepting one of ChatGPT's suggested ads sends every ad in the group back into review. OpenAI has not publicly addressed a timeline for resolving the issue.
Refreshed Static Ad Card Format
OpenAI is rolling out a refreshed static ad card format across web and mobile that is more compact and easier to read, with larger visual elements. The updated design began rolling out in late June 2026. OpenAI formally announced the change to the static ad format on July 9, 2026.
Custom Audiences: The Earlier Update
This week's announcements build on the custom audiences feature that OpenAI began rolling out earlier this week. Custom audiences allow advertisers to apply their own customer or prospect lists in ChatGPT Ads. Audiences are created from lists of customers or prospects using email addresses or phone numbers, and can be used for campaign-level inclusion to limit delivery to selected audiences. They can also be used for campaign-level exclusion, preventing campaign delivery to people in selected audiences, useful for suppressing existing customers or recent purchasers.
At the ad group level, advertisers can use a bid multiplier to increase or decrease an ad group's maximum bid when a viewer matches a selected custom audience. According to the OpenAI Help Center documentation updated on July 8, 2026, each custom audience must include a minimum of 25,000 matched users before it can be used in campaigns, with OpenAI recommending audiences of at least 100,000 users for optimal performance. Files can be uploaded as CSV or TXT, with a maximum file size of 500 MB and up to five million identifiers per upload. Identifier types include raw email addresses, phone numbers in E.164 format, or SHA-256 hashed versions of either.
OpenAI has stated that ads will be clearly labelled and kept separate from ChatGPT's responses, and that advertisers will not have access to personal conversations or user transcripts. Instead, brands will receive only anonymized performance data such as impressions and click-through rates.
Japan and South Korea Now Active
OpenAI has confirmed that ChatGPT advertising is active in Japan and South Korea. The pilot has been running in the United States since February 9, 2026, through a rapid sequence of market activations that now spans three regions and several subscription tiers. In Japan, local agencies Dentsu Digital, Hakuhodo DY ONE, and CyberAgent will assist with ad placement management.
The program targets adult users on ChatGPT's Free and Go subscription tiers. OpenAI has emphasized that advertisements appear as sponsored content clearly separated from ChatGPT responses and will not influence the substance of answers generated by the AI system. Advertisements will not be shown to accounts identified or predicted to belong to minors, and users subscribed to ChatGPT Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Edu plans will not see ads.
Platform Context
OpenAI launched its self-serve Ads Manager in early May 2026, removing the significant minimum spend thresholds that had previously locked out most advertisers. Since the pilot launched on February 9, 2026, average monthly ad spend on the platform has sat at approximately $109 million, according to data from AdClarity. Features added in short order include conversion tracking, role-based account access, spend reporting at the ad level, daily budget controls, and the self-serve manager itself. The pace of iteration has been, by any measure, aggressive.
Implications for Advertisers
Advertisers currently active in ChatGPT Ads Manager should audit their campaign structures in light of the new overview tab, which centralizes performance signals that previously required manual navigation to locate. The suggested ad drafts feature reduces creative production friction for campaigns with limited asset coverage, though the known bug triggering group-wide re-review when a draft is accepted warrants caution in live campaigns until OpenAI confirms a fix. The refreshed ad card format, having begun its rollout in late June, may already be affecting impression-level creative performance, making it a reasonable point of review for any advertiser monitoring CTR trends during that period. For advertisers targeting Japan or South Korea, campaigns can now be configured directly through the Ads Manager at ads.openai.com.
OpenAI has stated that its focus remains on supporting broader access to powerful AI while keeping ChatGPT's answers independent, conversations private, and users in control of their experience.
