On 16 September OpenAI changed what an advert in ChatGPT is. Until now an ad was a labelled card under an answer: a name, a line of copy, a link. Now, in a US test, a person can click that card and talk to an agent your business sponsors, ask it what they would ask a salesperson, and only then go to your website. The same day OpenAI opened its Ads Manager to businesses in 56 countries, including all six Gulf states, and put the whole thing inside HubSpot and Shopify. This article sets out what was announced, what it costs, who can buy it, who will see it, and what running customer-facing AI agents has taught us about the part OpenAI did not spell out: the conversation itself.
What OpenAI Announced on 16 September, in Plain Terms
The post is titled "Reimagining advertising with AI". Every quotation below is OpenAI's own, from the post or its help pages.
- Sponsored Agents. "After seeing a relevant ad, a user can choose to start a clearly labeled conversation with a business-sponsored agent in ChatGPT. The user can explain what matters to them, ask follow-up questions, and follow a link to the business's website when they're ready to take the next step." The thread is "separate from the original conversation", and the feature is "now being tested with select advertisers in the United States".
- Campaigns written as prompts. Advertisers "can now use simple, natural-language prompts to create, update, and analyze campaigns directly in ChatGPT with the Ads Manager plugin". Ads Manager now suggests copy and imagery from your landing page, and an opt-in setting "automatically translates ad copy to a user's preferred language".
- HubSpot and Shopify. HubSpot users can "connect a ChatGPT Ads account, create ads, track performance, and follow up on leads directly in HubSpot". US Shopify merchants get a ChatGPT Ads app with products "already integrated through Shopify Catalog"; it goes international "in markets where ChatGPT Ads are available starting September 23".
The ads themselves date from "the US on February 9, 2026". What is new is the two ends of the funnel: a conversation on the customer's side, and the tools you already use on yours.
How a Sponsored Agent Conversation Works, and What It Is Not
Three design choices in OpenAI's description decide what the product is worth to you.
- The customer opts in. The agent appears only when someone clicks the ad and chooses a conversation: a stronger signal of intent than a search click, and a rarer one.
- ChatGPT stays out of it. OpenAI's ads FAQ is categorical: "Ads do not influence ChatGPT's answers. Ads run on separate systems from our chat model, and advertisers have no ability to shape, rank, or alter ChatGPT's responses." If ChatGPT recommended a competitor two messages earlier, your agent does not get to argue with it.
- You see only what the customer says to you. "The advertiser will only see the messages you send them directly." The rest of the person's conversation, memory and history stay with OpenAI. Your agent starts cold, from the ad that was clicked and whatever the person chooses to say.
So a Sponsored Agent is not a way to get ChatGPT to recommend you. It is a chat window with your business, opened from an ad, inside the app where the person was already deciding. OpenAI's example is a dining table: does it fit my space, how many does it seat. Questions a shop assistant answers and a landing page never does.
The ad is no longer the end of the pitch. It is the start of a conversation your business has to be ready to hold, and the conversation is the product.
What a ChatGPT Ad Costs: Bids, the Auction and the Minimum Budget
The mechanics will look familiar to anyone who has run Google or Meta ads.
- Three objectives. "Views (CPM)" bills per 1,000 impressions; "Clicks (CPC)" bills "per valid click"; "Conversions" optimises towards an event but still bills per click or per 1,000 impressions: "You do not pay per conversion."
- A second-price auction. "We use a relevance-weighted, second-price auction to select among eligible ads." You set a maximum CPC per ad group, and OpenAI's guidance is: "For CPC campaigns, we recommend starting with a maximum bid of $3–$5 USD per click."
- Context hints, not keywords. You describe the conversations where your product is relevant, but hints "are not exact-match keywords and do not guarantee delivery in specific conversations". You are describing a situation, not buying a phrase.
The minimum daily budget depends on the currency your ad account bills in, and that currency is fixed for ever at sign-up. These are OpenAI's published minimums for the currencies our readers use, with the clicks each buys at OpenAI's suggested opening bid (dirham and riyal converted at their fixed pegs of 3.6725 and 3.75 to the dollar).
| Billing currency | Minimum daily budget | About | Clicks a day at $3–$5 |
|---|---|---|---|
| UAE dirham | AED 65 | $17.70 | 3 to 5 |
| Saudi riyal | SAR 50 | $13.33 | 2 to 4 |
| Qatari riyal | QAR 70 | $19.23 | 3 to 6 |
| US dollar | USD 25 | $25.00 | 5 to 8 |
| Pound sterling | GBP 15 | about $20 | 4 to 6 |
| Indian rupee | INR 725 | about $8 | 1 to 2 |
| Pakistani rupee | not on the list: no PKR billing, and Pakistan is not an available country | ||
A daily budget is a seven-day average, "Sunday through Saturday in your ad account's timezone": one day "will not exceed twice your selected daily budget", and a campaign that spends its week early "may stop delivering until the next budget week even while marked active".
Where You Can Advertise Today: the Gulf Yes, Pakistan Not Yet
OpenAI's availability page lists where self-service Ads Manager is open, with the rule that "the legal entity that will advertise and be billed must be based in a country listed as available". We counted the list on 18 September: 56 countries.
For a business in Dubai, Riyadh, Doha, Kuwait, Muscat or Manama, this is live now. For a business in Pakistan it is not, and the obvious workaround fails: an account created for an unavailable country cannot be used "until Ads Manager becomes available in that country", and "the country associated with your ChatGPT login or account registration does not override it". A Pakistani company with a UAE free-zone entity can advertise as that entity; one with only a UAE bank account cannot.
Three setup rules catch people on day one:
- Country, currency and time zone are permanent. "The country or region, billing currency, and time zone selected when an advertiser account is created cannot be changed later."
- You start at home. "Some new self-serve ad accounts can initially advertise only in their home country." Other countries unlock after verification and "the required advertising spend" at home.
- Your agency cannot open the account for you. "Agencies creating advertiser accounts on a client's behalf are not supported." Verification runs through Persona and "may take some time" because applications sit in "a rolling queue".
Who Sees the Ads, and Who Never Will
Most coverage skips this, and it changes who you are paying to reach.
- Free and Go users only. "Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Edu accounts will not have ads." Anyone paying $20 a month, or using ChatGPT through an employer's plan, will never see your ad. The audience is the free tier: large, but skewed away from the people with a company card.
- Not under-18s, not sensitive chats. No ads to accounts "identified as belonging to users under 18", and none "near sensitive or regulated topics, including personal health, mental health, or politics".
Put together: an adult free-tier user, in a non-sensitive conversation that matches the situation you described, in a country you may target. A narrow, high-intent slice, which is why OpenAI talks about $3–$5 a click rather than pennies.
Which Businesses Are Allowed In
OpenAI's ad policies, updated 10 September, are narrow for now, and where you are matters as much as what you sell.
- The open door. "A limited set of consumer categories, including household and consumer goods, local services, travel and entertainment, and digital products and education." Restaurants, retailers, salons, courses, software and travel fit; OpenAI expects "to expand eligible categories over time".
- The US-only door. Financial, health and legal services "may" be approved case by case, in the US, with "proof of licensure". Outside the US all three are "generally prohibited" or "currently prohibited". A Karachi law firm or a Riyadh clinic cannot buy in yet.
- The closed door. Gambling, alcohol and tobacco, adult content, politics, recreational drugs, counterfeits, and "ads for individual job listings or housing rentals or sales". A developer may advertise its listings site, not one flat; a recruiter the job board, not the job.
- The line every ad must clear. No "unfounded claims about capabilities, pricing, outcomes, affiliations, or comparisons", no ad that imitates ChatGPT, a landing page that matches the ad.
Reviews run "through automated systems with human oversight", and "ads or landing pages that cannot be reviewed or evaluated by our systems are not eligible to run". A landing page behind a login is a page the reviewer cannot read.
What Running Customer-Facing Agents Teaches You About a Sponsored One
OpenAI has published nothing yet on how a business builds its Sponsored Agent; the test is with "select advertisers" and may change. But the conversation on the other side of that click is the one we put agents into on websites and phone lines, and the failure modes do not depend on whose chat window it is.
- The agent knows only what you gave it. It starts with the ad and what the person types. If it cannot answer "does it fit a 3-metre room" or "do you deliver to Ajman on a Friday", the thread closes and you have paid for the click. Before the agent, you need a written answer to every question your sales staff hear more than twice a week: sizes, delivery areas, lead times, returns, what the price includes.
- It must know when to stop. An agent that quotes a price it was never given, or promises a delivery date, creates a dispute you will honour. The agents we run hand off to a human, by live chat or WhatsApp or by routing the call, when the question leaves the script. Expect to need the same escape hatch here, and decide in advance what "leaves the script" means.
- The lead lands somewhere, and someone has to answer. HubSpot's place in this launch is not decoration: a conversation that ends in "send me a quote" is a lead in your CRM at 11pm, and first reply time decides whether it converts.
- Measure with your own tags. OpenAI warns that spend reporting "can take longer" than clicks and "a displayed spend of zero does not necessarily mean no charges have accrued". Put UTM parameters on every landing URL from day one, so your analytics and your invoice can be reconciled by you.
What to Do This Month
If you are in the Gulf and sell in an open category, create the account now: verification is a queue and the country and currency you pick are permanent. Run a small CPC campaign at home with a daily budget, context hints written as situations rather than keywords, and UTM-tagged landing pages. Judge the average CPC against OpenAI's $3–$5 guidance after a month, and install the Shopify app from 23 September if you sell through Shopify.
If you are in Pakistan, register so OpenAI notifies you, and spend the wait on the part you control: the answers. Put a chat agent on your own website and WhatsApp, where it can be trained on your real questions, corrected when wrong, and connected to the people who close the sale, so that when the Sponsored Agent arrives you are not starting from a blank page. Our AI Agent does that on the web and WhatsApp today, SmartLine does it on the phone, and Media Studio makes the product film the ad needs. The WhatsApp side has its own bill from 1 October, set out in our guide to the new WhatsApp charges.
Read this next to our note on Claude's small-business workflows: in one week, two AI companies decided the small business is the customer, one by doing your admin and one by selling you its audience. The businesses that gain are the ones whose systems are clean enough that an agent, theirs or yours, has something true to say. For a second opinion on where to start, talk to us.
