Advertising inside
ChatGPT. What we
know so far.
ChatGPT Ads is now buyable in 32 European markets, on a platform that went from its first US test to a one-billion-dollar annualised run rate in under eight months.38 This is a working briefing for European advertisers — the audience, the format, the controls and the caveats, with every number linked to its source.
How it got here
From one US test to a
European media channel.
- 9 February 2026 First test of ads in ChatGPT, United States only.1
- 26 March 2026 Canada, Australia, New Zealand.1
- 7 May 2026 United Kingdom, Mexico, Brazil, Japan, South Korea — the first European market.1
- 10 August 2026 OpenAI publishes consolidated advertising policies.7
- Week of 24 August 2026 31 European markets open through OpenAI's Ads Solutions team, agency partners and technology partners.214
- 31 August 2026 — now Self-serve Ads Manager opens across Europe, alongside India and the MENA region. OpenAI's own availability table now lists 52 countries, 32 of them European.38
What this means if you are planning 2027
Three weeks of live self-serve data in Europe. Every performance number on this page comes from US- and UK-led early campaigns or from our own first flights, is advertiser-reported, and should be treated as a planning starting point rather than a benchmark. OpenAI has published no cross-advertiser CTR, CPC or conversion figures.15
The audience, by contrast, is already measured by national statistics offices across the continent — and it is large, young and growing fast. That is the part of the case that does not depend on anyone's early-adopter anecdote.
Our read: treat the next two quarters as a learning budget in a channel with almost no competitive density, not as a performance line that has to beat your search account in month one.
Who is writing this
Being early is
the whole business
model.
Madhouse is a media service company, founded in Budapest in 2010 — the year the iPhone 3G brought mobile advertising to Hungary, which is precisely why it was founded. Today it is one of the largest independent platform-based digital advertising providers in Central and Eastern Europe.27
The pattern has repeated for fifteen years. Mobile first, then programmatic, then Pinterest, TikTok, Snapchat, Viber, Spotify, Tinder, Reddit, Twitch and Vinted, then Advanced TV and retail media. We ran the first advertisement ever served on SkyShowTime and on Samsung's ad platform.2728 Each time the work is the same: open the account before there is a best-practice deck, spend our own money, and find out what the documentation does not say.
ChatGPT Ads is the current one. We placed one of the first campaigns in Hungary and have been buying the format since the week it opened in the region — which is the only reason this page exists. Everything below is either a linked public source or something we saw in our own campaign accounts, and we have marked which is which. Where we do not know something yet — how creative volume behaves, whether the early click-through rates hold — we say so rather than filling the gap with a confident number.
The audience
Where Europe actually
uses generative AI.
One comparable source, one method, one year: the share of people aged 16–74 in each country who used a generative AI tool in the three months before the survey. EU average 32.7%.910
This is adoption of generative AI in general, not ChatGPT alone — but ChatGPT is the dominant tool in every European market measured, so it is the best comparable proxy available for the size of the prize.
| Market | Gen-AI use, 16–74 (2025) |
|---|---|
| NONorway | 56.3% |
| DKDenmark | 48.4% |
| CHSwitzerland | 47.0% |
| EEEstonia | 46.6% |
| MTMalta | 46.5% |
| FIFinland | 46.3% |
| IEIreland | 44.9% |
| NLNetherlands | 44.7% |
| CYCyprus | 44.2% |
| GRGreece | 44.1% |
| LULuxembourg | 42.5% |
| BEBelgium | 42.0% |
| SESweden | 42.0% |
| ATAustria | 39.4% |
| PTPortugal | 38.7% |
| ESSpain | 37.9% |
| SISlovenia | 37.6% |
| FRFrance | 37.5% |
| LTLithuania | 36.9% |
| CZCzechia | 35.4% |
| LVLatvia | 33.4% |
| DEGermany | 32.3% |
| SKSlovakia | 30.8% |
| HUHungary | 29.6% |
| HRCroatia | 27.5% |
| PLPoland | 22.7% |
| BGBulgaria | 22.5% |
| ITItaly | 19.9% |
| RORomania | 17.8% |
Every market listed is one where ChatGPT Ads runs today.3 Three more are live but sit outside this Eurostat dataset, so they have no comparable figure here: the United Kingdom (advertising since May 2026), Iceland and Liechtenstein. Percentages are Eurostat's 2025 ICT household survey, compiled by Our World in Data.10
The number that should shape a 2027 plan is the generational one. Across the EU, 63.8% of 16–24 year-olds used generative AI in 2025 — against 32.7% of the population as a whole. In Greece it is 83.5%, in Estonia 82.8%, in Czechia 78.5%; even in the lowest market, Romania, it is 44.1%.11 Whatever this channel is worth today, the cohort that will be buying your category in five years is already living inside it.
Now subtract the subscribers
Ads only run on the free tiers.
That is still ~9 in 10 users.
This is the number most plans get wrong. "Ads may appear for users on the Free and Go plans. Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Edu accounts will not have ads."4 So every reach figure has to be discounted by the paying base — but that base is smaller than people assume. OpenAI has reported more than 900 million weekly active users;21 reported paid accounts run to roughly 50 million consumer subscriptions plus around 9 million business seats.23 Go is a paid tier that does show ads, so it stays in the addressable pool.
Weekly active users, global~900M
Less ad-free paid tiers~59M
Addressable share~93%
Our arithmetic, not OpenAI's. The paid share is global and will differ by market — willingness to pay for subscriptions is lower in Central and Eastern Europe than in the Nordics, so treat ~93% as a working figure rather than a constant. OpenAI does not publish a free-versus-paid split by country.
What a real market looks like. Hungary is, as far as we know, the only European market with a published third-party measurement of ChatGPT's own reach: the regulator's July 2026 report puts the ChatGPT mobile app at 1,907,876 monthly and 592,651 daily users, at 13 minutes 24 seconds per user per day, in a country of under ten million.25 Apply the ~93% and roughly 1.77 million of those are addressable. We can build the same sizing for your market on request — ask us.
The format
One unit: the
Sponsored Card.
There is no display inventory here and no pre-roll. The ad is a single card — square image, advertiser logo and name, one headline, one line of copy — clearly labelled and visually separated from the answer, sitting below ChatGPT's response inside the conversation.1
Note the sentence above each card. ChatGPT writes its own one-line bridge from the answer into the ad — you do not control that text, and it is a large part of why the unit does not read as an interruption.
All four captured live in one European market, September 2026. They are in Hungarian because that is where we run; the card, the "Ad" label, the disclaimer line and the placement are identical in every market — only the language changes. Shown as observed examples of the format. Madhouse is not affiliated with these advertisers and they are not Madhouse clients.24
Where it appears
Below the answer, inside the chat. "Ads may appear for users on the Free and Go plans. Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Edu accounts will not have ads."4
What you supply
Advertiser name, logo, a square 1:1 image of roughly 1200×1200, a short headline, one line of description and a landing page. OpenAI does not publish exact character limits; agencies running the platform report headlines working best at around 16–24 characters and descriptions at 32–48, with mobile truncating past about 30.61819
How it gets chosen
A relevance-weighted auction: your bid is multiplied by a relevance score derived from your context hints, landing page, ad title and ad copy. Specificity buys position more cheaply than bidding does.26
Targeting & buying
The controls you
actually get.
Contextual matching is the engine — everything else is a constraint you place on top of it.
| Control | What is available | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Contextual | Automatic. Ads are matched to the topic of the live conversation. Globally OpenAI also uses past chats and past ad interactions — but personalised ads are not initially available in the EEA or Switzerland, so across most of Europe the match is contextual only.14 | This is the basis of the whole channel. You are buying a moment of stated intent, not a demographic — and in the EEA that is all you are buying, which makes the creative and the context hints do all the work. |
| Context hints | Free-text descriptions of the conversations, topics or keywords where your product may be relevant, set per ad group. You can add a large number of them — up to around a hundred.2624 | Directional, not literal. The system reads them semantically, so write intent, not keywords. The count is not the lever — coverage of how people actually phrase the need is. |
| Location | Country targeting in every market. OpenAI's documentation describes state, DMA and ZIP-code targeting as US-only; in our own accounts we have had county and city-level targeting available in Central Europe.524 | Sub-country granularity appears to be rolling out ahead of the documentation, and unevenly. Assume country-level when you budget, and let us confirm what your market's account actually exposes. |
| Platform / device | Multi-select at campaign level: iOS app, Android app, web. Web covers both desktop and mobile web.513 | Reporting is coarser than targeting — insights group results into Mobile and Desktop only, with mobile web counted as Mobile.13 |
| Audiences | Custom audiences, with inclusion and exclusion.25 | Useful mainly for suppression — excluding existing customers — in the first weeks. |
| Objective & pricing | CPM for reach and awareness, CPC for traffic and engagement, oCPC — conversion-optimised cost per click — for tracked conversions.5 | We recommend starting on CPM. oCPC needs conversion history before it can optimise anything. |
| Budget | Campaign-total or daily. Daily spend will not exceed twice the daily budget on any one day, or seven times it across a seven-day period.5 | Plan weekly, not daily — the pacing logic is explicitly built around a seven-day window. |
| Measurement | OpenAI Pixel, Conversions API, and third-party measurement integrations.212 | Get the pixel live before the first impression. Retro-fitting attribution to this channel is painful. |
Pricing is per market and per category, on CPM or CPC, and depends on competition and on the relevance score of the creative. Tell us the market and the category and we will come back with a rate.
Early benchmarks — handle with care
What the first advertisers
are reporting.
None of these are OpenAI figures. They come from a small, self-selected group of advertisers in mature markets, in their first weeks of spend, and they will not necessarily hold in your market.15
≈ 0.9%, range 0.3–1.5%
A frequently cited Adthena figure puts ChatGPT ad CTR near 0.91%; industry ranges reported by early advertisers run 0.3–1.5%, with local and personal services at the top end and retail at the bottom.1516
$25–60 in mature markets
The format launched at a flat $60 CPM and category rates have since settled to roughly $25–60. These are US and UK rates; European pricing is its own conversation.1517
2–6% cross-industry
Early advertiser estimates: education 6–11%, local services 6–10%, SaaS and B2B 4–8%, ecommerce 3–6%. High relative to display, which is the point — the click arrives mid-decision.16
Why the CVR looks high and the CTR looks low: the card only surfaces when the conversation is already about the category, so impressions are few and qualified. Judged on impression volume this channel looks small. Judged on cost per qualified action it can look very different — which is exactly why the pixel matters more than the CTR column.
Who can run, and who already is
Check your category
before you plan a budget.
Cleared to run
- Retail & ecommerce
- Grocery
- Home & furniture
- Software & SaaS
- Automotive
- Travel
- Entertainment & streaming
- Education & training
- Telco
- B2B services
- Events
- Beauty & personal care
Allowed, but needs approval first
- Financial services
- Banking & lending
- Insurance
- Healthcare
These are the everyday categories most likely to trip an advertiser up. They are not banned — they need category approval before the first impression, so build two to three weeks of lead time into the plan.7
Not allowed at all
- Adult content & dating
- Alcohol
- Tobacco & vaping
- Gambling & casino
- Illegal drugs
- Counterfeit goods
- Weapons
- Political & advocacy
- Housing listings
- Employment listings
- Legal services
- Unsubstantiated wellness claims
Per OpenAI's advertising policies, last updated 10 August 2026.7 Note that housing, employment and legal services are prohibited outright — a restriction Google and Meta handle with special-category rules instead, so a plan ported from those platforms will fail here.
Who moved first
Retail and commerce dominated the opening wave in the US. Named participants include Target, Williams-Sonoma and Albertsons in retail and grocery, The Knot in wedding planning, Adobe in software, Audible in entertainment, and Ford and Mazda in automotive.20
Europe is following the same shape. In the first three weeks of self-serve we have seen cards from Samsung, Aldi, MediaMarkt and Telekom running in a single Central European market — consumer electronics, grocery discount and telco, all of them categories where people ask a comparison question before they buy.24
Agencies reporting on the first months name five verticals as the strongest performers: SaaS, ecommerce, online education, health and wellness, and financial services — the last two on educational, trust-building creative rather than urgency.22 Pacvue puts roughly 20% of ChatGPT conversations as carrying shopping intent.21
What this means for a European brand: if your category is on the cleared list and your customers ask comparison questions before they buy, you are the profile that has worked so far. If you sell on impulse or on price alone, wait.
One more thing worth putting in front of a legal team: personalised ads are not initially available in the EEA or Switzerland, so no behavioural profile is built on the way to your impression.4 Users can dismiss an ad, delete their ad data and view their ad history, and Free-tier users can turn ads off in exchange for fewer daily messages.1
How we'd start
A first test
that actually teaches you something.
Expect a CTR above 2% — and expect it to fall
Our early campaigns are clearing 2%+ click-through rates.24 We would not build a business case on that number holding. It almost certainly reflects novelty: the card is new, it is the only ad on the screen, and people click things they have not seen before. Mature-market benchmarks already sit at 0.3–1.5%.1516 Bank the early efficiency, model the decay.
CPM, one market, one category
Start on CPM in a single market so the relevance score has a clean read. oCPC has nothing to optimise against until conversion history exists. A multi-market launch on day one buys you noise, not learning.
Context is the only targeting — and it is accurate
This is the single most important thing to understand about the channel. Across the EEA there is no demographic, no interest and no behavioural layer: the conversation is the targeting.4 You can load a large number of context hints, up to around a hundred, but the count is not what makes it work.24 On the first campaigns the match has been strikingly precise — the ad lands in the conversation it was written for.24
Creative volume: untested, probably decisive
We have not yet been able to test running many creatives in parallel, so we will not pretend to know the answer. But given that relevance scoring reads the ad title and copy directly, the number and variety of creatives is almost certainly going to be a significant lever. Plan to produce more variants than a comparable search campaign would need, and treat the first flight as the experiment that tells us how many.
Let's talk.
We buy ChatGPT Ads in Europe and we have been running them since the channel opened. Tell us the market and the category and we'll come back with reach, a rate and a test plan — no pressure, just possibilities.
Sources
Every figure on this page, traced.
- OpenAI, Testing ads in ChatGPT — format, tiers, matching signals, user controls, rollout dates. Updated 11 Aug 2026.
- OpenAI, ChatGPT Ads expands across Europe — 31 European markets, CPM/CPC bidding, geo-targeting and custom audiences, OpenAI Pixel and Conversions API. Published 18 Aug 2026.
- OpenAI Help Center, Ads Manager availability — self-serve live in 52 countries, 32 of them European. Checked 15 Sep 2026.
- OpenAI Help Center, Ads in ChatGPT — "Ads may appear for users on the Free and Go plans. Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Edu accounts will not have ads." and "Personalized ads are not initially available in the European Economic Area (EEA) or Switzerland."
- OpenAI Help Center, Create campaigns for ChatGPT — CPM, CPC and oCPC; country targeting with state/DMA/ZIP in the US only; iOS app, Android app and web platform targeting; budget and pacing rules.
- OpenAI Help Center, Create ads for ChatGPT — creative guidance. OpenAI does not publish exact character limits.
- OpenAI, Advertising policies, last updated 10 Aug 2026 — prohibited and restricted categories, sensitive-context restrictions.
- Digiday, OpenAI's ChatGPT ads business hits $1 billion run rate as Europe gets self-serve access, 31 Aug 2026. The run rate is a forward-looking annualisation of current monthly revenue, not booked revenue.
- Eurostat, 32.7% of EU people used generative AI tools in 2025, published 16 Dec 2025. Base: individuals aged 16–74, three months preceding the survey.
- Our World in Data, Share of people in European countries using generative AI tools, compiled from the Eurostat 2025 ICT household survey — the per-country figures in the table above.
- Eurostat, 63.8% of 16–24 year-olds used generative AI in 2025, published 10 Feb 2026 — including Greece 83.5%, Estonia 82.8%, Czechia 78.5%, Romania 44.1%.
- OpenAI Developers, Measurement pixel — the oaiq base snippet, standard events and conversion tracking.
- PPC Land, ChatGPT Ads gains 3-platform targeting as reporting stays at 2 buckets, Aug 2026 — citing OpenAI help-centre documentation.
- Search Engine Land, ChatGPT Ads are expanding to 31 European countries, 19 Aug 2026 — access via Ads Solutions team, agency and technology partners ahead of self-service.
- 360ROI, ChatGPT Ads CTR and benchmarks — citing an Adthena CTR figure of ~0.91% (9 Jun 2026) and noting OpenAI has published no aggregate cross-advertiser benchmarks.
- Lapis, ChatGPT Ads conversion rate benchmarks by industry, published 25 Jun 2026, updated 1 Aug 2026 — early advertiser estimates, not OpenAI data.
- Index Lab, What ChatGPT ads cost in 2026, data dated 23 Jul 2026 — agency-observed CPM and CPC ranges in mature markets.
- Index Lab, ChatGPT ads creative specs — 1:1 image 640–1200px, PNG or JPG, headline and description working ranges. Explicitly observed practice, not OpenAI documentation.
- All Ad Specs, ChatGPT Sponsored Recommendation Card — 1200×1200 1:1 image; required fields: advertiser name, logo, title, description, landing page URL and image. Third-party compilation; its character limits differ from source 18, which is why we give a range rather than a number.
- Floodlight, Which brands are advertising on ChatGPT, published 23 Feb 2026, last modified 6 Apr 2026 — named advertisers compiled from company announcements.
- Pacvue, ChatGPT Ads in 2026: early results and best practices — 900M+ weekly active users, and roughly 20% of ChatGPT conversations carrying shopping intent.
- AdVenture Media, 5 industries winning with ChatGPT Ads in early 2026, 23 Feb 2026 — qualitative agency observation; the article publishes no CTR, CVR or CPA figures.
- Paid-account figures compiled by Nerdynav, ChatGPT statistics, Aug 2026, from OpenAI disclosures — 12M+ Plus subscribers, 9M+ business seats, 50M+ total paying consumer subscriptions. OpenAI does not publish an official free-versus-paid ratio, and these categories may overlap.
- Madhouse, observed directly in ChatGPT Ads Manager and in live campaigns, August–September 2026 — the ad examples above, available geo-targeting levels, context-hint capacity, early click-through rates and observed targeting accuracy. First-hand platform observation, not OpenAI-published data, and based on a small number of early campaigns.
- NMHH, Az online médiatér közönsége — 2026. július, published 5 Aug 2026, based on Egységes Digitális Mérés (Gemius) data. Base: Hungarian internet users aged 16–75.
- Context Hints, Guide to context hints — quoting OpenAI's definition of context hints, plus the relevance-weighted second-price auction. Third-party source.
- Madhouse, About and Services — founding year, positioning in the CEE region, platform history and the SkyShowTime and Samsung first-ad claims. Our own pages.
- IAB Hungary, Brindza Gábor: Elsők között az elsőknek lenni, 24 Mar 2025 — interview with our founder on first-to-market platform work.
Prepared by Madhouse, 15 September 2026. Market figures are reproduced from the sources listed above and are not Madhouse research. Performance benchmarks marked as early or advertiser-reported are directional only. Advertiser screenshots are shown as observed examples of the ad format; the brands pictured are not Madhouse clients and no affiliation or endorsement is implied. ChatGPT and OpenAI are trademarks of OpenAI; Madhouse is not affiliated with or endorsed by OpenAI.