What ChatGPT ads are and who sees them
ChatGPT ads are now available to advertisers in Malaysia: OpenAI began the rollout here on 23 September 2026, and its Ads Manager availability table (opens in a new tab) lists Malaysia. The points below come from OpenAI's help pages and ad policies, read on 7 November 2026.
- The unit. One sponsored ad sits below ChatGPT's response, labelled as sponsored and visually separate from the answer.
- The creative. Advertiser name, favicon, title, description, landing page and one image, or a multi-image set, which has been an open beta since 26 October 2026.
- The audience. Users on the Free and Go plans. Accounts on Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise or Edu get no ads at all.
- The exclusions. Nothing is shown to accounts identified as under 18 or inside Temporary Chats, and nothing appears next to personal health, mental health or political topics.
- The firewall. Advertisers never see chats, chat history or memories, and have no way to influence what ChatGPT answers.
Who ChatGPT advertising suits in Malaysia
OpenAI's ad policy says the early phase focuses on household and consumer goods, local services, travel and entertainment, and digital products and education. In Malaysia that points to consumer brands, retail and ecommerce groups, private education groups, and marketplace or app platforms.
The same policy generally prohibits financial and health services ads outside the US, prohibits legal services ads there too, and bars individual housing sale or rental listings. Banks, insurers, hospital groups, clinics and law firms are therefore not candidates today; we serve those firms through GEO and AI search instead.
How OpenAI ads are bought
There are four routes into the auction: OpenAI's Ads Solutions team, agency partners, technology partners, and self-serve Ads Manager, which OpenAI still labels a beta. Self-serve opens up when the legal entity that advertises and pays is based in a listed country.
- Objectives. Views are billed on CPM, Clicks on CPC, and Conversions per valid click or per impression served; nobody pays per conversion.
- Price. The winning auction bid sets what you pay. OpenAI has no public rate card, and the minimum spend for each billing currency appears inside Ads Manager.
- Targeting. Country, platform (Android, iOS or desktop), custom audiences and context hints. OpenAI says hints guide matching but are not exact-match keywords.
- Accounts. Country, currency and time zone are locked once an account exists, and an agency keeps one account per advertiser.
What our ChatGPT ads agency work covers
We run ChatGPT as one line in the media plan, next to search, social and GEO:
- Plan. Check the product and landing pages against OpenAI's policy, then decide what ChatGPT should do that Google and Meta do not.
- Set up. An Ads Manager account in your company's name, the OpenAI Pixel and Conversions API, and landing pages that do not block OAI-AdsBot or OAI-SearchBot.
- Write. Titles, descriptions, images and context hints for each audience and offer.
- Measure. Clicks and conversions read beside your Google Ads and Meta reporting, with UTM tags on every link.
OpenAI says the platform has no performance benchmarks yet, so targets are set only after the first weeks of data come in.
For Shopee For Youth, co-branded with ZUS Coffee, we ran a Malaysian student creator campaign; the Shopee For Youth case study sets out the work.