ChatGPT Ads in Italy: How Advertising Works on ChatGPT and How to Prepare

From the August 24, 2026 Advertising has also entered ChatGPT in Italy. It's not just another banner on a web page: it's a new channel, where your brand can appear at the exact moment a person is comparing options and deciding what to buy. Those who arrive prepared for this event start with a head start that's difficult to regain later.

What is ChatGPT Ads?

ChatGPT Ads is OpenAI’s advertising platform that displays ads under ChatGPT replies when they are relevant to the ongoing conversation. There is no list of sponsored results: a single ad, labeled as such, appears under the answer the user is reading. On August 18, 2026, OpenAI announced its extension to 31 European markets, Italy included, departing on August 24th.

The stated logic is simple: people don't come to ChatGPT just to find information, but to explore options, compare alternatives, and decide. Instead of typing three keywords, they explain what they want to achieve, what matters to them, and what constraints they have. This is a much richer context than a query, and for marketers, it's exactly the point at which a purchasing decision is formed.

The project launched in February 2026 with a pilot in the United States, expanded to eight other markets, and now has tens of thousands of advertisers. Each ad contains six elements: advertiser name, favicon, headline, text, image, and landing page.

Who sees ads on ChatGPT?

Ads are only shown to users on the free and basic plans. OpenAI explicitly states that they do not appear to subscribers Plus, Pro and Business, nor to accounts identified as belonging to persons under 18, based on personal data and — where available — an age estimate.

It's a detail that changes the way we think about the audience. The reachable audience is huge in absolute terms, but It excludes paying profiles, that is, the most intensive and often most professional users. If your product is aimed at decision makers who use ChatGPT every day with a business subscription, those people won't see your ad.

OpenAI also insists on three guarantees: ads are clearly labeled, they remain separate from responses, and do not affect what ChatGPT responds to. No budget buys a recommendation inside the generated text. Advertising does not change the model's responses: this is the cornerstone of OpenAI's user trust, and it must be kept in mind before building false expectations.

How Matching Works: Context Hints Instead of Keywords

There is no “keywords” field in ChatGPT Ads. In its place are the context hints: Phrases that describe conversations, topics, and situations where your product can be useful. These are set at the ad group level and guide the matching, but OpenAI is clear in specifying that they are not exact match keywords and do not guarantee appearance in any specific conversation.

Multiple signals contribute to determining whether your ad appears: the context and intent of the conversation, your landing page, the headline, the ad text, and the context hints you provide. When personalization is enabled, signals about the user's overall experience on ChatGPT also come into play.

In concrete terms, this means writing differently. A list of isolated terms works poorly; a sentence describing a need works better. Instead of "men's running shoes"—which isn't the right logic here—an effective context hint sounds like "I'm looking for running shoes to start running with foot strike issues." And the rule of separate groups applies: If your product, audience, or use case changes, you need a different ad group.

How much does it cost to advertise on ChatGPT?

ChatGPT Ads are paid per impression or per click, and there is no fixed cost that applies to all campaigns. By choosing the Reach objective you pay per thousand impressions (CPM); by choosing the Click objective you pay per valid click (CPC). To these has been added the’oCPC, the cost per click optimized for conversions, which leaves the system to pursue your business goals and not just traffic.

The maximum bid is set at the ad group level. For CPC campaigns, OpenAI recommends starting with a maximum bid between $3 and $5 per click., and Ads Manager warns you if your bid is likely to limit distribution. The selection is made with a’second-price auction weighted on relevance: it is not the one who offers the highest bid that wins, but the best combination of bid and expected relevance.

Two honest warnings. The first: There are no official CTR or CPC benchmarks for the sector yet, so anyone who promises you benchmark numbers is improvising. Second: OpenAI currently offers $500 advertising credit for anyone who spends $500, an entry incentive that halves the cost of the first test. If you're interested in promotions of this type, we've also covered the same mechanic in our guide on How to get free advertising credit on Google Ads.

What's different compared to Google Ads?

Those who manage search campaigns find a familiar structure—campaign, ad group, ad—but lose some of the levers they have always worked with. The substantial difference is that you stop buying words and start buying contexts.

Lever	Google Ads	ChatGPT Ads
Matching unit	Keyword with match type	Thematic context hint, no exact match
Purchasing models	Many, from click to conversion value	CPM, CPC and oCPC
Geographic targeting	Country, region, city, radius	By country (higher granularity only in the United States)
Surfaces	Search, display, video, shopping	iOS apps, Android apps, and web
Panel metrics	Historical and very granular	Impressions, clicks, spend, CTR, average CPC, average CPM, conversions

On the measurement front, OpenAI has gone beyond just counting clicks: there are now’OpenAI Pixel, a Conversions API and integrations with third-party measurement tools. static UTM parameters They stick to the click and feed the analytics tools you already use, so traffic from ChatGPT can be isolated in GA4 without any hassle.

How to access ChatGPT Ads from Italy

In the initial European phase, access is not self-service. OpenAI has specified that, upon opening, ChatGPT Ads is reachable through the OpenAI Ads Solutions team, advertising agency partners, and technology partners. Self-service through Ads Manager is being announced later this quarter, with no specific date.

Translated: Italian users have been seeing the ads since August 24th, but an Italian company wishing to purchase them today will go through an intermediary channel. Those with structured needs can fill out the sales contact form on ads.openai.com; for everyone else, the realistic choice is use these weeks to prepare instead of passively waiting for the opening.

How to prepare now: 6 checks before your first campaign

The window between the announcement and the opening of the self-service is the most useful moment of the entire operation. These six checks are done today, at no cost, and determine whether the first campaign will actually launch or remain stuck in review.

1. Unblock OpenAI crawlers in robots.txt. Landing pages must not block OpenAI user agents: two forgotten disallow lines and the ad is rejected for review, with zero spend and zero distribution.
2. Check if your industry is eligible. OpenAI's advertising policies exclude some categories and evaluate others on a case-by-case basis: checking this beforehand avoids building a campaign that will never launch.
3. Prepare the measurement before the first click. OpenAI Pixel or Conversions API should be installed and tested in advance, along with a clean UTM convention: without tracked conversions, oCPC has nothing to optimize for.
4. Fix the landing pages. The ad brings qualified but eager traffic: speed, clarity of the offer, and a single objective per page are more important than the ad's creativity.
5. Write context hints based on real customer questions. Recover requests that actually arrive via email, phone, and chat: those phrases are already the contexts in which you want to appear.
6. Prepare creatives in the required formats. Clean, legible images are needed, even when small, because the ad lives within a conversation and doesn't have the space of a banner.

Get found on ChatGPT without paying

There's a second way to be present on ChatGPT, and it doesn't depend on your budget: getting mentioned in replies. Is called GEO, Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is the set of practices that make content selectable and citable by generative engines. It doesn't replace advertising, but it's the platform on which advertising works best.

The main levers are few and concrete. Reply immediatelyThe first lines of each section should contain a self-contained answer, as this is where models draw most often. Structure by questions: Titles formulated as questions match the way people query AI. Anchor data to sources: a number with a primary source beats a vague sentence. Keep content fresh: the date it was last updated significantly affects the likelihood of citation.

Then there is a technical prerequisite that applies to both fronts: AI crawlers don't run JavaScript. If your content only appears after the browser has rendered the page, that content doesn't exist for ChatGPT. A well-built site works for both ads and citations., and this is why the technical part is not a detail that can be postponed. If you want to understand how to put yours in order, this is exactly the kind of work we do with the Artificial intelligence consulting for companies.

Conclusion: the channel is new, the preparation is not

ChatGPT Ads moves advertising to a new location, but it doesn't change the rules that really matter: knowing who you're talking to, having a page that converts, and measuring what happens after the click. At this stage, the advantage isn't going to go to the highest spenders. whoever arrives with the site ready, the measurement active and the right contexts already written will take it.

The time to do it is now, while access is still intermediated and competition in the channel is thin. In a few months, when self-service is open to everyone, the cost of attention will be different.

Advertising hasn't stopped being a conversation: it's just found a place where conversation actually happens.