ChatGPT ads are live in South Africa: what they really cost, who may advertise and how to run your first campaign

By Tihan van der Walt | 10 November 2026

You can now pay to show up in ChatGPT in South Africa. OpenAI switched the country on for advertisers on 21 October 2026, in a batch of 26 new markets that took its total to 89, and the help centre now marks South Africa as "Available" for self-service in Ads Manager.

Within a week my inbox was full of guides, mostly written for Americans, and several got the most important number wrong. So I went back to OpenAI's own documentation, policy pages included, and tried to answer what a Joburg business owner would actually ask me over coffee. Where nobody knows yet, I'll say so.

First, the number everyone gets wrong.

R83 a day, not US$25

If you have read that the minimum spend is US$25 a day, about R415, you have read a guide that copied American numbers. US$25 is the floor for accounts billed in dollars. OpenAI's minimum budget table has a separate line for rand-billed accounts, and it says R83 average per day.

At US$25 you'd be committing roughly R12,500 a month before learning anything. At R83 a day it's about R2,500 over 30 days, a test most small businesses can stomach. There is one condition: your account's country, currency and time zone get locked when you sign up and generally can't be changed afterwards. Pick South Africa and ZAR deliberately. Don't click through that screen on autopilot.

How we got here

OpenAI started testing ads in the US on 9 February 2026. At first you could only buy views. Digiday reported about US$60 per 1,000 views and minimum commitments starting at US$250,000, which rather limited the guest list. By mid-April that had changed a lot. CPMs as low as US$25, entry at US$50,000. Still not corner-café money.

Then on 5 May the doors opened properly: a self-service Ads Manager (in beta), the option to pay per click, and a pixel plus server-side tracking for conversions. Europe, Asia and Latin America followed. When South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya were added on 21 October, OpenAI said more than 100,000 advertisers had already used the platform.

The local launch was a little messy. MyBroadband reported on 22 October that South Africans were already seeing ad notices in ChatGPT, but that Ads Manager "was not yet available to South African businesses" at the time. OpenAI's availability page is newer and now lists us. So for a short while, local users were probably seeing foreign brands before local brands could even get in the door. Typical.

OpenAI still calls Ads Manager a beta "in the early stages of scaling". I'd take them at their word and run your first campaign as an experiment.

Who sees these ads, then?

Only people on the Free and Go plans. Go launched here in October 2025 at R149 a month.

Nobody on Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise or Edu sees ads. Neither do accounts OpenAI thinks belong to under-18s (it uses stated age and its own age prediction), people in Temporary Chats, or free users who opt into an "Ads-Free" mode, which costs them lower message limits and fewer tools. Ads are also kept away from chats about personal health, mental health, politics and a long list of brand-unsafe topics.

Sit with that for a moment if you sell to businesses. The heavy professional users, the people whose companies pay for a Business plan, the ones you'd most like to reach? They are precisely the people who won't see you.

And how many South Africans are we talking about? I can't tell you, because nobody has published it. OpenAI says 1.2 billion people use ChatGPT every week worldwide and gives no country split. The closest local figure I found is from Microsoft's AI Diffusion report, which put the share of working-age South Africans using any AI product in the first quarter of 2026 at 23.1%. Any AI product, mind you, not just ChatGPT. Ads Manager will show you an estimated reach once you build a campaign. Look at it before you put money down.

What the ad looks like

One unit, sitting under ChatGPT's answer, labelled as sponsored. You supply:

• your brand name and favicon;
• a title (OpenAI suggests 16 to 24 characters, hard limit 50);
• copy (32 to 48 characters suggested, 100 maximum);
• one square image, or 4 to 6 square images in the multi-image format, which is in open beta;
• a landing page.

Images max out at 1,200 × 1,200 pixels according to the bulk-upload guide. Export at that size; it saves a round trip with the reviewers.

Now the part that matters most and gets glossed over most. OpenAI says ads run on separate systems from the chat model and don't change what ChatGPT answers. You cannot pay to be recommended inside the answer. The sponsored box underneath is all you are buying. Even BusinessTech's sponsored write-up from one of the agencies now selling this service concedes the point: advertisers can't buy a higher spot in ChatGPT's organic recommendations or influence what it says.

Getting named in those organic recommendations is a different job, and it depends on your website, your reviews and how the rest of the internet describes you.

No keywords, so how does it target?

There are no keyword bids. Google Ads people (me included) take a minute to get used to that.

ChatGPT reads what the conversation is about and looks at your title, copy and landing page. It also reads your "context hints", little notes you write per ad group explaining what you sell and to whom, and when somebody might need it. If the user hasn't switched off ads personalisation, their old chats, memories and ad clicks come into it too.

OpenAI is blunt that hints "are not targeting rules or delivery instructions". Typing "only show this to people in Durban" into a hint does precisely nothing. The real controls sit elsewhere. You can target by country and, where available, by region, city, market or postal code (new product-feed campaigns are country-only for now). You can choose platforms, from the Android and iOS apps to mobile and desktop web. Negative phrases exist, but only for "qualifying advertisers", which may or may not include you.

Then custom audiences, which is where most local businesses will hit a wall. Upload a list of emails, phone numbers, hashed versions of either or Google Advertising IDs, and you can include those people, keep them out or bid more or less for them. Fine. But inclusion only works once 25,000 people on the list are matched, and OpenAI would like you to have 100,000. I know a lot of SA owner-managed firms. Very few have 25,000 customers, never mind 25,000 who happen to be on free ChatGPT. For most of you, lists will be good for exclusions and little else.

New accounts have one more limit. Some self-service accounts can only advertise in their home country at first, and other countries unlock once identity verification is approved and you've spent enough at home. If the plan was to target the diaspora in London from day one, you may have to wait.

So what does it cost?

There's no rate card. It's an auction, which OpenAI describes as "relevance-weighted, second-price". What OpenAI has actually published comes down to a handful of numbers:

• Minimum daily budget: R83 average for a ZAR account, about US$5 at the R16.60 to the dollar I saw on 3 November. A USD account has a US$25 minimum, roughly R415.
• Biggest possible spend on one day: twice your daily budget, so R166 at the minimum.
• Weekly ceiling (the week runs Sunday to Saturday): 7 × daily, which is R581 at the minimum.
• Starting bid OpenAI suggests: US$3 to US$5 a click, call it R50 to R83.

You pay by card after delivery, whenever you cross a payment threshold and at month-end. Thresholds start low and rise as you build a payment history.

What are South Africans really paying? We have exactly one public data point. Johannesburg agency IMS ran ads for its own services from 23 October to 1 November 2026 on a R600 daily budget and published the results. It got 36,835 impressions and 1,125 clicks, a 3.05% click-through rate. Its average cost per click was R5.17, coming down from R15.37 in the first three days to R4.18 in the most recent week. It attributed 10 leads to the campaign at R581.99 each, and IMS itself points out that these are tracked form fills, not verified sales.

One advertiser, one industry, ten days. That's a single case and I'd be wary of anyone who calls it a benchmark. It does hint that local clicks may cost far less than the R50 to R83 bid OpenAI suggests from its American data. My advice would be to start lower, keep an eye on the bid-strength guidance in Ads Manager and only raise your bid if delivery stalls.

Two billing traps deserve a warning.

Your card can be charged before verification is done. OpenAI says some accounts can start delivering ads, and running up spend, before the extra business verification kicks in, and that verification can take up to seven business days. If you aren't ready, pause the campaign yourself. Don't count on verification to hold it back.

Pausing also doesn't stop things immediately. Ads can keep serving for up to 24 hours after you hit pause, that spend is billable, and delivered spend is generally not refundable.

Is your business even allowed in?

For a lot of South African businesses, no.

OpenAI says ads are currently aimed at "household and consumer goods, local services, travel and entertainment, and digital products and education". Its eligibility table for regulated industries is stricter outside the US, and for us it reads like a list of half my potential clients.

Health is out. That covers telehealth, prescription and over-the-counter medicines, online pharmacies, hospitals, medical testing, cosmetic procedures, consumer medical devices, dietary supplements, health insurance and sexual health. Most of finance is out as well: personal loans, buy now pay later, payments and remittances, financial planning, credit monitoring, crypto, payday loans, debt relief and credit repair. Legal services are out too.

Deposit accounts, credit cards, insurance other than health insurance, vehicle finance, mortgages and investing or brokerage aren't banned outright. They are restricted to "select approved advertisers", and OpenAI adds that it is "not accepting applications for approval in certain policy categories". For most local banks and insurers, I'd read that as "not yet".

Software is the exception: budgeting apps, accounting tools and practice-management systems are allowed everywhere.

Then there's the list that's banned everywhere, US included. Booze over 0.5% ABV. Tobacco and vapes. Gambling and betting, dating, adult content, recreational drugs (a non-intoxicating CBD topical might squeak through), political and issue ads, fakes, and ads for one particular house or one particular job. If you run a property portal or a job board you're fine, provided the ad isn't about a single listing.

Supplement brands should be careful. OpenAI's wellness policy says supplements "widely sold through major retailers" may be allowed if they make no medical claims, but the eligibility table marks dietary supplements as "Not allowed" outside the US. Those two pages contradict each other. Until OpenAI sorts it out, I'd assume a supplement brand gets rejected here.

Your landing page gets reviewed as well, not only the ad. OpenAI checks title, copy, image and landing page, mostly with automated systems and some human review. A food-delivery ad that lands on a page selling wine will fail. An ad that passes review can still be blocked in a country where its category is restricted.

Setting up your first campaign

Start with the account, because mistakes here are hard to undo. Sign up at ads.openai.com with your OpenAI login. For self-service, the legal entity that advertises and pays has to be based in South Africa, so use your CIPC-registered name, a South African business address and a card issued here (OpenAI warns that foreign cards "may not be accepted"). Add your VAT number to the billing profile. Expect a temporary authorisation hold on the card, which can sit there for eight days or more.

Then tracking. Before a single rand goes out. I'd say that about any platform, but on a new one with no benchmarks you're flying blind without it. The OpenAI Pixel goes on your site, and ideally the Conversions API as well, both firing the same event ID so nothing gets counted twice. Pick a standard event (lead_created or order_created will do for most of you). And tag every landing page URL with UTMs, otherwise ChatGPT clicks vanish into the soup in GA4.

Next you choose an objective, and you're stuck with it. Views means you pay per thousand impressions. Clicks, per click. Conversions sounds like you'd pay per conversion. You don't. It optimises towards your tracked action and then bills you per click or per thousand impressions anyway. You can't change the objective later without building a new campaign. For most small businesses, Clicks is where I'd start.

Use a daily budget, not a lifetime one, as OpenAI recommends for new advertisers (switch lifetime to daily and you can't go back). "Daily" is really a weekly average, so any single day can hit double.

Keep ad groups tight, one product or service each. Write context hints as natural phrases describing one real need. Something like "Joburg homeowners comparing solar and battery backup for load-shedding" is going to do a lot more for you than "solar, inverter, battery". OpenAI's own guidance asks for hints that are additional, specific, relevant and accurate.

Write several ads. OpenAI calls it building "for coverage": a few title-and-copy combinations per offer, each from a different angle, written for someone halfway through a decision. Only promise what the landing page delivers, because exaggerated or unsupported claims get rejected.

Then submit and watch. Impressions and clicks refresh roughly every 15 minutes, but spend can lag seven to eight hours behind, so a zero on the dashboard doesn't mean you haven't been charged. Conversions use a 30-day click and 1-day view attribution window by default and can take 24 to 48 hours to show up.

For what it's worth, we're doing this ourselves. MinuteSteak has opened its own ChatGPT ads advertiser account and is setting up a first test campaign. It isn't running yet, so I have no results to brag about, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise.

POPIA still applies to you

OpenAI says advertisers never see users' chats, memories, names or precise locations. You get aggregated reports and nothing more. That protects ChatGPT's users. Your own obligations under the Protection of Personal Information Act don't go anywhere.

Take the pixel first. OpenAI's "automatic advanced matching" picks up email addresses and phone numbers in your website forms, hashes them in the browser and sends them along with conversion events. OpenAI's help centre says you must give users "clear and comprehensive information" and obtain "all necessary consents where required by law". That's on you, not OpenAI. Update your privacy notice (section 18 of POPIA) and your cookie banner before you switch matching on.

Customer lists are a bigger question. Hashed or not, a list you upload to OpenAI is personal information going to a third party abroad. Section 72 of POPIA lets you do that only in certain situations, for instance where the recipient offers adequate protection, where the person consented, or where the contract requires it. Is that covered in your privacy notice? If not, fix it, and only upload people who'd reasonably expect to be on that list.

If somebody unsubscribed from your marketing, think hard before targeting them anywhere. Using a list to exclude existing customers is the safer use by some distance.

I couldn't find any guidance from the Information Regulator dealing specifically with ChatGPT ads. I'm a marketer, not a lawyer, so treat this as general information and run it past your information officer or attorney.

Where it fits next to Google and Meta

I get asked this a lot already. Google works off keywords and search intent (with its own AI matching on top), Meta off interests, demographics and lookalikes, and ChatGPT off the conversation and your hints. Google has no platform minimum and Meta's is small and set per currency. Google, like ChatGPT, can spend double the daily budget on a given day, but it balances out over the month at 30.4 times daily rather than over a week. Customer Match and Custom Audiences don't demand 25,000 matches. Google and Meta will also take health, legal and finance advertisers, subject to their own policies and checks. And Google has decades of data behind it, while ChatGPT ads are months old.

Google does already show ads inside AI Overviews and AI Mode in some markets, Kenya and Nigeria among them, but not in South Africa as I write this. Here, Google ads can only sit above or below an AI Overview. Which makes ChatGPT one of the very few places a South African brand can pay to appear next to an AI assistant's answer right now.

That's not a reason to switch off Google. Someone typing "plumber Randburg" wants a plumber, today, and Google Ads is still the most direct way to reach them. ChatGPT looks better suited to the earlier stage, when people are comparing options and working out what they need. Fund it from a test budget. Not from the campaigns that pay your bills.

What I'll be watching

Prices, for a start. The local auction is thin for now. US CPMs fell sharply within weeks, and ours will move as more businesses pile in.

The category rules too: OpenAI's ad policy has been updated six times since March 2026, so check again before ruling your industry in or out. And OpenAI hasn't published South African reach, CPC or CPM data, so be suspicious of anyone quoting "typical SA costs" without showing theirs.

And then the agencies. Several South African agencies were selling "ChatGPT ads management" within days of the 21 October launch. Think about that for a second. Self-service Ads Manager has existed since May 2026 and local campaigns have been running for less than three weeks. Nobody in this country has years of experience with it, including us. So before you sign with anyone, ask them to open Ads Manager and show you a South African campaign: impressions, CPC, conversions, spend. Then ask how they'll follow a lead through to an actual sale. If they go vague, you have your answer.

Cheap clicks are nice. Customers are nicer. Measure the second one, and hold it up against what Google and Meta already bring you.

FAQ

Want a second opinion?

MinuteSteak Marketing is one of the big players in South African digital marketing, and we're based in Linbro Park, Sandton. We manage Google Ads every day as a certified team, and we look after tracking and analytics, SEO and Google Business Profiles, and the websites and landing pages that ads point to. That last one matters more than usual here, since ChatGPT reviews your landing page too.

Sources

• OpenAI, "ChatGPT Ads expands to 26 new countries", 21 October 2026
• OpenAI, "New ways to buy ChatGPT ads", 5 May 2026
• OpenAI Help Center, "Ads Manager Availability"
• OpenAI Help Center, "Ads in ChatGPT" (user FAQ)
• OpenAI Help Center, "Ads in ChatGPT: The Basics"
• OpenAI Help Center, "Creating campaigns for ChatGPT Ads" (incl. minimum spend table)
• OpenAI Help Center, "Daily budgets"
• OpenAI Help Center, "Billing & Payment"
• OpenAI Help Center, "Launch Campaigns"
• OpenAI Help Center, "Creating ads for ChatGPT Ads"
• OpenAI Help Center, "Write Context Hints for ChatGPT Ads"
• OpenAI Help Center, "Set up Custom Audiences for your Campaign"
• OpenAI Help Center, "Conversion Measurement"
• OpenAI Help Center, "Measure Results"
• OpenAI Help Center, "Troubleshooting Common Onboarding and Policy Issues" (eligibility table)
• OpenAI, "Ad policies" (updated 10 September 2026)
• MyBroadband, "ChatGPT ads launched in South Africa", 22 October 2026
• MyBroadband, "ChatGPT rand prices launched in South Africa"
• The Verge, 21 October 2026
• Digiday, "'Everything is coming down': ChatGPT ads are getting cheaper", 17 April 2026
• IMS, "IMS Takes Digital Advertising into ChatGPT: Our Latest Campaign Results", 2 November 2026
• ITWeb, "SA ranks 46th out of 147 in AI adoption", 19 May 2026
• Google Ads Help, "About ads in AI-powered experiences in Google Search"
• Google Ads Help, "About overdelivery and your average daily budget"
• POPIA, Section 72
• Information Regulator, Guidance Note on Direct Marketing