Black Friday ChatGPT ads: planning the first season

First ChatGPT ads served in the US

Feb 9, 2026

OpenAI

Countries where ChatGPT shows ads

40+

OpenAI, Aug 31, 2026

Minimum daily budget in the US

$25

OpenAI help center

Starting CPC bid OpenAI recommends

$3 to $5

OpenAI help center

Ads show only to logged-in adults on the Free and Go plans. Every paid plan above Go is ad-free, and ads never appear in Temporary Chats. By August 31, 2026 they served in more than 40 countries, including the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, 31 European countries and India. For a Black Friday campaign that means the audience is the Free and Go user base in the countries you pick, not every ChatGPT user.

The placement is small and separate from the answer: a card labeled Sponsored, after ChatGPT finishes responding, with the advertiser name, favicon, a title, a line of copy, a square image and a link. The full picture of how the product works is in the ChatGPT ads guide.

None of these cards mention Black Friday. They matched the product in the question, not the occasion. That is the opening for this season: a card whose title names the Black Friday offer answers the question the reader actually asked.

Prompt not recorded

SSpot & TangoAd

UnKibble: Affordable Fresh Dog Food

Start with 50% off- real food, free shipping, skip or cancel anytime. Make the switch.

What should I do for my parents' 40th anniversary?

QuinceSponsored

Shop Quince Anniversary Gifts

Save 50-75% vs. Top Brands. Free Shipping & Free Returns.

How much are Nikes?

MercariSponsored

Nike Sneaker Deals

Save up to 70% on Nike sneakers

Recommend a good laptop under $1000.

LenovoSponsored

Laptop deals you want

Save on the specs you need

How to cook salmon.

JCPenneySponsored

Kitchen Deals You'll Love

Everything you need to cook, serve, and save.

Prompt not recorded

AAmazonSponsored

Prime Tech Deals

Top gadgets and gaming gear on Prime.

Retailers already put the discount in the card: "Start with 50% off", "Save 50-75% vs. Top Brands", "Save up to 70%". Hundreds more are in the ChatGPT ads library, searchable by advertiser and format.

Feed items expire after 14 days, so a catalog uploaded in early November has expired by Black Friday. Refresh it in the week of the sale, carrying the prices you want shown on the weekend itself; feeds can come from a file, a hosted URL or SFTP. The setup is covered step by step in the ChatGPT Ads Manager walkthrough.

Write hints for the buying conversation, not the holiday. The questions above were about a phone, a litter box and dog grooming, with Black Friday as the timing. Good hints read the same way:

• Comparing robot vacuums and asking whether to buy now or wait for Black Friday
• Looking for the best Black Friday deals on running shoes for beginners
• Choosing a gift for a partner who likes skincare, with a budget under $100
• Asking when Cyber Monday deals on laptops start and what discounts to expect

Context hints do not guarantee placement. Custom audiences of your own customers can raise or lower bids with a multiplier from 0.1x to 10x; including an audience needs at least 25,000 matched users, while excluding one has no minimum, which makes it useful for keeping a new-customer offer away from existing buyers.

At a $3 to $5 CPC, $25 a day buys roughly five to eight clicks. Delivery can spend up to twice the daily budget on a single day and seven times it in a week, which helps on Black Friday itself, but the choice between a daily and a campaign-total budget is locked once the campaign exists. Pick a campaign-total budget if you want the spend to follow demand across the weekend.

Bidding is either Maximize results, where OpenAI sets bids toward your objective within budget, or a manual maximum CPC or CPM. Costs, formats and what practitioners report are covered in the ChatGPT ads guide.

1. October
   Open the account at ads.openai.com, finish Persona verification and billing, and install the OpenAI pixel or the Conversions API. Campaigns will not deliver until every setup step is complete, and every landing page must allow OAI-AdsBot in robots.txt or the ad is rejected at review.
2. Early November
   Run a small Standard campaign on your best sellers. Conversions report 24 to 48 hours late and reporting lags delivery by up to seven hours, so this is the only window to learn which context hints and titles convert before the weekend.
3. Week of Black Friday
   Launch a separate Black Friday campaign with start and end dates around November 27. The objective (Views, Clicks or Conversions) is locked after creation, so decide it before you build. Turn off Text customization in Advanced settings if the offer wording must be exact: it is on by default and lets AI rewrite headlines and descriptions without review.
4. Cyber Monday
   Swap to a Cyber Monday campaign for November 30 rather than editing the Black Friday one, so each offer has its own reporting. Build it before the weekend so its ads have passed review by the time they are needed.
5. After Cyber Monday
   Read results at the ad group level against your Google and Meta numbers. Click attribution defaults to 30 days and view-through to one day, and there is no prompt-level reporting, so compare cost per conversion rather than guessing which question drove the sale.