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A new advertising platform has arrived. ChatGPT — the AI tool used by hundreds of millions of people worldwide — has launched its own paid advertising product. And while it is still in early stages, it is worth understanding what it is, what it can do right now, and what is still missing before you decide whether it belongs in your marketing budget.
This is our honest assessment. No hype, no over-promising. Just a practical look at where ChatGPT Ads stands in 2026 and what Australian businesses should do about it.
What Is ChatGPT Ads?
ChatGPT Ads is OpenAI’s paid advertising platform. It lets businesses run ads that appear within ChatGPT conversations — meaning your ad can show up when someone is actively engaging with the AI tool, asking questions that are relevant to your product or service.
That is a genuinely interesting concept. Unlike a traditional search ad, which appears when someone types a keyword into a search bar, a ChatGPT ad can appear in the middle of a back-and-forth conversation. If someone is asking ChatGPT for advice on choosing an accountant, a travel destination, a software tool, or a local service, a relevant business can appear in that moment.
The platform is new, it is developing quickly, and some useful features are already in place. But there are also some significant gaps that are worth understanding before you invest.
What Is Already Working on ChatGPT Ads
The platform has moved quickly to add some of the most important advertising fundamentals. Here is what is already live and working.
Conversion Tracking
One of the first and most important additions has been proper conversion tracking. When ChatGPT Ads first launched, there was no reliable way to measure whether your campaigns were actually generating results. That has now been addressed. Advertisers can track conversions — meaning you can see whether someone who clicked your ad went on to take a meaningful action on your website, such as submitting a form, making a purchase, or calling your business.
This is a non-negotiable for any advertising platform. Without it, you are spending blind. The fact that it is now available makes ChatGPT Ads a much more viable consideration than it was at launch.
Custom Audiences From Your Own Data
Advertisers can upload their own customer data and use it to build custom audiences. This means you can reach people who are already known to your business — existing customers, email subscribers, past enquirers — when they are using ChatGPT.
This is a significant feature. For businesses with good CRM data, it opens up the possibility of re-engaging warm audiences in a new and genuinely different context.
Product Feeds for E-Commerce
If you run an e-commerce business, you can upload your product feed to ChatGPT Ads and have your products shown dynamically within relevant conversations. This makes the platform much more relevant for online retailers, particularly those with a larger catalogue who want AI-driven placements rather than manually set up ad creative for each product.
Postcode Targeting
Geographic targeting by postcode is available, which gives local businesses some level of location control. This matters for any business that only serves a defined area and does not want to pay for impressions from users on the other side of the country.
That said, the implementation of postcode targeting has some practical limitations — which we will cover in a moment.
Conversation and Topic Targeting
This is one of ChatGPT Ads’ most distinctive features. Rather than targeting traditional keywords, advertisers describe the types of conversations, topics, or keywords where their product or service might be relevant. The platform then uses that description to guide where your ads appear.
In theory, this is extremely powerful. Imagine being able to reach someone the moment their conversation with ChatGPT touches on the exact problem your business solves — before they have even thought to search Google. The intent matching potential is real.
In practice, the execution is still quite limited — more on that shortly.
What Is Still Missing From ChatGPT Ads
Alongside its genuine strengths, the platform still has some notable gaps that make it hard to rely on as a primary advertising channel right now.
Location Targeting Needs Work
Postcode targeting exists, but the process of adding locations is manual and time-consuming. There is currently no option to paste or bulk upload a list of postcodes at once, which means targeting multiple locations can require adding them one by one.
There is also a practical issue with suburbs that span multiple postcodes. If you search for a suburb, the platform maps it to a single postcode rather than the full suburb. For many Australian locations — where one suburb can cover several postcodes — this means you could miss significant portions of your target area unless you identify and add each postcode manually.
For local businesses wanting to target a specific service area across multiple suburbs, this makes geographic setup considerably more work than it should be.
No Radius Targeting
There is currently no option to target users within a defined radius around your business location. For local service businesses — a tradie, a health clinic, a café — this is a meaningful gap. Google Ads has offered radius targeting for years because it maps neatly to how local service businesses actually operate: “anyone within 20km of our shop.”
Until radius targeting is added, geographic precision on ChatGPT Ads will remain more limited than most local business owners would want.
Remarketing From Pixel Data Is Not Yet Available
This is probably the most significant missing feature. While conversion tracking is in place and custom audiences from uploaded data are possible, you still cannot build remarketing audiences directly from your website pixel.
That means you cannot create an audience of “people who visited my website but did not enquire” or “people who viewed my pricing page” and then specifically target those users on ChatGPT. Nor can you use your pixel-based audiences as the source for lookalike targeting — finding new users who look like your best existing customers based on their actual website behaviour.
On Google Ads and Meta Ads, these remarketing and lookalike capabilities are among the most powerful and commonly used strategies. They convert well precisely because they reach people who have already shown genuine interest. Without them, ChatGPT Ads is limited to prospecting cold audiences and using uploaded CRM data — both of which have higher conversion barriers than a well-built remarketing list.
Reporting Is Still Very Thin
Transparency in reporting is currently one of the weakest points of the platform. Advertisers can see top-level metrics like impressions, clicks, and conversions. But there is very little visibility into where exactly your ads appeared — which topics, which types of conversations, which contexts generated the best results.
This matters because the platform’s unique targeting approach — describing conversations and topics to guide placement — is only useful if you can see how well that guidance is working. At the moment, you can tell ChatGPT the kinds of conversations you want to be part of, but you have limited ability to understand whether your ads actually appeared in those conversations or what drove performance.
Without richer reporting, optimising a ChatGPT Ads campaign is largely guesswork.
Targeting Transparency Is Limited
Linked to the reporting issue is the broader question of how the conversation targeting actually works. The platform itself describes its targeting hints as guidance that is “not exact-match targeting rules.” That is an important caveat. You are describing the conversations you want to be part of, not guaranteeing placement within them.
On a mature platform with strong reporting, this would be manageable — you would see the results, identify what was working, and refine accordingly. But without that reporting layer, it creates genuine uncertainty about who is seeing your ads and in what context.
Only One Creative Format
At the moment, there is essentially one ad format available. Compare that to Google Ads, which offers search ads, display ads, shopping ads, video, and Performance Max campaigns — or Meta, with its range of image, video, carousel, and story formats. For businesses that have learned to optimise creative for different formats and placements, the current limitations on ChatGPT Ads feel restrictive.
This is almost certainly an area where the platform will expand significantly as it matures and attracts more advertiser spend.
Should Australian Businesses Try ChatGPT Ads Right Now?
Here is our honest take.
ChatGPT Ads is a genuinely interesting platform with a real concept at its core — reaching people in the context of relevant AI conversations is a compelling advertising idea. Some key fundamentals are already in place: conversion tracking, custom audiences, product feeds, and postcode targeting give you enough to run a real campaign and measure it.
But the gaps are real too. The lack of remarketing from pixel data, limited geographic controls, thin reporting, and the single creative format mean this is not yet a platform where most businesses should be shifting significant budget.
If you are an e-commerce business with a well-structured product feed and a customer data list you can upload, ChatGPT Ads is worth testing now. The product feed integration and custom audience capability make it more relevant for you than for many other business types.
If you are a local service business — a tradie, a health provider, a professional services firm — the geographic targeting limitations make it harder to run focused campaigns right now. Postcode targeting helps, but the manual setup and the lack of radius targeting add friction that most local businesses do not need.
If you are running Google Ads or Meta Ads already, do not pause or reduce those campaigns to fund a ChatGPT Ads experiment. Both of those platforms have far more mature targeting, reporting, and optimisation tools. ChatGPT Ads should be tested with additional budget, not at the expense of what is already working.
If you have no paid advertising running at all, starting with Google Ads is still the stronger first step for most Australian businesses. The benefits of Google Ads for Australian businesses are well-established and the platform gives you the measurement and control you need to understand what your budget is generating. Once that is working, ChatGPT Ads becomes a sensible next experiment.
The key thing is to watch this platform closely. AI search trends are moving quickly, and ChatGPT Ads could look very different in 12 months. The features that are missing today — remarketing, radius targeting, richer reporting, more ad formats — are standard features on every established advertising platform. OpenAI will add them. When they do, the platform’s value proposition will strengthen considerably.
How ChatGPT Ads Fits Into the Bigger AI Marketing Picture
ChatGPT Ads is part of a broader shift that is worth understanding if you run a business in Australia. AI tools are becoming part of how your customers find information, compare options, and make decisions. That trend is not going away — it is accelerating.
For most Australian businesses, the immediate priority is still making sure you are visible in traditional search through strong SEO fundamentals and well-managed Google Ads campaigns. But alongside those, it is worth starting to understand how AI-native platforms like ChatGPT are adding new layers to customer discovery.
Tracking AI traffic to your website is a good first step — understanding whether ChatGPT and other AI tools are already sending people to your site gives you a clearer picture of how much attention to give this channel.
And if you want to be found in AI-generated answers and recommendations more broadly — not just through paid ads — Generative Engine Optimisation and Answer Engine Optimisation are the organic strategies that complement what ChatGPT Ads can do on the paid side. The full comparison of SEO, AIO, GEO, AEO, and SXO is worth reading if you want to understand how all these pieces fit together.
FAQs About ChatGPT Ads
Is ChatGPT Ads Available in Australia?
The platform is rolling out globally, but availability and features can vary by market. We recommend checking directly through ChatGPT’s advertising platform or speaking with our team, as availability and full feature access in Australia may still be limited depending on your account and business type.
How Is ChatGPT Ads Different From Google Ads?
The core difference is where and how ads appear. Google Ads shows your ad when someone types a specific query into Google — you are targeting a keyword at the moment of search. ChatGPT Ads shows your ad within an ongoing AI conversation — you are targeting the context of what is being discussed. Both approaches have merit, but they reach users in very different mental states and at different moments in their decision-making process. Google Ads is still significantly more mature, more measurable, and more flexible at this stage. Common mistakes to avoid in Google Ads is a useful read if you are currently running or considering Google Ads.
How Much Does ChatGPT Ads Cost?
Pricing details are still developing as the platform matures. As with most advertising platforms, costs will depend on your targeting, your industry, your competition, and your campaign settings. Because the platform is new and inventory is still limited, early advertisers may find costs relatively manageable compared with more competitive established platforms — though this will likely change as more businesses join.
Should I Switch My Marketing Budget to ChatGPT Ads?
Not yet. The platform is promising but not mature enough to justify shifting budget away from Google Ads or Meta Ads. The right approach is to run ChatGPT Ads as an additional experiment with a separate budget while keeping your existing paid channels running. If you are not currently running Google Ads and are looking for the most efficient way to get more leads, starting there is still the stronger move for most Australian businesses right now.
We Are Watching This Closely — and So Should You
ChatGPT Ads is a real development in the advertising landscape and we are taking it seriously. The core idea — reaching people within relevant AI conversations at a moment of genuine engagement — is compelling. The fundamentals are being put in place. And as the platform adds remarketing, better geographic targeting, richer reporting, and more creative options, it will become significantly more useful.
For now, the best thing most Australian businesses can do is stay informed, test with modest budget if the platform is accessible and the category fits, and make sure your existing Google Ads and SEO are performing well.
Local Digital Experts stays on top of changes across every major advertising and search platform so you do not have to. If you want to talk through where ChatGPT Ads fits in your current marketing mix — or if you want to make sure your Google Ads and SEO are performing as well as they should be — get in touch with our team today.
No lock-in contracts. No jargon. Just practical advice for Australian businesses navigating a rapidly changing digital landscape.