ChatGPT Ads Launches in Thailand: What Thai Advertisers Need to Know

OpenAI began rolling out ChatGPT Ads in Thailand on 23 September 2026, in the same wave as Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Vietnam and Taiwan. Businesses with a legal entity in Thailand can already buy the ads themselves through OpenAI's Ads Manager, and the ads appear below ChatGPT's answers only for people on the Free and Go plans. OpenAI announced the expansion on its own site and said it takes ChatGPT Ads to more than 60 countries.

This post covers what was announced, who will actually see the ads, how buying works, and what a Thai business should check before spending its first baht. Where OpenAI has not published a detail, we say so instead of guessing.

What OpenAI announced on 23 September 2026

OpenAI's announcement, dated 23 September 2026, says ChatGPT Ads begins rolling out that day in seven Asian markets: Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and Taiwan. The wave follows OpenAI's earlier Asia Pacific launches in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea and India, so Thailand joins most of its larger regional neighbours at once rather than lagging behind them.

OpenAI listed three ways for advertisers to buy. Larger advertisers can work with OpenAI's own Ads Solutions team. Others can go through agency partners or technology partners. Eligible businesses can also use self-service access through Ads Manager. OpenAI's Ads Manager availability page, updated the same day, lists Thailand as available for self-service, on one condition: the legal entity that advertises and is billed has to be based in a listed country.

The announcement also gave two figures on scale. OpenAI said ChatGPT Ads passed a US$1 billion annualised revenue run rate less than 200 days after launch, a milestone it first reported at the end of August, and that tens of thousands of advertisers now run ads in ChatGPT, many of them across several countries. Dave Dugan, OpenAI's Vice President and Head of Global Ads Solutions, called it "the beginning of a new chapter for advertising". The announcement also carried a statement from Shopee, which said it is extending its ChatGPT Ads work with OpenAI from Brazil to Southeast Asia and Taiwan.

OpenAI said it will keep expanding into new markets over the coming months and build new ad formats, optimisation tools and measurement products. It did not give dates for any of those.

ChatGPT Ads in Thailand: the key facts

The table below collects what OpenAI has published about the Thai launch, taken from the announcement and from OpenAI's advertiser help pages.

Who will see ChatGPT ads in Thailand

Only people using ChatGPT's Free and Go plans will see ads. OpenAI's announcement says Plus, Pro and Enterprise subscriptions remain ad-free. OpenAI's help centre adds that ads are not shown on any Business plan, and not to accounts identified as belonging to users under 18, based on account-level age information and age prediction where it is available.

That affects how advertisers should read the audience. A business selling mainly to professionals who pay for ChatGPT through their employer may reach fewer of those buyers through ads than ChatGPT's overall popularity suggests. OpenAI has not published how many users in Thailand are on the Free and Go plans, so nobody outside OpenAI can size the Thai ad audience precisely yet.

OpenAI restated the principles it applied in earlier markets. Conversations are kept private from advertisers and customer data is never sold. Ads are always labelled and kept separate from ChatGPT's answers, and advertising does not influence the answers ChatGPT gives. Users can control ad personalisation, and people who do not want ads can move to a paid plan.

How buying ChatGPT Ads works

Campaigns are built in OpenAI Ads Manager at ads.openai.com. The structure has three levels. A campaign sets the objective, budget, dates and targeting. An ad group holds ads around one theme and carries the context hints. An ad is the creative itself. Everything submitted is reviewed before it serves, and an ad marked "Not serving" shows the reason in Ads Manager.

Where the ads appear and what they contain

Ads appear below ChatGPT's responses. According to OpenAI's help centre, each ad unit shows the advertiser name, a favicon, a title, a line of copy, an image and a landing page. There is no keyword bid and no search results page; the ad sits under an answer to a conversation.

How ads are matched to conversations

OpenAI says its system picks ads on expected relevance and outcomes. The signals it lists are the context and intent of the current conversation, the ad's landing page, title and copy, the context hints the advertiser adds and, when a user has ad personalisation switched on, select signals from their wider ChatGPT use. Context hints are short descriptions of the products, customer needs and situations an offer suits. OpenAI is clear that they are not exact-match keywords, that they do not guarantee an ad appears in a particular conversation, and that they cannot be used as location or scheduling rules.

Bidding and billing

ChatGPT Ads bills on impressions and on valid clicks. Advertisers choose Views to buy impressions, Clicks to drive traffic, or Conversions to optimise toward a standard conversion event. Conversion-optimised campaigns billed per click, which OpenAI calls oCPC, still charge for valid clicks rather than for conversions. Bids are set at ad-group level as a maximum CPM or a maximum CPC, and a relevance-weighted second-price auction chooses among the eligible ads. For click campaigns OpenAI recommends starting with a maximum bid of US$3 to US$5, and Ads Manager can flag a bid that looks likely to limit delivery.

Reporting

Ads Manager currently reports impressions, clicks, spend, click-through rate, average CPC, average CPM and conversions. Impressions, clicks and click-through rate refresh roughly every 15 minutes. Spend can lag by seven to eight hours, so a zero spend figure early in the day does not mean nothing has been charged.

OpenAI's launch offer and webinar

In an email to businesses in Thailand announcing that ChatGPT Ads Manager is available, OpenAI said advertisers who create an account before 30 September will receive ad credit when they spend on their first campaign. The email did not state the size of the credit or the minimum spend, so check the terms shown in Ads Manager before counting on it.

The same email invited advertisers to a live webinar on 24 September from 9:30 to 10:15 a.m. Pacific time, which is 11:30 p.m. to 12:15 a.m. in Bangkok, on five best practices for building campaigns. OpenAI said people who register but cannot attend will be sent the recording.

What Thai businesses should prepare before launching

Most of the preparation happens on your own website, not inside Ads Manager.

Let OpenAI's crawler reach your landing pages

OpenAI's crawler, OAI-AdsBot, visits each landing page submitted with an ad to check it against OpenAI's ad policies, and OpenAI says it may also use the page content to decide when the ad is relevant. Allowing OAI-AdsBot is required, and OpenAI recommends allowing OAI-SearchBot as well. Rules in robots.txt, firewalls, CDN bot protection, CAPTCHAs and login walls can all block the review. OpenAI notes that Cloudflare already verifies and allowlists OAI-AdsBot, but other providers may need an explicit rule, and ads may have to be resubmitted once the page is reachable.

Set up measurement with consent

Conversions are measured through the OpenAI Pixel, the Conversions API, or both. When someone clicks an ad, OpenAI adds a click reference called oppref to the landing page URL, and the Pixel stores it in a first-party cookie so a later purchase or lead can be matched to the click. OpenAI recommends keeping oppref intact through redirects and sending the same event ID from the Pixel and the server so duplicates are removed. It also says conversion data should only be shared with the consents the law requires, which for a Thai website means tying the Pixel to a PDPA-compliant cookie banner.

Write for conversations, in the language people use

OpenAI's creative guidance asks for several distinct, benefit-led ad variations per offer and for landing pages that match the product rather than a generic homepage. OpenAI's own example hints read like plain product descriptions, for instance bookkeeping software for retailers that reconcile online and in-store sales. For brands in Thailand that sell to both Thai and English speakers, our reading is that this calls for separate hints, ads and landing pages per language rather than one translated set.

These are the same foundations that decide whether a brand appears in ChatGPT's unpaid answers, which is the focus of our GEO service. For the paid side, our ChatGPT Ads management service covers account setup, campaigns, landing page access and tracking.

What this means for Thai marketers

The main change for Thai advertisers is access. Before 23 September a business in Thailand could not buy ChatGPT inventory directly; now it can, in the same week the channel opened in six neighbouring markets. That puts ChatGPT next to Google, Meta, TikTok and LINE as a paid channel that can be tested today rather than watched from a distance.

Two cautions follow from what OpenAI has published. The audience is limited to Free and Go users, so reach depends on how Thai users split across plans, a number OpenAI has not released. And the matching model rewards specific pages and accurate descriptions over keyword coverage, which moves part of the work from media buying into content and site quality.

A reasonable first test is a small click campaign on one high-intent offer, with conversion tracking working from day one, judged against the cost per lead you already accept on other channels. That gives a real comparison instead of a novelty result.

What OpenAI has not said yet

Several details that matter to Thai advertisers are not in the announcement or the help pages we reviewed. OpenAI has not said how many ChatGPT users in Thailand are on the Free and Go plans. Its help pages quote bids in US dollars and do not say whether billing in Thai baht is supported. They do not describe Thai-specific targeting options, and the launch email does not state the value of the first-campaign credit. We will update this post if OpenAI publishes any of these.

FAQ: ChatGPT Ads in Thailand

Are ChatGPT ads live in Thailand?

Yes. OpenAI started rolling out ChatGPT Ads in Thailand on 23 September 2026, as part of a seven-market expansion across Southeast Asia and Taiwan.

Can a Thai company buy ChatGPT ads without an agency?

Yes. OpenAI's Ads Manager availability page lists Thailand as open for self-service, provided the legal entity that advertises and is billed is based in Thailand. Businesses can also buy through OpenAI's Ads Solutions team, an agency partner or a technology partner.

Who sees ads in ChatGPT?

Only Free and Go plan users. Plus, Pro, Business and Enterprise accounts are ad-free, and OpenAI does not show ads to accounts it identifies as belonging to people under 18.

How much do ChatGPT ads cost?

There is no fixed price. Ads are sold through a relevance-weighted second-price auction on a maximum CPM or maximum CPC, and OpenAI suggests starting click campaigns at US$3 to US$5 per click.

Do ads change ChatGPT's answers?

No. OpenAI states that advertising does not influence the answers ChatGPT provides, and that ads are labelled and shown separately from the answer.

Relevant Audience sets up and runs ChatGPT Ads for businesses in Thailand, in Thai and English. See how on our ChatGPT Ads page.