OpenAI got rid of the minimum spend on sponsored ads entirely!
Here is who is eligible right now, and the one requirement that may catch your online shop out.
Six months ago sponsored advertising inside ChatGPT meant a huge spending commitment. However, now the minimum is gone, sign-up is self-serve, and any WooCommerce store in a supported country (which includes the UK) can run a campaign.
There is one small but very important catch, and it is about tracking. Specifically tracking a sponsored ad under a ChatGPT answer, the click reference travelling across, and the WooCommerce order attributed on the other side.
What has changed?
From a six-figure commitment to no minimum at all. When OpenAI first tested ads in ChatGPT it worked with a hand-picked group of advertisers. OpenAI never published a price of entry, but the trade press reported minimum commitments in the low hundreds of thousands of dollars, with eMarketer citing roughly $200,000.
In May 2026, OpenAI launched the beta self-serve Ads Manager, CPC bidding, and pixel plus Conversions API measurement. Digiday reported the $50,000 minimum was dropped at the same time. Today, none of OpenAI’s own documentation mentions a minimum spend or a minimum daily budget. You set an average daily budget and OpenAI paces against it.
Who is eligible right now?
- 1. A business in a supported country. Ads Manager is currently available in Australia, Canada, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States.
- 2. Identity and business verification, followed by a review against OpenAI’s Ads Policies. Reviews run in a rolling queue and OpenAI says it cannot expedite them.
- 3. Billing on file, plus your account name and logo, because they appear in the ad unit and ads will not serve without them.
One detail worth planning around: the country, billing currency and time zone you pick at sign-up cannot be changed later.
The catch – Conversion campaigns require standard events.
You do not need tracking to run a plain impression or click campaign. But OpenAI’s conversion-optimised campaigns, the ones that optimise delivery toward purchases instead of clicks, will not let you create one until conversion tracking is live on your ad account and at least one supported standard event is arriving.
Custom conversion events are explicitly not supported. Firing your own event called woo_purchase does not qualify. OpenAI wants order_created, items_added, checkout_started and the rest of its own taxonomy, with the right event type and the right value format.
Where Pixel Manager Pro comes in.
Pixel Manager Pro for WooCommerce is a versatile plugin designed to enhance your WooCommerce store by providing advanced pixel tracking capabilities. This plugin solves the problem of ineffective tracking and data collection, allowing store owners to optimise their advertising strategies. Businesses of all sizes can benefit from its features, ensuring they make informed decisions based on accurate data.
The Pixel Manager supports the OpenAI measurement pixel and the OpenAI Conversions API: the full shopping funnel, purchases sent server-side, and the ChatGPT click reference that connects a conversation in ChatGPT to the order it produced.
Already on Pixel Manager Pro? You have it. It is two fields and takes about five minutes to set up.
Thinking about running ChatGPT ads and not sure where your tracking stands? Just send us an email and we will get back to you as soon as we can.
