Yes, a New Zealand business can now advertise inside ChatGPT. OpenAI lists New Zealand as available for its self-serve Ads Manager, the minimum daily budget for an account billed in New Zealand dollars is $25, and ads appear below ChatGPT's answers, labelled as sponsored. Paying does not change what ChatGPT says: OpenAI states that "ads do not influence the answers ChatGPT gives you." The platform is still in beta and OpenAI itself says it has no performance benchmarks yet, so treat it as an experiment with a capped budget, not a replacement for Google Ads or for being recommended organically. Everything below comes from OpenAI's own published pages, checked on 18 September 2026. The product is changing quickly, so follow the links before you spend.
What are ChatGPT ads?
OpenAI began testing ads in ChatGPT in the United States on 9 February 2026. On 26 March 2026 it announced that the pilot would expand "beyond the U.S., starting with pilots in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand", and on 11 August 2026 it added the United Kingdom, Mexico, Brazil, Japan and South Korea. New Zealand was in the first group of countries outside the US, which is why NZ business owners are starting to ask about it.
OpenAI's advertiser basics guide says "Ads appear below ChatGPT responses", and each one shows the advertiser's name and logo, a headline, a short description, an image and a link to a landing page. It looks like a small sponsored card under the answer, not a line inside the answer.
Do ads change what ChatGPT recommends?
OpenAI says no, and says it in plain words: "Ads do not influence the answers ChatGPT gives you. Answers are optimized based on what's most helpful to you. When you see an ad, they are always clearly labeled as sponsored and visually separated from the organic answer." That matters for two reasons. If you are a customer, the recommendation you read was not bought. If you are a business, you cannot pay to be the business ChatGPT names in its answer. Being named in the answer is earned the slow way, which we cover in our guide to getting recommended by ChatGPT and AI search.
So there are now two separate ways to show up in ChatGPT: the answer itself, which is organic, and the sponsored card beneath it, which is paid. They are run by different systems and one does not feed the other.
Who actually sees the ads?
Not everyone, and this shapes whether your customers are in the audience at all. From the same OpenAI pages:
- Only the free and Go tiers. The original announcement says ads are for "logged-in adult users on the Free and Go subscription tiers", and that "Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Education tiers will not have ads."
- Adults only. OpenAI says it does not show ads to accounts identified as belonging to users under 18.
- Not beside sensitive topics. Ads "are not eligible to appear near sensitive or regulated topics like health, mental health or politics." If you run a clinic or a health practice, expect that many of the conversations you would most like to appear under are excluded.
- Private from advertisers. "Advertisers do not have access to your chats, chat history, memories, or personal details." Advertisers receive only aggregate numbers such as views and clicks.
Users can also dismiss ads, see why they were shown one, and turn ad personalisation off. People on paid plans never see your ad, so a customer who uses ChatGPT through a Plus subscription or a work account is out of reach.
Can a New Zealand business buy them?
Yes. OpenAI's Ads Manager availability list marks New Zealand as "Available" for self-service. The condition is that "the legal entity that will advertise and be billed must be based in a country listed as available." You sign up on OpenAI's advertiser page, and the quickstart guide lists the setup steps: add your logo, set up billing, complete account verification, then build a campaign and submit it for review. Ads do not run until they pass review.
One restriction to know about: OpenAI says some new self-serve accounts "can initially advertise only in their home country" until identity verification is approved and the account has reached a required level of spend. For a local NZ business advertising to New Zealanders, that changes nothing.
How much do ChatGPT ads cost?
Like Google Ads, there is no price list. You set a budget and a maximum bid, and an auction decides the rest. The specifics, from OpenAI's campaign setup guide and basics guide:
- Minimum daily budget: NZ$25. OpenAI publishes a minimum by billing currency, and for NZD it is 25 a day. That is the floor, not a recommendation.
- Three ways to buy. Views, where "you pay per 1,000 impressions served"; Clicks, where "you pay per valid click"; and Conversions, which optimises towards an action on your site but is still billed by click or impression. "You do not pay per conversion."
- A maximum bid you set. For click campaigns OpenAI recommends "starting with a maximum bid" of US$3 to US$5 per click. That is OpenAI's starting suggestion in US dollars, not a measured NZ click price.
- A second-price auction weighted by relevance. OpenAI says it uses "a relevance-weighted, second-price auction to select among eligible ads." As with Google, a more relevant ad can beat a higher bid.
- Daily budgets are averages. "Daily spend will not exceed twice your selected daily budget", and spend across a Sunday to Saturday week will not exceed seven times the daily budget.
Put together: at the minimum, a campaign that spends in full costs up to $175 in a week, and can spend up to $50 on a single busy day. If you want a hard ceiling for a test, OpenAI offers a campaign-total budget, which it describes as "the stricter control for total spend".
How does targeting work without keywords?
This is the real difference from Google Ads. You do not bid on keywords. You write context hints: plain-language descriptions of the conversations where your business is relevant. OpenAI's ad group guide gives the example that "cushioned everyday running shoes for beginners training for their first 5K" is a more useful hint than "running shoes", and uses a trade example for structure: "a plumbing business might use separate ad groups for emergency repairs and preventive maintenance."
OpenAI is clear about the limits. Context hints "are not exact-match keywords or targeting rules, and they do not guarantee delivery for particular conversations or audiences." The system also reads your ad's headline, description and landing page to judge relevance, which means a vague landing page hurts you twice: once in the auction and again when the visitor arrives.
On location, campaigns target countries, and for most campaign types OpenAI says you can also "target supported locations such as states or regions, cities, markets, and postal codes where available", adding that "Location availability may vary by country." We have not confirmed how fine the options are for New Zealand. If you serve one city, search for it during campaign setup before you commit a budget, because paying for clicks from the other island is an expensive way to find out.
How do ChatGPT ads compare with Google Ads?
- Intent. A Google search is a short, explicit request. A ChatGPT conversation is longer and often earlier in the decision, when someone is still working out what they need.
- Targeting. Google matches keywords you choose. ChatGPT matches context hints that guide, but do not control, where you appear.
- Maturity. Google Ads has decades of tooling and documentation. OpenAI's advertiser FAQ says ChatGPT Ads "is currently in beta" and "does not yet have performance benchmarks across advertisers, industries, or campaign types." It also warns that delivery and spend can fluctuate during the beta.
- Audience. Google reaches anyone searching. ChatGPT ads reach logged-in adults on the free and Go tiers, outside sensitive topics.
- Measurement. Both report impressions, clicks, spend and conversions. OpenAI says you can add UTM parameters to landing page URLs so clicks show up in your own analytics.
Anyone who quotes you an expected return for ChatGPT ads in New Zealand today is guessing. The platform's own owner says the benchmarks do not exist yet.
Should a small business in NZ bother yet?
It is a reasonable test if all of these are true:
- Your website already converts. If visitors do not enquire today, paid clicks from any platform multiply the problem. Our free website audit shows where a page leaks.
- You can track an enquiry. Form submissions and calls need to be recorded, or you will not know what the test bought. Our guide to telling whether your website is working covers the setup.
- You know what an enquiry is worth. The sums are the same as for any ad platform, and we walk through them in our post on what Google Ads costs in NZ.
- You can afford to learn nothing. A beta platform with no benchmarks may simply not deliver in your niche or your town. Set a campaign-total budget you are comfortable losing.
- Your customers ask AI about what you sell. Considered purchases and "help me choose" questions suit a conversation. An emergency callout at 2am is still a Google search or a Maps tap.
It is probably not the next move if you have not yet claimed your Google Business Profile, if your site is slow or thin, or if you are in health and the sensitive-topic rule removes most of your relevant conversations.
What to do before you spend anything
The free route into ChatGPT is the answer itself, and the work that earns it also makes any ad perform better, because OpenAI's system reads your landing page to judge relevance. Make sure OpenAI's search crawler is not blocked, state clearly what you do and where, answer the questions customers ask in full sentences, and keep your business details consistent across the web. Our AI recommendation guide has the full checklist, and our post on llms.txt explains which crawlers to allow. You can then see whether ChatGPT already sends you visitors, paid or not, by following our guide to tracking AI traffic in Google Analytics.
Do this today
- Ask ChatGPT the question your best customer would ask, and note who it names and what sits underneath the answer
- Check your robots.txt is not blocking OAI-SearchBot
- Open Google Analytics and look for an AI Assistant row in your traffic report
- Write down what an enquiry is worth to you and the most you would pay for one
- If the sums work, create an Ads Manager account, search for your city in location targeting, and set a small campaign-total budget
Where we come in
We should be straightforward about our own position. ChatGPT ads management is not a packaged Go Digital service today, and we have no campaign results of our own to show you, which is why this post quotes OpenAI's documentation and nothing else. What we do is the part every ad platform depends on: websites that load fast and turn a click into an enquiry, conversion tracking that records what each channel produced, SEO and AI search optimisation so you are named in the answer and not only beneath it, and Google Ads management for the channel that already has a track record. If you want a second opinion on whether a ChatGPT test makes sense for your business, ask us. The honest answer for some businesses will be "not yet".
Frequently Asked Questions
Can New Zealand businesses advertise on ChatGPT?
Yes. OpenAI's Ads Manager availability list marks New Zealand as available for self-service, provided the legal entity that advertises and is billed is based in a listed country. OpenAI announced the New Zealand pilot on 26 March 2026, alongside Canada and Australia. Accounts are created at OpenAI's advertiser site, and ads must pass review before they run.
How much do ChatGPT ads cost in NZ?
There is no fixed price. OpenAI sets a minimum daily budget of NZ$25 for accounts billed in New Zealand dollars, and advertisers choose to pay per 1,000 impressions or per valid click at a price set by a relevance-weighted second-price auction. OpenAI recommends a starting maximum bid of US$3 to US$5 per click. Daily spend can reach twice the daily budget, and weekly spend is capped at seven times the daily budget.
Do ChatGPT ads change the answers ChatGPT gives?
OpenAI says they do not. Its published policy states that ads do not influence the answers ChatGPT gives, that answers are optimised for what is most helpful to the user, and that ads are always clearly labelled as sponsored and visually separated from the organic answer. A business cannot pay to be named inside the answer itself.
Who sees ads in ChatGPT?
Logged-in adult users on the Free and Go tiers. OpenAI says Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Education plans do not have ads, accounts identified as under 18 are not shown ads, and ads are not eligible to appear near sensitive or regulated topics such as health, mental health or politics.
Can my business appear in ChatGPT without paying?
Yes. The answer ChatGPT writes is organic and separate from the sponsored card beneath it. OpenAI says any public website can appear in ChatGPT search, as long as its OAI-SearchBot crawler is not blocked. Clear service and location information, content that answers customer questions directly, and consistent business details across the web all make a business easier for AI assistants to recommend.
The bottom line
ChatGPT ads are real, they are open to New Zealand businesses, and the entry cost is low enough to test. They are also a beta product with no benchmarks, a partial audience and targeting you guide but do not control. Get the free foundations right first, decide what an enquiry is worth, cap the budget, and measure what comes back. If the numbers work, scale it. If they do not, you will have spent a small, capped amount to find out.