South African businesses can now buy advertising inside ChatGPT. OpenAI added the country to ChatGPT Ads on 21 October, taking the programme to 89 countries, and its help centre lists South Africa as available for Ads Manager, the self-service platform where a business signs up, builds a campaign and pays by card. An OpenAI ads email received by Business News South Africa on 22 October tells its recipient that Ads Manager “is now available to you”. This guide sets out how to get started, what the rules and billing look like, and what the evidence says about whether it is worth the money.
What OpenAI announced
In its announcement, OpenAI says more than 1.2 billion people use ChatGPT each week and that over 100,000 advertisers have run campaigns in the eight months since ads launched. The 26 new markets include South Africa and Nigeria, alongside Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Serbia, Ukraine, Cambodia, Bangladesh and Pakistan. Advertisers in these countries can buy through technology partners or through Ads Manager.
OpenAI’s pitch is about the moment of decision. Someone training for a first marathon might ask for meal ideas for race week, then narrow the options by diet and cooking time; an ad relevant to that conversation could introduce a grocery delivery service they had not considered. Early advertisers include Newegg, Best Buy, Lowe’s and VistaPrint. Newegg’s performance marketing manager, Alec Shao, says the aim is to “be part of the conversation when someone is researching what to buy.”
What South African users will see
Ads appear only on the Free and Go plans. Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Education plans stay ad-free, and OpenAI does not show ads to accounts identified as belonging to users under 18. According to OpenAI’s help centre, an ad sits below ChatGPT’s response and carries the advertiser’s name, logo, headline, description, landing page and an image.
An email OpenAI sent to ChatGPT users this week, updating its privacy policy, sets out the promises. Ads do not influence the answers ChatGPT gives, and an ad is “always clearly labeled as sponsored and visually separated from the organic answer”. Personalisation uses “information that stays only on ChatGPT, such as ads you’ve interacted with, or context from your chats”, and users can manage it in settings. Advertisers “do not have access to your chats, chat history, memories, or personal details” and receive only overall performance information, “such as total views or clicks”.
How a South African business gets started
The route begins at ads.openai.com, using the OpenAI login you already have for ChatGPT. Ads Manager can draft a first ad from your website address, or you can skip that and build a campaign yourself. Every ad is reviewed before it runs: OpenAI’s onboarding notice reads “Your ads will go live once they pass review.”
OpenAI’s availability page lists seven African countries for self-service access: South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. It also attaches a condition that matters for local firms. The legal entity that will advertise and be billed must be based in a listed country, so a South African company buying through a foreign entity needs to think about which one signs up.
Three setup choices are permanent. Your country or region, currency and time zone cannot be changed after the account is created, according to OpenAI’s account setup guide. Get them right the first time. Larger advertisers can request sales support through the form on the Ads Manager site, and OpenAI offers a short introductory webinar, 30 minutes long and presented by OpenAI’s Christin Klein and Zo Hajiyani, on how the product works today and where it is heading.
How billing and bidding work
Billing is by credit card and works after the fact. Campaigns run, spend accrues, and OpenAI charges the card once unpaid spend reaches a payment threshold, according to its billing guide. New accounts start with a low threshold, with $25 given as the example, and it rises automatically after successful payments. The card and billing address should match the country of the business that created the account. VAT and tax numbers can be added to the billing profile, and delivered spend is generally not refundable.
You choose an objective. Views buys impressions at a cost per thousand, Clicks pays per click, and Conversions optimises toward an action such as a purchase, though even then you are billed on clicks or impressions, never per conversion. Bids are set per ad group. For click campaigns, OpenAI recommends starting with a maximum bid of $3 to $5 a click, and ads are chosen in a relevance-weighted second-price auction. Advertisers do not target keywords exactly. They write “context hints” describing the conversations where their product is relevant, and those guide matching without guaranteeing delivery.
One rule deserves a warning. A daily budget is an average over seven days, not a same-day limit. Spend on a single day can reach up to twice the daily budget, though it will not exceed seven times the daily figure over the week. Reporting covers impressions, clicks, spend, click-through rate, average cost per click and per thousand impressions, and conversions. Clicks refresh about every 15 minutes, while spend can lag by seven to eight hours.
What the evidence says about returns
The size of the prize is clear. PwC’s Africa Entertainment and Media Outlook, published on 13 October, projects South African internet advertising reaching US$3.1 billion (R55.7 billion) in 2030, making it the largest market of the three it studies. PwC’s advice to advertisers fits this launch: “reach is no longer enough”, and trusted first-party data, effective activation and credible measurement will matter more.
The sceptics are specific. eMarketer expects ads in AI chatbots to bring in less than $1 billion in 2026, about 3% of total AI advertising spending, and says performance evidence is still thin. It cites an Ipsos survey in which 63% of US adults said ads in AI search results would make them trust the output less. Early prices were steep: OpenAI started at a $60 CPM with roughly $200,000 up front, before cutting minimums, and eMarketer’s verdict is to treat ChatGPT as “a structured test, not a core channel”.
It is not the first platform to change what reaching customers costs. In September we reported how Meta’s new WhatsApp service-message fees could bite South African marketers, a reminder to budget for price changes on any channel you depend on.
What advertisers should do first
Confirm that the entity you will bill is South African and that the account settings are right before you click create. Work out your break-even point first with our break-even calculator, so you know the most a sale can cost before you set a bid. Start with a small, fixed budget and set up conversion measurement from day one; Ads Manager connects to Google Analytics 4 and Shopify, and static tracking parameters on your landing page URLs let your existing analytics tools see the traffic. Write context hints around the questions your customers actually ask. Make sure OpenAI’s crawlers can reach your landing pages, since it publishes guidance on how to allow them. And treat any customer list you upload for audience targeting as personal information under POPIA, and know the steps if customer data is ever exposed, which our POPIA response plan guide sets out.
Watch two developments. OpenAI says its next phase brings more formats, objectives, buying options and measurement, and it is testing Sponsored Agents, a format that lets people chat with an AI representative of a business from an ad. That format is currently limited to selected advertisers in an alpha test, and OpenAI is not accepting requests for early access. For owners weighing where else AI belongs in the business, our practical guide to AI tools for South African owners covers the options.
