As of September 1, 2026, theOpenAI Ads Manager is available for self-service in France. The channel is open with no minimum budget, and the first question advertisers almost always ask is the same: how much should I bid, and on what model?
The answer isn't just a simple copy-paste of Google Ads. ChatGPT Ads does not operate on keywords, does not offer Smart Bidding in the way we understand it on Google, and only displays one ad per response. The bidding levers are therefore limited, but how you balance them has a direct impact on your acquisition cost. Here are the available strategies, the bidding logic that governs them, and how to manage them.
How does bidding work on ChatGPT Ads?
A second-price auction weighted by relevance
OpenAI uses a second-price auction weighted by relevance to select which ad is displayed. In practical terms, the advertiser who wins the impression does not pay their maximum bid, but rather an amount determined by the next highest competitor.
Most importantly, the bid alone doesn't decide everything: it is weighted by a relevance score calculated based on the conversation context, the provided context hints, the ad's title and description, and the content of the landing page.
This weighting has a very practical consequence: on this channel, improving an ad's relevance is often more cost-effective than raising your bid. An advertiser who is highly aligned with the expressed intent can win the impression over a higher but poorly targeted bid.
How this differs from Google Ads
Four differences define how you manage bids on ChatGPT Ads.
• No keywords. Targeting is based on contextual cues describing conversations, topics, or needs, rather than exact queries. You bid on intent, not on phrases.
• Only one ad per response. Inventory is scarce by design: there is no second or third fallback position.
• No advanced automated bidding. No equivalent to tROAS or "maximize conversions": the advertiser sets a maximum bid or bid cap, and the platform handles the rest.
• No personalization in Europe. European campaigns do not leverage conversation history or user memory. The immediate context is the only truly actionable signal.
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The three bidding strategies available on ChatGPT Ads
1. CPM, for Reach objectives
The Reach objective optimizes delivery for impressions and charges per thousand impressions. The maximum bid is set at the ad group level, with a default value of around $60 CPM in markets that are already open.
This is the most suitable mode for a brand awareness objective, a share-of-voice strategy within a conversation topic, or a conquest campaign against an established competitor. It also becomes the most cost-effective mode once the CTR is high, as the effective cost-per-click drops automatically.
2. CPC, for the Clicks objective
The Clicks objective optimizes delivery for clicks and only charges for valid clicks. OpenAI recommends starting with a maximum bid between $3 and $5 per click. The risk is better contained: an ad that receives few clicks will not consume your budget.
This is the preferred starting point for a first campaign. It allows you to build a CTR history by intent cluster, which will then serve as a basis for deciding whether to switch to CPM or conversion optimization.
3. oCPC, the conversion-oriented bid
The Conversions objective charges per valid click but directs delivery toward a conversion event. The advertiser no longer sets a fixed bid; instead, they define a bid cap, which is the maximum amount they are willing to bid for a conversion.
Three precautions to keep in mind before activating it. First, this bid cap is neither a charged price nor a guaranteed cost-per-acquisition; it is a bidding ceiling. Second, the objective and the conversion event are locked in upon campaign creation, with only one standard event supported. Finally, OpenAI does not yet provide a recommended bid for this mode, and its rollout remains gradual depending on accounts and markets: it is best to check its availability in the Ads Manager before building a media plan around it.
Which bidding strategy should you choose based on your objective?
CPM is justified when the goal is reach: occupying a conversation space, testing new intent clusters to see which ones generate engagement, or maintaining share of voice against a competitor. Billing per thousand impressions makes spending predictable but independent of performance, which requires closely monitoring three indicators: CTR, the resulting effective CPC, and trends in brand searches, which remains the best signal of a brand awareness campaign's impact on this channel.
CPC is the default mode for a first campaign. As long as there is no CTR history for your intents, it avoids paying for impressions that do not turn into visits, and it caps the cost of traffic at a known value. The key metrics to monitor are standard: click volume, average CPC actually charged—almost always lower than the maximum bid due to second-price auctioning—cost per lead, and landing page conversion rate.
oCPC only makes sense once two conditions are met: reliable tracking and a sufficient volume of conversions for the optimization to have enough data to work with. Billing remains based on valid clicks, but delivery is geared toward the declared conversion event, and the bid cap replaces the fixed bid. Management then shifts toward cost per conversion and ROAS, keeping in mind that the bid cap is a bidding ceiling and not a cost-per-acquisition commitment.
In most accounts, the logical trajectory is the same: start with CPC to learn, switch certain clusters to CPM when their CTR justifies it, and reserve oCPC for campaigns that already have an actionable conversion history.
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CPM or CPC: a calculated trade-off
The choice between CPM and CPC is not a matter of preference; it is an equation. You simply need to convert a CPM into an effective cost-per-click:
Effective CPC = CPM ÷ (CTR × 1,000)
With a $42 CPM, a 1.5% CTR brings the click cost to $2.80—cheaper than a $4 CPC bid. The same CPM with a 0.5% CTR drives the effective click cost up to $8.40, more than double the CPC. The tipping point here is around a 1.05% CTR.
In practice, the CTRs reported by initial tests are most often between 0.6% and 1.3%, meaning they fall on either side of this threshold. Two consequences: CPC remains the safest mode at launch, and switching to CPM is only justified for intent clusters that consistently exceed the threshold, ideally for two consecutive weeks.
These benchmarks come from markets that opened before France, primarily the United States. The French inventory is too new to have its own benchmark: these figures serve to frame an initial hypothesis, not to set a target.
How to manage your bids on a daily basis
Work with a daily budget, not a total budget
A campaign's total budget acts as a spending cap, not a smoothing tool: there is no guarantee of even distribution over time, and the budget can be exhausted quickly. The daily budget is the real management lever and the safeguard to put in place right from launch.
One intent per ad group
Bids are set at the ad group level. Grouping intents of very different values into the same ad group means paying the same price for a user in the discovery phase as for a user in the comparison phase. Fine segmentation by intent, with homogeneous context hints, is the prerequisite for differentiating bids.
Improve relevance before raising the bid
Since selection is weighted by relevance, your first reaction to under-delivery should not be to increase the bid. Revising the headline, description, visual, and especially the consistency between the ad and the landing page generally has more impact, at a constant budget, than an extra dollar of bidding.
Use audiences as a bid modifier
Custom audiences, built from email lists or phone numbers (raw or SHA-256 hashed), accept up to 5 million identifiers and require a match threshold of approximately 25,000 users to be activated. They are used to include, exclude, or apply a bid multiplier at the ad group level. Note: they cannot be modified after creation, so it is essential to define them carefully beforehand.
Give measurement time
Conversions are reported with a 24 to 48-hour delay, the first-party cookie set by the pixel has a 30-day lifespan, and attributed totals may include modeled conversions. Adjusting your bids every morning based on incomplete data is the best way to create noise. A weekly cadence, with increments of 10 to 20%, is healthier.
The most common mistakes with ChatGPT Ads bidding
• Raising the bid to fix a problem that is actually an issue of relevance or consistency with the landing page.
• Starting directly with conversion optimization without sufficient conversion volume to feed the algorithm.
• Relying on a total budget, thinking it will smooth out spending, only to find the budget exhausted in a few days.
• Reusing display visuals and headlines without adapting them to the conversational tone of the environment.
• Sending traffic to a homepage instead of a page aligned with the expressed intent, which degrades both conversion and relevance scores.
• Forgetting to authorize OpenAI bots (OAI-AdsBot, OAI-SearchBot) in robots.txt, even though the landing page content is part of the evaluation.
• Formulating context hints that target specific individuals rather than contexts or business types: these formulations are rejected.
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Our approach to bidding at datashake
At datashake, we view bidding as an output variable, not a starting point. Before setting an amount, we qualify the offer and its potential on a conversational channel, map the truly addressable intents, structure the ad groups and context hints accordingly, set up measurement, and only then do we optimize bids cluster by cluster.
This sequencing is what allows us to distinguish an intent worth $6 per click from one not worth $2, and to avoid the most costly reflex on a new channel: bidding by gut feeling due to a lack of measurement structure.
Conclusion
Bidding strategies on ChatGPT Ads come in three modes: CPM for reach, CPC to control traffic costs, and oCPC to optimize for conversions once measurement is in place. CPC remains the most reasonable entry point, and the shift to CPM or conversion optimization should be triggered based on observed data, not intuition.
But the most important work happens before the bid. With a relevance-weighted bid, a single ad per response, and intent-based targeting, the quality of your structure and measurement determines your acquisition cost far more reliably than the amount you bid. The channel is still young and bids are still low: this is precisely the time to build that structure.
FAQ
Which bidding strategy should I choose for my first ChatGPT Ads campaign?
CPC, with a maximum bid between $3 and $5, is the recommended starting point. It limits risk and helps build a CTR history based on intent, which is essential for later transitioning to CPM or conversion-based optimization.
What is the average CPC on ChatGPT Ads?
Early feedback places the CPC between $3 and $5 in markets that opened before France, with CTRs generally ranging from 0.6% to 1.3%. There is no reliable French benchmark yet: these figures should be used to frame a hypothesis, not to set a target.
Are there automated bidding options like on Google Ads?
There is no equivalent to Smart Bidding at this stage. Advertisers set a maximum bid for CPM or CPC, or a bid cap for conversion goals. Automation focuses on the contextual selection of ads, not on bid management.
Is there a minimum budget for bidding on ChatGPT Ads?
No. The thresholds that existed during the pilot launch were gradually removed before the self-service platform opened. However, it is still necessary to plan a test budget consistent with a multi-dollar CPC to obtain actionable data.
How do I know if I should switch from CPC to CPM?
By comparing the effective CPC of the CPM (CPM ÷ (CTR × 1,000)) to your CPC bid. If the CTR of a cluster exceeds the tipping point—often around 1%—for two consecutive weeks, a CPM test on that cluster is justified, without switching the entire account.
Does the oCPC bid cap guarantee a cost per acquisition?
No. It is a bid ceiling, not a billed price or a guaranteed cost per acquisition. Billing is still based on valid clicks, and the actual cost per conversion depends on the landing page's conversion rate.
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