OpenAI opens ChatGPT Ads in 26 more countries, reaching 89
OpenAI announced on October 21, 2026 that ChatGPT Ads is expanding to 26 additional countries, taking availability to 89. The company says more than 100,000 advertisers have run campaigns since ads began. Separately, creative enhancements for self-serve campaigns switch on automatically at the end of October.
Two OpenAI announcements, one picture
In its October 21, 2026 announcement, OpenAI said ChatGPT Ads is expanding to 26 additional countries and is now available in 89 worldwide. The company puts ChatGPT's weekly users at more than 1.2 billion and says over 100,000 advertisers have run campaigns since ads launched just over eight months ago. That count is OpenAI's own and cumulative, not a figure for active advertisers.
Two related developments sit alongside it. One is an engineering post OpenAI published the same day, describing how ad selection runs in a service apart from answer generation. The other is an email to advertisers reported by Search Engine Roundtable on October 20: creative enhancements will be enabled for new and existing self-serve ChatGPT Ads campaigns. This piece covers all three because the decisions they raise for an advertiser meet in the same channel.
New countries, plans and the enhancement settings
Following launches in Mexico and Brazil, OpenAI says 14 more Latin American countries join, including Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Peru. The rollout also reaches further markets in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia; the examples OpenAI names are Nigeria, South Africa, Serbia, Ukraine, Cambodia, Bangladesh and Pakistan. In these countries advertisers can reach ChatGPT Ads through technology partners or through self-service access in Ads Manager. Per OpenAI: "Ads will appear only on the Free and Go plans." Plus, Pro and Enterprise subscriptions stay ad-free. OpenAI also says conversations are kept private from advertisers, customer data is not sold, ads are clearly labeled and they do not influence answers. According to OpenAI, the next phase covers additional formats, objectives, buying options and measurement. A separate OpenAI post on Europe, dated August 18, 2026, covers 31 European markets, and its August 31 update says self-service access through Ads Manager is available across them.
On creative enhancements, OpenAI's help page says the feature switches on by default for both new and existing campaigns from Thursday, October 29, 2026. The email text quoted by Search Engine Roundtable gives Friday, October 30, 2026. The two sources are a day apart and neither reconciles the difference, so advertisers should check the notice in their own account. According to the help page, OpenAI works from the advertiser's existing ad and landing-page content. The changes can cover headlines and descriptions (new or rewritten), resized images, an optimized destination URL and translated ad text. Versions can be produced ahead of time or generated live from the conversation. Advertisers can switch the setting at any time under Manage settings in Ads Manager; opt-outs already set at account or campaign level stay in place, and a campaign's own setting overrides the account default. The FAQ on the help page adds that advertisers will not get a preview of each variation.
For advertisers, the question is who writes the creative
The expansion is one more sign that ChatGPT is becoming a channel worth tracking next to Google and Meta, but it is not evidence of performance. The 100,000 figure counts advertisers that have run campaigns and says nothing about results. The same-day engineering post says ad selection runs in its own service, so ChatGPT's organic response continues if the ads system is unavailable or slow, and returning no ad is described as an ordinary outcome. The post also says ChatGPT Ads passed a $1 billion annualized revenue run rate in under 200 days; that is OpenAI's own statement, not an independently verified number.
The tension in the creative enhancements is about whose voice the final ad carries. Search Engine Roundtable quotes the email as saying "these ads can run automatically without requiring you to review or approve each version", and the help page repeats the point. OpenAI also cautions that shifts in reported metrics over time are not, by themselves, proof of what the enhancements did. Advertiser Melissa Mackey wrote on X that she paused her ChatGPT ads test over poor lead quality, and Anthony Higman also criticised the change; these are individual reactions relayed through Search Engine Roundtable. PPC Land covered the same email in its October 21 roundup, citing Search Engine Roundtable. For an earlier look at ChatGPT ad performance, see our report on click-through rates.
The sources say nothing about Türkiye, so this section is commentary
None of the six source pages we opened (three OpenAI posts, the help page, Search Engine Roundtable and PPC Land) mentions Türkiye. OpenAI says the expansion covers markets in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia, but the country list is introduced with "including" and Türkiye is not among the named examples; that does not mean Türkiye is in or out of the 89, only that the sources do not say. This section is therefore not a fact drawn from the sources but explicitly UNALSOFT commentary.
Our reading: exporters in Türkiye can weigh target markets against the 89-country list, but for a local advertiser today this is a watch item more than a concrete budget decision. The unknowns: whether Türkiye has access, pricing, minimum spend and ad formats in the new countries, and whether creative enhancements apply in Türkiye or outside the US, are not stated in the sources. No performance data on enhanced ads has been published either.
The UNALSOFT view
We summarise this in two sentences: the channel is growing, but the share of control is shifting. Once creative enhancements are on, the final word on brand copy can move from the advertiser to the platform, so it makes sense to choose the setting deliberately before the start date, review opt-out choices campaign by campaign, and label the change separately in your reporting. The method we use for paid social and search is the same: try a new channel with a small test budget and read the result in your own data. More on that on our ad management page.
Sources
OpenAI, ChatGPT Ads expands to 26 new countries · OpenAI, building the ChatGPT ad stack (engineering) · OpenAI, ChatGPT Ads expands across Europe · OpenAI Help Center, creative enhancements for ChatGPT Ads · Search Engine Roundtable, creative enhancements being enabled · PPC Land, OpenAI turns on automatic ad rewrites
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