ChatGPT Ads

ChatGPT Ads in Sweden: what we know and what no one knows yet

At the end of August 2026, ChatGPT started displaying ads in Sweden. Since then, we have received the same question from several customers: should we be there?

The honest answer is that it's too early to tell. The service is new, it changes every week, and there are no independent figures yet on how it performs in Sweden.

What can be done is to clarify what actually applies today and to look at the first own figures. This review is based on OpenAI's own help pages, ad policy and press releases, and on the campaigns we ourselves have run in the past month: one for Pigment and one for a customer who is a craftsman.

Brief: what is ChatGPT Ads?

ChatGPT Ads is OpenAI's advertising platform. The ads are displayed under ChatGPT's responses, are labeled as sponsored, and are separate from the actual response.

An ad consists of the advertiser's name, logo, a headline, a short text, an image, and a link to your website.

According to OpenAI, the ads do not affect what ChatGPT responds, and advertisers do not get access to users' conversations.

How far has it come?

Here is the timeline as it appears in OpenAI's own announcements:

  • February 2026: the first ads are tested in the USA.
  • May 2026: the self-service tool Ads Manager opens in beta version, and you can start paying per click.
  • August 19, 2026: OpenAI announces that ads will come to 31 European countries, including Sweden, the following week. Initially, they are sold via OpenAI's sales team, agencies, and technical partners.
  • August 26, 2026: OpenAI writes that self-service opens in Europe the same day.
  • September 16, 2026: OpenAI introduces a new ad format, Sponsored Agents, and integrations with HubSpot and Shopify.
  • End of September 2026: Sweden goes from "coming soon" to available for self-service on OpenAI's own overview page.

However, it took a couple of extra weeks in practice. On September 24, OpenAI's own overview still listed Sweden as "coming soon," four weeks after self-service was supposed to have opened. Since September 28, Sweden is listed as available for self-service on the same page.

So: expect the dates in press releases to be the target, not always what actually applies to your account. Log in to ads.openai.com and check for yourself before planning anything.

OpenAI states that tens of thousands of advertisers have used the platform globally. How many advertise in Sweden is not disclosed.

ChatGPT Ads Manager

Who sees the ads?

Not everyone who uses ChatGPT. This is perhaps the most important limitation to be aware of.

Ads are only shown to users with the free version and the cheap Go plan. Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Edu have no ads, and ads are not shown to accounts deemed to belong to persons under 18 years of age.

For companies that sell to other companies, this is important. Those who use ChatGPT the most at work often have a paid account or an account through the employer, and you won't reach them with ads.

How is the ad selected?

Here, ChatGPT differs from Google.

In Google Ads, you choose keywords and bid on them. In ChatGPT, there are no keywords in that sense. The ad is selected based on the conversation: what the user is asking about, what they seem to want to achieve, and how well it matches the ad's headline, text, and landing page.

As an advertiser, you can add so-called context hints, descriptions of which topics and situations your offer fits. OpenAI explicitly states that they guide the matching but do not function as exact keywords.

The difference is most evident with an example. A search on Google might be "bathroom renovation price." A question to ChatGPT might be "how much does it cost to renovate a bathroom of eight square meters in Stockholm, and how long does it take?" The second question says much more about what the person needs.

Whether this leads to better ads in practice cannot be said yet. That is precisely what no one has independent data on.

In Sweden, the ads become less personal

One thing that is rarely mentioned: personalized ads are initially not available in the EU, EEA, and Switzerland.

In the USA, ChatGPT can also use signals from the user's previous conversations when the ad is selected, if the user allows it. Here in Sweden, the ad is based on the ongoing conversation. This limits how accurate the system can become, and it makes American results difficult to transfer to Swedish conditions.

Create campaign in ChatGPT Ads

What can you advertise about?

It's far from everything. According to OpenAI's ad policy, during the test period, consumer areas are primarily applicable:

  • lifestyle and household products
  • local services
  • travel and experiences
  • digital products and education

Finance, healthcare, and law are tested individually and approved manually. Politics, gambling, alcohol, dating, and health claims are not allowed.

So check that your industry is approved before you spend time on a campaign. The policy itself says that the list will change.

Performance overview in ChatGPT Ads

What does it cost and how do you measure?

You pay either per thousand impressions or per click and set a max bid. The ads are distributed in an auction where both bid and relevance are counted. There are also campaigns that optimize for conversions, but they are still charged per click.

OpenAI recommends starting with a max bid of 3–5 dollars per click. It's a starting bid to get going, not a market price. In our own campaigns, the clicks have cost significantly less, more on that below.

For measurement, there is today:

  • a tracking pixel and an API for conversions
  • connections to external measurement tools
  • own audiences
  • choice of country and platform
  • product feeds for e-commerce

The reports show impressions, clicks, cost, click-through rate, average price, and conversions. These are the basics, but not more. Those familiar with Google Ads or Meta will find significantly fewer tools for testing, audiences, and follow-up.

A practical tip that applies regardless: add UTM parameters to all links, so that traffic from ChatGPT is visible separately in your own analysis. Then you don't have to rely solely on the platform's own figures.

Key figures from ChatGPT Ads from Pigment

Our own first numbers

We have run ChatGPT Ads for about a month, for ourselves and for a customer who sells craft services to private individuals. At the same time, both have advertised in Google Ads on similar searches, so there is something to compare with.

Before the numbers: the basis is small. It involves 159 clicks in a month, distributed across two advertisers. It's enough to see a direction, not to draw conclusions.

The clicks are cheap

It is immediately visible, and it applies to both.

  • Pigment: just under 18 kronor per click in ChatGPT. In Google Ads, we have paid an average of 66 kronor for clicks on keywords like "web agency" and "wordpress web agency."
  • The craftsman: 27 kronor per click in ChatGPT. In Google Ads, a click on searches like "plumber stockholm" and "gas installer stockholm" costs an average of 102 kronor, calculated without searches on the company's own name.

In both cases, a click in ChatGPT is about a quarter as expensive as in Google.

This aligns with what one can expect from a new channel with few advertisers. Google has a mature auction landscape where competitors have been bidding against each other for many years. How long the price difference will last in ChatGPT, no one knows.

Few clicks, and no inquiries yet

The percentage of people clicking is low. Both campaigns are just under one percent. The ad appears under a response that has already answered the question, and it shows.

And the most important: none of the campaigns have registered a single conversion in ChatGPT Ads, neither inquiries nor bookings.

Conversion tracking is enabled in both accounts, so it's not a matter of missing measurement.

In Google Ads, about one in ten clicks leads to an inquiry with the craftsman. If the clicks from ChatGPT had behaved similarly, there should have been about four. There were none.

Four expected versus zero are still small numbers, and a month is a short time. There may be explanations that are not visible in the numbers: that someone clicking from a ChatGPT response is earlier in their decision and returns later via another channel, or that the ad appears in conversations where the question is already answered. But these are guesses. What we know is that the clicks have come and the inquiries have not.

Cheap clicks are only cheap if they lead somewhere. That's the question we're trying to answer now.

What has received the most attention is Sponsored Agents. Instead of clicking through to a website, the user can open a conversation with the company's own AI assistant directly in ChatGPT, ask questions, and proceed when they are ready.

It's an interesting direction. But it's important to be clear about the situation: Sponsored Agents are being tested only in the USA, with a small number of selected advertisers. OpenAI is not accepting applications to participate.

For Swedish companies, it's something to monitor, not something to plan for.

What we don't know yet

This list is at least as important as the rest of the article:

  • How many Swedes see the ads. OpenAI does not disclose figures per country.
  • What a click costs in Sweden overall. There is no public information. Our own campaigns are at 18–27 kronor, but that's two advertisers over a month.
  • If the clicks lead to business. In our campaigns, no conversions have been registered yet.
  • What the competition looks like. Few advertisers can mean cheap clicks, but there is no statistic showing how many are already active here.
  • How the ads perform. The results published come from OpenAI themselves or from their partners. It is supplier data, not independent measurements.
  • What the service will look like in six months. New features have been coming roughly every other week since spring.

We asked ChatGPT to describe its own advertising service

Before writing this article, we asked ChatGPT to summarize the situation for ChatGPT Ads in Sweden. The response was well-written, well-structured, and mostly correct. But when we checked it against OpenAI's own pages, three things were incorrect:

  • ChatGPT stated that self-service opened on August 31 and that Swedish companies can buy ads directly today. OpenAI's own announcement says August 26, and their availability page still lists Sweden as "coming soon."
  • ChatGPT suggested law, insurance, and business systems as suitable industries. According to the ad policy, law and finance are restricted and tested manually.
  • ChatGPT described Sponsored Agents without mentioning that they are only tested in the USA.

And the most important difference for Swedish advertisers, that personalized ads are not available in the EU, was not mentioned at all.

This is not a criticism of the tool. It is a reminder of why the primary source is still needed, especially for something that changes so quickly.

How we would think

We would not move money from a working Google Ads campaign to ChatGPT Ads today. Google and Meta have many years of development in measurement, audiences, and automation that ChatGPT still lacks.

But we would also not disregard the channel. If you want to try:

  1. Check that you can and are allowed to advertise. Is Ads Manager open for your account, and is your industry approved?
  2. Start small and limited. A separate test budget that is not taken from what already works.
  3. Set up and test conversion tracking before you start. Send a test inquiry and check that it appears in Ads Manager. Otherwise, you don't know if zero means zero.
  4. Choose an offer where people need to think before they buy. That's where the conversations become long and the questions clear, and where the difference from Google should be noticeable first, if it exists.
  5. Measure yourself. UTM parameters and own conversion tracking, so you can compare with other channels on the same terms.
  6. Decide in advance what counts as a good result. Otherwise, it will be difficult to know if the test succeeded.

ChatGPT Ads is the paid part of something larger. The organic part is to be mentioned and cited in the actual response, what is sometimes called GEO.

The two are partly connected. Both are based on the same thing: that the content on your website clearly describes what you offer, for whom, and why. An ad that leads to an unclear landing page is matched worse, and the same lack of clarity means you are not cited.

We have written more about the organic side in How to be visible when the answer is written by a machine.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is ChatGPT Ads available in Sweden?
Yes. OpenAI started displaying ads in Sweden at the end of August 2026 as part of a launch in 31 European countries. Self-service via Ads Manager has been available for Swedish advertisers since the end of September.

Who sees ads in ChatGPT?
Users with the free version and the Go plan. Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Edu have no ads, and ads are not shown to persons under 18 years of age.

Is ChatGPT Ads cheaper than Google Ads?
Per click, yes, at least for now. In our campaigns, a click cost about a quarter of what it costs in Google Ads. But the clicks have not yet resulted in any registered conversions, and the price says nothing about what each click is worth.

Do the ads affect ChatGPT's responses?
According to OpenAI, no. The ads are displayed under the response, are labeled as sponsored, and should not affect what ChatGPT responds.

Can you choose keywords in ChatGPT Ads?
Not in the same way as in Google Ads. The ad is selected based on the context of the conversation. The advertiser can describe relevant topics, so-called context hints, but they do not function as exact keywords.

What does ChatGPT Ads cost?
You pay per click or per thousand impressions and set your own max bid. OpenAI recommends starting at 3–5 dollars per click. In our own campaigns, a click has cost 18–27 kronor, about a quarter of what a corresponding click costs in Google Ads. It's two advertisers over a month, so see it as an indication.

Are the ads personalized in Sweden?
No, not initially. Personalized ads are not available in the EU, EEA, and Switzerland. The ads are based on the ongoing conversation.

Which industries can advertise?
During the test period, primarily consumer areas such as lifestyle, household, local services, travel, and education. Finance, healthcare, and law are tested manually. Politics, gambling, alcohol, and dating are not allowed.

What are Sponsored Agents?
An ad format where the user can converse with a company's AI assistant directly in ChatGPT. It is tested only in the USA with a few selected advertisers.

Are you wondering if ChatGPT Ads is right for you? We help you try the channel without jeopardizing what already works.

Read more about our work with paid search advertising · Read about our AI solutions

Sources

All retrieved and read on September 24, 2026.