What Korean brands need to know when starting ChatGPT ads

Korean brands can now run ChatGPT ads themselves. OpenAI's Ads Manager availability page lists Korea as available for self-serve, and an ad pilot for users in Korea started on June 19, 2026 (Money Today report). Ads are shown separately below the answer, and advertisers receive only aggregated performance figures.

The answer body cannot be bought with ads. The brands ChatGPT mentions and recommends in the body of its answers are excluded from bidding, so you have to earn them through content. Below are the items PION checks first when it designs ChatGPT ad operations and answer-citation work together.

1. What are the sign-up requirements for a Korean legal entity?

If the legal entity that advertises and pays is based in a country on OpenAI's country list, it can sign up for self-serve, and Korean entities qualify. When the console (ads.openai.com) first opened in May 2026, only US businesses could sign up, and at the same time the previous $50,000 minimum spend requirement was dropped (Digiday report).

The sign-up process goes in the following order.

1. Entering business details (name, website, logo, industry) and the ad account's country, currency, and time zone
2. Account verification through Persona and review against OpenAI's ad policies
3. Finalizing the account name and logo that will appear in ads
4. Setting up a billing profile and registering a credit card

Campaigns do not deliver until all required steps are complete. An agency handling several advertisers has to create a separate account for each advertiser. Political ads are not accepted, and regulated industries such as health and finance can advertise only if they meet additional eligibility requirements.

2. Where do ads appear, and who sees them?

Ads appear separately below ChatGPT's answer with a Sponsored label, and they are shown to users on the free and Go plans. According to OpenAI's help article on ads in ChatGPT, there are no ads on the Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, or Edu plans, for accounts identified as under 18, or in Temporary Chats. Ads are also not placed near conversations on sensitive topics such as personal health, mental health, or politics.

The first test started in the US on February 9, 2026, and ads appeared in a separate area below the answer without entering the answer body (Search Engine Land report). Before the Korea pilot, ads were introduced first in the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

Each ad includes the advertiser name, favicon, title, description copy, landing page, and an image. OpenAI's basics guide to ads explains that ads are chosen by looking at the context and intent of the conversation, the landing page, the title and copy, and the context hints (context_hints) the advertiser provides. Context hints are not exact-match keywords and do not guarantee delivery.

3. The data advertisers get and the data they don't

Advertisers receive only aggregated performance such as impressions, clicks, spend, CTR, average CPC, average CPM, and conversions, not the content of users' conversations. The ads help article states that advertisers cannot access chats, chat history, memories, or personal details.

A conversion is credited to an ad when it happens within a set period after the ad is clicked. The reporting documentation sets that period at 7, 14, or 30 days, with 30 days as the default, and the dedicated conversion report also counts conversions within 1 day of seeing the ad separately. You can see why the data you don't get is blocked in The data you can and cannot get from ChatGPT Ads.

4. How are answer-body citations (GEO) and ads divided?

Ads appear in the area below the answer through bidding, while brand citations in the answer body are excluded from bidding and can be earned only through content. OpenAI states that ads run on systems separate from the chat model and that advertisers cannot change or rank ChatGPT's answers.

For a site to appear as a source in ChatGPT search answers, OAI-SearchBot must be allowed in robots.txt. OpenAI's crawler documentation states that sites that block this bot are not shown in ChatGPT search answers. You can see how to split ad placements and the answer body between providers in What a ChatGPT marketing agency actually does.

5. In what order should you start?

Go in this order: check the country, get through account review, prepare conversion measurement, set up campaigns, and review the first week's metrics. Measurement has to be ready before the campaign so that conversions are captured from the first impression.

1. Check the Ads Manager availability page to see whether the country of the legal entity that will advertise is available for self-serve.
2. Create an account and wait for Persona verification and the ad policy review. Reviews are handled in the order applications arrive, so they take time.
3. Install the pixel or the Conversions API on your landing page, and choose the events that fit your goal, such as purchases, leads, or registrations, from the 12 standard events in the list of supported events. If you add tracking parameters such as UTM to the landing URL, GA4 can also count traffic from ChatGPT ads separately.
4. Create them in the order of campaign, ad group, and ad, and for each ad group, write context hints that describe which conversations and topics the ad suits. For click campaigns, OpenAI recommends starting the maximum bid at $3–5 per click.
5. Impressions, clicks, and CTR refresh about every 15 minutes, while spend is reflected 7–8 hours later. Even if spend shows 0 on the first day, do not read that as meaning there are no charges.

How PION structures its answer-body citation work is laid out in the managed GEO service overview. Separately from ads, you can check whether your site is ready to be cited in the answer body with the AI answer visibility basics check.