Top 10 Best ChatGPT Ads Agencies in 2026

We reviewed 58 agencies that run or market ads in ChatGPT, read every case study and service page they publish, checked each platform claim against OpenAI's own documentation, and selected the best chatgpt ads agencies for brands and apps testing ads in ChatGPT in 2026. Seven of the 58 publish a numeric ChatGPT Ads result, five of them are shortlisted here, and three of those five stop at a click. OpenAI itself publishes deeper, named-brand outcomes than its entire agency ecosystem, and that inversion is the most useful thing a buyer can know before signing anyone.

Ads in ChatGPT are sold by OpenAI and bought in its own Ads Manager at ads.openai.com. This list covers agencies that buy that inventory. GEO and AEO services, which work on whether a brand gets cited in AI answers organically, are a different product, and we explain the difference below because roughly a third of the companies marketing themselves for this keyword are selling that instead.

The scale, from OpenAI's own announcements. More than 1.2 billion people use ChatGPT each week, and over 100,000 advertisers have run campaigns since ads launched in February 2026. Read the audience figure carefully: it is total platform usage, not the addressable ad audience. Ads appear only on the Free and Go plans, never to accounts identified as under 18, never near personal health, mental health or politics, never in Temporary Chats, and personalised ads are not initially available in the European Economic Area or Switzerland.

TL;DR

• Ads in ChatGPT launched in the United States on 9 February 2026 and are now available in 89 countries. OpenAI lists self-service Ads Manager as available in all of them, including the US, the UK, every Tier-1 EU market and Ukraine.
• Access is not a differentiator. Over 100,000 advertisers have already run campaigns, there is no certification programme and no badge to hold. Seven of the 58 agencies we reviewed advertise partner status, certification or privileged access beyond what OpenAI has granted. OpenAI has named five agency partners and operates no certification programme.
• There is no app-install campaign objective. You buy Reach, Clicks or Conversions to a tracking link, which makes app growth here a web-to-app and attribution problem rather than an install-campaign problem.
• App measurement does work. OpenAI supports seven mobile measurement partners: Adjust, Airbridge, AppsFlyer, Branch, Kochava, Singular and Tenjin.
• Seven of the 58 agencies publish a numeric ChatGPT Ads result. Five are shortlisted here, and three of those five stop at a click or an impression. OpenAI publishes cost per acquisition against a benchmark, incrementality and new-customer share for named brands.
• Best for subscription apps: Applica. Most transparent published account data: SmartSites. Most rigorous published auction economics: Brainlabs. Best-sourced service page: Admiral Media.

A chatgpt ads agency gets an Ads Manager account, designs a test with a budget and a success criterion, writes creative for a conversational context, wires conversion tracking through the OpenAI pixel, the Conversions API or an MMP, and then reports in the same currency as your other channels: trials, purchases and payback rather than impressions. An openai ads agency and a chatgpt ads agency are the same purchase, since OpenAI sells the inventory itself.

How we selected. Two questions, in order. Can this agency actually buy the inventory, and does it describe the platform the way OpenAI documents it. Then, how far down the funnel does its published ChatGPT result go: revenue and payer figures count for more than roas, roas more than cpa, cpa more than cpc, and an unlabelled number counts for nothing. Access level was recorded only where OpenAI has publicly named a partner. We did not treat a logo in a partner strip as a relationship.

The problems this list is meant to solve are specific to a channel this young. No published benchmarks for cost per trial or payback, so a test without a stated success criterion runs forever. Agencies selling organic AI visibility under a paid-ads label. Attribution left on platform-reported numbers for a placement nobody has a baseline for. Brand safety questions in answer surfaces. And the structural one: because there is no install objective, an app advertiser who treats this like Meta or Apple Ads will measure the wrong thing from day one.

Below are ten agencies worth a conversation, what each one actually proves, and who each one is for.

Why chatgpt advertising agencies matter in 2026

ChatGPT is the largest of the new ai search ads surfaces, and ai search behaves differently from both search and social.

The placement sits inside a decision, not beside one. People arrive mid-research, explain what they want and refine it in conversation. An ad below that answer reaches someone who has already described their problem, which is closer to intent targeting on search than to interruption on social.

The platform is now a real ad product, not a pilot. Target CPA and Target CPC bidding, custom audience lists with a 25,000 matched-user minimum, product feed campaigns, a pixel, a Conversions API, a campaign API and seven MMPs. Legacy manual bidding retires on 1 January 2027.

Answers are not for sale, and that matters commercially. OpenAI states that ads run on separate systems from the chat model and that advertisers have no ability to shape, rank or alter ChatGPT's responses. Any pitch that offers to put your brand inside the answer is selling something that does not exist.

Our guide to app growth strategy in 2026: AI, AEO and UA covers how the two sit together.

Measurement is the whole job. OpenAI's reporting has no revenue field, so return is judged on your own books. That is why the agencies worth hiring talk about conversion tracking, attribution and incrementality rather than about access.

For apps, the gap is the objective. App installs cannot be bought as an objective here, so they have to be measured through an MMP tracking link. No install objective exists. The workable route is a tracking link from your MMP as the ad destination, a web-to-app funnel, or a sponsored Business Agent, which became an available ad destination in November 2026.

That is why the top chatgpt ads agencies are now judged on what they measure, not on what access they claim. The chatgpt advertising agencies worth a shortlist talk about instrumentation before they talk about access.

The best ChatGPT ads agencies at a glance

Founded, team and HQ are given as each agency states them, with the source named where the agency itself does not publish the number. In this field most do not.

1. Applica: a ChatGPT test designed to produce a decision

Applica is a mobile app growth agency for subscription apps in FinTech, WellTech and EdTech. Its position on this channel is narrow and deliberate. ChatGPT is a test, not a core channel, and the value it adds is in the two places the channel is actually hard: designing a test that ends in a decision, and measuring a placement with no install objective and no revenue field in its own reporting.

Founded 2022 · HQ London · Team 25+ specialists · ChatGPT ads specialties performance marketing for mobile apps applied to a new channel: test design with stated budget, duration and success criteria, MMP tracking links as ad destinations, web-to-app funnels, conversion tracking through the pixel and Conversions API, results read against Meta, Apple Ads and Google

Access. No partner status, because none exists to hold. Applica buys through OpenAI's self-service Ads Manager, which OpenAI lists as available in the United Kingdom and Ukraine, where its team sits. No waitlist, no minimum, no intermediary.

What Applica publishes, with the channel and the client named

• NEMO, an investing app: cost per first-time deposit down 4x over seven months, 8x lower on Meta and 3x lower on Google Ads, across 700+ tested creatives
• 7 Minute Workout: 201.2% total ARPU uplift and 50% ARR growth through disciplined paywall and pricing testing
• Fabulous: +40% ARPU within four weeks of a web-to-app funnel audit and a new paywall strategy
• TouchRetouch: +41.3% revenue on +53.3% spend in Apple Search Ads, with non-brand ROAS improving nearly 4x

Why that is the relevant proof for this channel. None of it is ChatGPT, and this article says so rather than implying otherwise. What it demonstrates is the two competences the channel actually demands. Fabulous and TouchRetouch are web-to-app and intent-channel work, which is the shape of a ChatGPT buy with no install objective. 7 Minute Workout is a paywall and pricing record, which is what decides whether cheap clicks from a new source become payback. Across the ten agencies shortlisted here, nobody published a ChatGPT result deeper than a cost per click, so adjacent proof measured at the payer level is the honest best available, and it is labelled as adjacent.

Recognition. Business of Apps Top App Marketing Company 2024. Clutch 5.0 from 19 reviews. $100M+ in ad spend managed, 10,000+ ads produced, 500+ growth experiments run and 50+ Tier-1 apps partnered.

Pricing model. A monthly fee plus a percentage of ad spend once media passes a threshold, with creative production included rather than billed per asset. Applica works with subscription apps from $100K MRR.

Best for: subscription apps that want this channel tested with a budget, a deadline and a number that decides it.

2. SmartSites: the only agency publishing its own account data

A performance PPC shop for DTC and local businesses, and the only agency anywhere that publishes aggregate ChatGPT Ads data from its own accounts with the sample size and date range attached.

Founded 2011 · HQ not stated on its own site; Clutch lists Paramus, New Jersey · Team 370+ stated on its own site · Clutch 4.9 from 370 reviews

Across all nine ChatGPT Ads accounts it manages, between 4 June and 30 September 2026, it reports $39,527 of spend buying 979,144 impressions and 8,718 clicks, a 0.89% click-through rate and $4.53 per click overall, with cpc falling from $7.15 in July to $3.12 in September. For a named client, Aquasure, it reports an 86% higher click-through rate month over month.

It also publishes the channel's real constraint in plain words: OpenAI's reporting has no revenue field, so return has to be judged on your own books rather than in the platform. That single observation is more useful than most of the service pages in this category.

The limit is depth. The deepest metric anywhere in its disclosure is a cost per click, there is no roas or revenue outcome, and ChatGPT sits as one section of a general PPC page rather than a built-out practice.

Best for: DTC and ecommerce brands who want a channel test with a public benchmark to compare against.

3. Brainlabs: the only published auction economics, and an argument against spending

A data-led paid media agency that has published its own media-cost testing on ChatGPT inventory, and reached a conclusion that works against its own commercial interest.

Founded 2012 · HQ not stated on its own site · Team 1,000+ stated · Clutch 5.0 from one review, so effectively no third-party proof

Its own testing landed cpm closer to $40, ranging from roughly $15 on an uncontested prompt to about $60 on a competitive one, and it found better cost per click by bidding on cpm rather than cpc. Its published position is that the cpm maths does not hold up yet for many advertisers, and it has described the spend publicly as still feeling like money going into a black box.

Two things to know. That candour is the reason it ranks third: an agency that publishes an unflattering number is telling you how it will report yours. And its testing predates OpenAI's custom audience documentation, so its statement that there is no audience targeting is now out of date. Ask what has changed since it published.

Best for: brands that want a numerate, sceptical read before committing budget.

4. Havas Media: a named client, a live campaign, and nothing published about it

One of the five agencies OpenAI has publicly named as an agency partner, and the only agency in this review with a confirmed, dated campaign for a named enterprise client on the channel.

Founded 1835 per its own site · HQ not stated · Team nearly 23,000 stated at group level · Clutch profile exists with no reviews

Its Havas Market arm deployed a campaign for EDF in late August 2026, with clicks reported in trade press at under one euro. OpenAI named Havas Media among its agency partners in September 2026.

The caveat is that none of it comes from Havas. It publishes nothing first-party about ChatGPT advertising, so a buyer has to take trade press on trust, the budget is withheld, and the deepest number available is a cost per click. Its only published AI work is organic visibility, which is the other product this article separates out.

Best for: large advertisers wanting a managed first campaign in Europe.

5. Admiral Media: the best-sourced service page in the category

The only agency whose ChatGPT ads page dates its own claims, cites OpenAI announcements by date, carries a visible check date and states plainly which route it buys through.

Founded 2019 · HQ Dubai, United Arab Emirates, per its own about page · Team 10 to 49 per Clutch · Clutch 4.9 from 49 reviews · Budget minimum none stated

Its page routes buying through OpenAI's self-serve Ads Manager, correctly names the supported app attribution partners, correctly describes the visual format during image generation, and does not claim an install objective exists. Asked in its own FAQ whether it has published ChatGPT ads results, it answers that it has not yet.

That candour is why it sits fifth rather than lower, and the honest statement of what it means: on published results alone this is a zero. One figure on the page is labelled as a published result and is organic ChatGPT referral traffic to Admiral's own website rather than an ad campaign for a client, which a reader skimming the page could easily misread. Its partner logos are Google, Meta, TikTok and Snapchat, with no OpenAI, which is accurate.

Best for: subscription app teams wanting a small, well-structured first test.

6. dentsu: four markets of announcements, no published numbers

A global media network and one of OpenAI's named agency partners, and the only company in this review to put named pilot clients on its own letterhead.

Founded 1901 · HQ not stated as such; the company began in Tokyo · Team not verifiable from its own materials · Clutch no usable group profile

It announced itself as an early test partner for ads in ChatGPT in February 2026, named Hilton, Hiscox, Next and Tesco as UK pilot clients in June 2026, and correctly restated in September that ads are clearly labelled, separate from responses and do not influence the answers users receive.

There are no metrics in any of the three announcements. Nine months of pilot work across four markets has produced named clients and no published performance, which is the pattern across the holding companies. Its own subsidiary publishes the best explainer of the channel in the market, and describes its status in stronger terms than the parent's announcement supports, so treat partner language here as coming via the parent.

Best for: multinational advertisers running ChatGPT alongside full-funnel media.

7. DEPT: a named client attached to a published paid metric

A digital product and performance group with a productised ChatGPT ads starter package and a dated retrospective written by the practitioners who ran the work.

Founded 2015 per Clutch · HQ not stated on its own site; Clutch lists Boston · Team 4,000+ stated · Clutch 4.8 from 34 reviews

For Lumen Technologies, named, it reports twice the click-through rate on ChatGPT ads, and it volunteers that Google still beats ChatGPT on conversion volume. A fixed-scope entry package means the test is buyable without a long negotiation.

The limits: the one metric is relative and stops at clicks. Its most quotable figures elsewhere, about share of AI visibility, are organic work for a different client and must not be read as ad results.

Best for: enterprise B2B and brand advertisers.

8. Jellyfish: the only structured advertiser training for the channel

A platform-certified performance media group, and the only company in the review selling a formal course on advertising in ChatGPT alongside managed buying.

Founded 2005 per Clutch · HQ not verifiable from its own site · Team not verifiable · Clutch no usable profile, see note

Trade press reports it buying with cpms closer to $30 and describing early conversions with high order values, unquantified, alongside the admission that only a couple of its advertisers are seriously committed to the channel so far.

Two things for a buyer to check directly. Its curriculum describes conversational targeting approaches, and OpenAI's own documentation describes contextual placement plus uploaded custom audience lists, so ask which of the two the course actually teaches before you buy seats. And be careful with the Clutch profile: the obvious listing under this name belongs to a different, unrelated company in Kyiv, so no usable rating exists for this one.

Best for: advertisers who want their own team trained alongside a managed test.

9. M+C Saatchi Performance: the mobile specialist with first-hand reads

A mobile-first performance media agency across app verticals, and the only mobile specialist in the review whose published analysis reads as first-hand operation rather than commentary.

Founded 2006 · HQ not stated; 13 offices · Team 250 to 999 per Clutch · Clutch profile exists with no reviews

It publishes qualitative observations on purchase intent in the placement and it agrees with OpenAI's constraints rather than inflating them, including on the absence of retargeting at the time it wrote, a statement since superseded by custom audiences.

The limits are plain: no service page, nothing quantified, no third-party reviews, and no self-stated headquarters or headcount.

Best for: app advertisers who want a mobile-native team on a managed test.

10. WebFX: the most accurate public documentation, and no results behind it

A large PPC and SEO agency with an in-house measurement stack and the most complete public documentation of how the channel actually works, including published pricing.

Founded 1996 · HQ not stated on the page; Clutch lists Harrisburg, Pennsylvania · Team 750 experts stated on its own site · Clutch 4.9 from 454 reviews, the highest volume in this field

Its guide documented OpenAI's custom audiences, including the 25,000 matched-user threshold, months before most of the market noticed the feature existed. We checked that against OpenAI's own documentation and it is exactly right.

What is missing is evidence. There is no published ChatGPT result of any kind, and its pages describe early and front-of-the-line access to emerging placements, which traces to its status on other platforms rather than to anything OpenAI has granted. Since OpenAI lists self-service as available in 89 countries, early access is not a thing anyone can sell you.

Best for: mid-market B2B and ecommerce advertisers who want published pricing. It earns its place here as a documentation reference rather than as a proven buyer.

Two names were deliberately left out and are worth knowing about. One agency publishes the only funnel-deep ChatGPT case in the entire review, 64 demos in 42 days with a cost per acquisition below its Google benchmark and twelve closed deals, but it sits on a page built around an OpenAI certification that does not exist, with no client named. A second is a genuine single-channel specialist publishing 3.4x roas, but discloses no headquarters, founding year or team size. Both fail the data floor this list applies to everyone.

Paid ChatGPT ads and AI visibility are two different purchases

This is the most expensive confusion in the category, so it is worth sixty seconds. Roughly a third of the companies marketing themselves for this keyword sell organic AI visibility, variously called geo, aeo or llm visibility, rather than paid inventory. Both are legitimate. They are not substitutes, and the price and the mechanism are nothing alike.

Paid chatgpt ads are bought in OpenAI's Ads Manager, appear below a response or in the visual format during image generation, are clearly labelled, and are measured with conversion tracking and attribution like any other performance channel. You control the creative, the budget, the bid and the destination.

AI visibility work, the subject of our own AEO vs ASO guide, tries to influence whether and how a brand is cited in the answer itself, by improving the sources the model reads. Nobody can buy that outcome. OpenAI's own documentation is unambiguous: ads run on separate systems from the chat model and advertisers have no ability to shape, rank or alter ChatGPT's responses. An agency promising a guaranteed place in an answer is promising something the platform does not sell.

Of the 58 agencies we reviewed, seven advertise OpenAI partner status, certification or privileged access of some kind. OpenAI has publicly named five agency partners, operates no certification programme, and lists self-service Ads Manager as available in all 89 countries where ads run, with over 100,000 advertisers already through the door. There is no gate to be inside of, which means the question to ask an agency is not what access it has, but what it will measure.

How to choose a chatgpt ads agency

Most shortlists of the best chatgpt ads agencies go wrong in the first question. Nine that actually separate the candidates.

Can it buy, and does it describe the platform correctly. Ask which objectives it runs, which bidding strategy, and what the creative specification is. An agency that cannot name Reach, Clicks and Conversions, or that describes formats OpenAI does not document, has not opened the account. Ask too which other AI placements it runs, such as microsoft copilot or Google ai overviews and AI Mode, because the creative and measurement lessons transfer.

Paid or organic. Settle this before the second meeting. A chatgpt advertising agency buys inventory. A geo or aeo agency works on citations. If the proposal mixes them, ask for two line items.

Test design. Budget, duration, and the number that ends the test. Without a stated success criterion a new-channel test becomes a subscription.

Measurement, which is the real job here. The pixel and Conversions API for web, and one of the seven supported MMPs for an app. For an app, ask specifically how the tracking link is built and which events post back, because there is no install objective to lean on.

Incrementality, if the budget justifies it. OpenAI works with geo-experiment partners for exactly this. On a new channel with no benchmark, a holdout is worth more than a dashboard.

Creative for a conversational context. Conversational ads have to read as an answer to what the user just described. The single-image and multi-image formats are tightly specified, and in the visual format the only call to action available is Learn more. Ask to see work made to that constraint rather than resized display banners.

Policy and brand safety. No political advertising, guardrails that assess whether a conversation is appropriate for advertising, strict eligibility in regulated verticals, and landing pages that must not block OpenAI's crawlers. An agency that has shipped creative through review will know this without looking it up. Privacy rules also shape the targeting: custom audiences need 25,000 matched users, and personalised ads are not initially available in the EEA or Switzerland.

Reviews and reputation. Read Clutch reviews rather than counting them, and check that the profile you are reading belongs to the company you are talking to.

Pricing and account ownership. Percentage of spend, flat fee, test fee, or a combination, and who owns the Ads Manager account and the audience lists when the engagement ends. Get the last part in writing.

Comparison

Why app teams choose Applica for ChatGPT ads

For a subscription app, the best chatgpt ads agency is the one that wires the measurement before the first impression. A test with a budget, a deadline and a number that ends it, because a channel with no published benchmarks is where open-ended tests go to live forever. Tracking built before the first impression: an MMP link as the destination, the events that matter posting back, and a decision made in advance about which number wins when the platform and your MMP disagree. Web-to-app funnels, which is the shape this buy takes when there is no install objective to use, and a published record of moving ARPU inside that funnel. Paywall and pricing testing behind it, because cheap clicks from a new source only matter if they reach payback. And ChatGPT sized inside a cross-channel plan with Meta, Apple Ads, Google and TikTok, where it competes for budget on the same terms as everything else and in the order our which paid channels to run first guide sets out.

Business of Apps Top App Marketing Company 2024. Clutch 5.0 from 19 reviews. $100M+ in ad spend managed, 500+ growth experiments run, 50+ Tier-1 apps partnered.

They showed a good blend of experience in the team setup, and the quick turnaround in activating campaigns was also impressive.

Pras Murukesvan, Growth Marketing Head, Nemo Money

See UA case studies or book a strategy call with Applica.

Conclusion

The February 2026 beta is over. The first thing to understand about this channel is that nobody is gatekeeping it. Ads in ChatGPT are available to advertisers in 89 countries, more than 100,000 have already run campaigns, and no agency anywhere holds a certification, because OpenAI does not issue one. Access was a story in the spring of 2026 and it is not a story now.

What is still genuinely scarce is proof. Seven of the 58 agencies we reviewed publish a numeric result from the channel, five of them are on this list, three of those five stop at a click, and OpenAI's own measurement post carries deeper outcomes for named brands than its entire agency ecosystem: a cost per acquisition 15.3% below a blended paid-search benchmark for one advertiser, statistically significant lift with 67% of incremental purchases from net-new customers for another, and 93% new visitors for a third.

So judge the best chatgpt ads agencies on measurement. Ask each one what it will instrument before the first impression, what number will end the test, and what it does when the platform's reporting and your own books disagree. The ones that answer in specifics have run this. The ones that answer in access have not.

Choose a ChatGPT ads partner that tests with a plan and measures paying users.

FAQ

What are the best ChatGPT ads agencies?

The best chatgpt ads agencies publish what they measured rather than what access they hold. On that test, SmartSites publishes the only aggregate account data in the category, Brainlabs the only auction economics, DEPT the only named client attached to a paid metric, and Admiral Media the best-sourced service page while stating openly that it has no results yet. Applica is built for subscription apps that need the test designed and the measurement wired before the first impression. The term openai ads agency describes the same service, so judge both on published measurement.

How do ads in ChatGPT work?

Chatgpt ads are bought in OpenAI's Ads Manager at ads.openai.com. They appear below a ChatGPT response, and in a visual format during image generation, for users on the Free and Go plans only. You choose Reach, Clicks or Conversions as the objective, bid with intelligent bidding, Target CPA or Target CPC, and measure with the OpenAI pixel, the Conversions API or one of seven supported mobile measurement partners. Ads are clearly labelled and, per OpenAI, run on separate systems from the chat model, so advertisers cannot shape or alter the answers themselves.

Can any advertiser run ChatGPT ads yet?

Largely yes. OpenAI lists self-service Ads Manager availability in 89 countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, every Tier-1 EU market and Ukraine, and states that over 100,000 advertisers have run campaigns since February 2026. The legal entity being billed has to be based in an available country. Larger advertisers can also go through the OpenAI Ads team, named agency partners or technology partners, but no certification or badge is required to buy.

What is the difference between a ChatGPT ads agency and a GEO agency?

A chatgpt advertising agency buys labelled ad inventory in ChatGPT and is measured on conversions. A geo or aeo agency works on organic visibility, trying to influence whether your brand is cited in answers by improving the sources the model reads. The difference is not academic: OpenAI states that advertisers have no ability to shape, rank or alter ChatGPT's responses, so nobody can sell you a place in an answer. Roughly a third of the companies ranking for this keyword are selling the organic service.

How much does advertising on ChatGPT cost?

Bidding is now intelligent bidding, Target CPA or Target CPC, with legacy manual bidding retiring on 1 January 2027, so the cost you control is a target rather than a rate card. Published agency testing puts cpm somewhere in the $30 to $40 range with wide variance by how contested the conversation is, and one agency reports a $4.53 average cost per click across nine accounts. Treat all of those as other people's accounts, not benchmarks. Agency fees are usually a percentage of spend, a monthly fee, or a test fee for a fixed-scope pilot.

Who can help me advertise my app on ChatGPT?

Look for a team that has wired an MMP to a channel with no install objective, because that is the actual work. OpenAI supports Adjust, Airbridge, AppsFlyer, Branch, Kochava, Singular and Tenjin, and the mechanism is a tracking link as the ad destination with events posting back through the Conversions API. An agency that talks about app campaigns here has not run it. Applica runs this setup for subscription apps and buys through self-service Ads Manager with no intermediary.

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