ChatGPT ads are now running in Japan and South Korea. The self-service Ads Manager beta, until now restricted to US businesses, has expanded to the United Kingdom. The announcement, made today by Benji Shomair, OpenAI's VP of Monetization, via LinkedIn, marks the most significant geographic and access expansion the platform has made in a single step since its February launch.

OpenAI today confirmed that ChatGPT advertising is active in Japan and South Korea, and that its self-service Ads Manager beta is now open to UK advertisers. The disclosure, posted directly by Shomair on LinkedIn, extends a pilot that has been running in the United States since February 9, 2026, through a rapid sequence of market activations that now spans three regions and several subscription tiers.

According to OpenAI, ads remain limited to Free and Go subscription users. Plus, Pro, and Enterprise subscribers see no advertisements, a segmentation that has been in place since the pilot's first day. That boundary holds across every new market.

The technical mechanics of ad delivery

The format itself has not changed. According to OpenAI's published advertising documentation, each ad unit appears at the bottom of a ChatGPT response when a relevant sponsored product or service matches the context of the user's current conversation. The placement is visually separated from the organic answer. Each unit includes an advertiser name, a favicon, a title headline, description copy, a landing page URL, and an image asset. OpenAI's documentation recommends a headline of approximately 16 characters and description copy of approximately 32 characters - notably shorter than the units typical of search or social platforms.

Targeting is driven by context hints rather than keyword lists or behavioral profiles. At the Ad Group level, advertisers supply phrases describing the types of conversations or topics where their products may be relevant. The system determines which ad to surface based on the subject of the user's current conversation, past chat history, and previous interactions with ads. When multiple advertisers compete for the same placement, the system selects the one deemed most relevant. No individual conversation data is shared with advertisers - reporting is delivered in aggregated form only.

The Ads Manager itself follows a three-tier campaign hierarchy: Campaign, Ad Group, and Ad. A Campaign defines the objective, overall budget, start and end dates, and targeting parameters. An Ad Group is a collection of ads organized around a specific theme or intent area, and it is at this level that context hints are supplied. An Ad is the individual creative unit. The interface supports CPM-based Reach objectives and CPC-based Clicks objectives, with conversion-optimized campaigns having rolled out to eligible advertisers on June 5, 2026.

What is new about the Japan and South Korea activation

The UK received ChatGPT ads on June 6, 2026, becoming the first European market to go live. Japan and South Korea, announced today, represent the first activation in Asia - and the first markets where the primary user language is not English. That distinction carries operational weight. The system's context-hint targeting mechanism is built around conversational text. In markets where users interact with ChatGPT in Japanese and Korean, the matching logic between advertiser-supplied context hints and user conversation content faces a language environment that differs structurally from what the pilot has operated in until now.

OpenAI has been building local infrastructure for these markets for months. As PPC Land reported in May 2026, the company listed 19 open advertising-related positions on its careers page as of May 6, with roles spread across San Francisco, New York, London, Tokyo, Seoul, Sydney, and Sao Paulo. The Tokyo and Seoul roles - Regional Client Partner and Customer Success Manager positions - mapped directly to the markets confirmed today. Those cities represent the two largest advertising markets in Asia after China, both with substantial programmatic infrastructure and significant demand from global brands. OpenAI's hiring footprint was an early signal of where the advertising pilot was heading.

The OAI-AdsBot crawler, documented in OpenAI's public crawler records on April 21, 2026, performs landing page verification, brand safety review, and ad relevance assessment. Brands launching campaigns in Japan and South Korea will need to ensure their landing pages are configured to accept OAI-AdsBot requests - the same requirement that applied to US campaigns since the pilot launched, and that UK advertisers encountered when their market went live.

UK self-serve: closing the access gap

The expansion of the Ads Manager beta to the UK is operationally significant. When the UK went live with ads on June 6, no self-serve buying path existed for UK-based advertisers. The interface at ads.openai.com was accessible and functional, but the formal self-serve mechanism was restricted to US businesses. Today's announcement closes that gap.

The Ads Manager beta has itself undergone rapid feature development since its US launch on May 5, 2026. CPC bidding was introduced alongside the CPM model on May 5, with recommended starting bids of $3 to $5 per click. Custom audience targeting arrived on May 14, allowing advertisers to upload CSV or TXT files of up to 512MB containing hashed or raw email addresses and phone numbers. Daily budgets, geo-targeting down to ZIP-code level for US campaigns, and dynamic call-to-action units were added on May 22. Conversion-optimized campaigns followed on June 5 for accounts with at least one active conversion event flowing through either the JavaScript Pixel or the Conversions API.

For UK advertisers gaining access to the self-serve interface now, the platform they encounter is materially more capable than the one US advertisers first used in early May. Conversion optimization is available from day one, provided measurement infrastructure has been set up. Custom audiences are accessible. The Conversions API - which LiveRamp connected to its CAPI Hub on June 10, 2026 - offers a server-to-server measurement path that reduces signal loss compared to browser-based tracking, a particularly relevant consideration for a conversational platform where users frequently switch between web browser, mobile app, and desktop client within a single decision-making session.

The measurement picture

Measurement has been the persistent structural challenge of the ChatGPT advertising platform since its February launch. When the pilot began, there was no pixel, no Conversions API, and no self-serve dashboard. Advertisers working through holding company partners or directly with OpenAI had limited visibility into what their campaigns were producing beyond basic reach estimates.

That infrastructure has assembled at speed. The Conversions API and JavaScript Pixel launched on May 5. A community Google Tag Manager template for the pixel was published on May 7 by Utku Gulden, a marketing analytics professional, reducing the implementation burden for teams without dedicated engineering resources. The template was submitted to the GTM Community Template Gallery and placed under review; until gallery approval, access requires a manual import from GitHub. LiveRamp's CAPI Hub connection, confirmed June 10, extends server-side measurement to marketers already operating within LiveRamp's data collaboration network - a significant portion of the enterprise advertiser base.

The performance data that exists comes primarily from technology partners operating inside the pilot. According to Criteo, one of OpenAI's first ad tech partners, more than 1,000 brands were running active campaigns through its API connection as of May 5. Criteo's own client data showed AI-referred conversion rates approaching twice those of traditional search in retail categories including consumer electronics, lifestyle and wellbeing, and home and garden - an increase from the 1.5x figure the company first reported in March. Those figures come from Criteo's own reporting on its own client base. Independent, third-party verification of conversion performance at scale remains unavailable. The caveat matters particularly for markets like Japan and South Korea, where the initial conversion dataset will be even smaller.

Similarweb data cited by Search Engine Roundtable in May 2026 put the overall ChatGPT click-through rate at 0.68 percent, with the top quartile reaching 1 percent and the best-performing brands reaching 1.57 percent. A peak observed CTR of 5.4 percent was recorded across the placement universe. Those figures cover a small sample from a pilot that was still establishing its bidding mechanics when the data was collected.

Pricing and the evolving cost structure

The CPM rate that launched the pilot at $60 in February 2026 has not held. As PPC Land reported in April 2026, CPMs had fallen to as low as $25 within nine weeks of launch, with some buyers via Criteo reporting rates of $35 to $25, and Ad Age citing prices as low as $15. The decline was driven by a widening advertiser pool following the reduction of the minimum spend threshold and the absence of a fully developed auction mechanism.

The minimum spend threshold itself has compressed dramatically across the pilot's lifetime. The original floor stood at between $200,000 and $250,000 when the pilot began in February. By April 2026, it had dropped to $50,000. On May 5, the threshold was removed entirely when OpenAI opened the self-serve Ads Manager to all US businesses. For UK advertisers gaining self-serve access today, there is no minimum spend requirement. Campaigns can be started with whatever budget an advertiser chooses to commit.

CPC bidding, introduced alongside the CPM model on May 5, operates with OpenAI recommending starting maximum bids of $3 to $5 per click for Clicks-objective campaigns. Reach-objective campaigns continue to use the CPM model. The two models run in parallel inside the same Ads Manager interface.

The subscription segmentation and its commercial logic

The consistent thread running through every market activation and every feature addition is the subscription segmentation. Ads appear only for Free and Go tier users. According to OpenAI, as of March 26, roughly 85 percent of ChatGPT users were eligible to see advertisements - yet fewer than 20 percent encountered them on any given day. That gap between eligibility and exposure reflects deliberate restraint in ad load during the pilot phase.

The deliberate restraint has served a specific purpose. OpenAI has been measuring three formal metrics throughout the pilot: trust, relevance, and overall user experience. According to OpenAI's March 26 progress update, the company reported no negative impact on consumer trust metrics, low dismissal rates, and ongoing relevance improvements. Whether those metrics hold in Japan and South Korea - markets with distinct digital advertising norms and consumer attitudes - is a question the current activation will begin to answer.

According to OpenAI, the expansion is guided by its stated ads principles: ads are always clearly labeled and separate from ChatGPT's answers, and they do not influence the responses ChatGPT provides. Those principles have been the commercial floor of the advertising pitch since January 16, 2026, when OpenAI first confirmed its plans to test advertising. The answer-independence commitment - ads do not shape what ChatGPT says - is the load-bearing element of the trust argument. It is the claim that distinguishes the format from traditional search advertising, where the line between organic and paid results has been a matter of ongoing regulatory scrutiny.

Why this matters for marketers

The sequencing of today's announcement matters as much as its content. The ChatGPT advertising pilot crossed $100 million in annualized revenue within six weeks of its February launch, a milestone disclosed on March 26 when OpenAI simultaneously announced expansion to Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. More than 600 advertisers had joined by that point. Since then, the technology partner roster expanded to include Criteo, Kargo, Adobe, Pacvue, and StackAdapt, the self-serve interface opened, conversion optimization launched, and the geographic footprint extended from the US to the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and now Japan and South Korea.

That pace of product addition and geographic expansion has been faster than most advertising platform launches proceed. The Japan and South Korea activation signals that OpenAI is not treating non-English markets as a secondary or delayed phase. Both markets have substantial programmatic advertising infrastructure - South Korea's digital advertising ecosystem is among the most developed in Asia, and Japan's total digital advertising market is one of the largest in the world.

For marketers with budgets allocated across Asia-Pacific, today's confirmation that Japan and South Korea are live creates an immediate planning question: what does a ChatGPT campaign in those markets look like, what measurement infrastructure needs to be in place before launch, and how does the context-hint targeting translate to campaigns in Japanese and Korean?

The Ads Manager is accessible at ads.openai.com for businesses interested in participating. Businesses in Japan and South Korea can sign up for the pilot at the same address.

Timeline

Summary

Who: OpenAI, represented by VP of Monetization Benji Shomair, made the announcement. The changes affect advertisers in Japan, South Korea, and the United Kingdom, as well as Free and Go tier ChatGPT users in those markets.

What: ChatGPT advertising is now live in Japan and South Korea, marking the platform's first activation in Asia and its first non-English language markets. Simultaneously, the self-service Ads Manager beta - previously restricted to US businesses - has been expanded to UK advertisers. Ads remain limited to Free and Go subscription users; Plus, Pro, and Enterprise subscribers are unaffected.

When: The announcement was made today, June 22, 2026, via a LinkedIn post from Benji Shomair. It follows the UK ad activation on June 6, 2026, and the original US pilot launch on February 9, 2026.

Where: Japan and South Korea are the new markets where ChatGPT ads are now active. The self-service Ads Manager, accessible at ads.openai.com, is now available to UK-based advertisers in addition to its existing US user base.

Why: OpenAI is projected to lose $14 billion in 2026. The ChatGPT advertising pilot crossed $100 million in annualized revenue within its first six weeks. Expanding into Japan and South Korea - two of Asia's largest digital advertising markets - broadens the addressable revenue base while testing whether the platform's context-targeting mechanics and trust metrics translate into non-English language environments. The UK self-serve expansion closes an access gap that existed since the UK went live with ads on June 6 without a local buying pathway.