ChatGPT opens its ad platform to Israeli businesses, with no minimum spend
On 16 September 2026 OpenAI opened ChatGPT's ad management system to advertisers in Israel. The notice went out by email to advertisers in the region, and Israel joined alongside the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait. Until this week Israel had stayed off the list.
Advertising in ChatGPT reached a one billion dollar annualised revenue run rate in under 200 days, and tens of thousands of advertisers already buy there. For a small business in Israel the practical change is that the channel is now available without an agency. You open an account, enter a credit card and set a budget.
The Israeli user side
In the same week, Israeli users began receiving a privacy policy update that covers showing ads. Ads can appear on the free account and on the Go plan. Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Edu subscribers stay ad-free. OpenAI has not given a date by which every ChatGPT user in Israel will see ads, and the advertiser opening and the rollout to users are moving on separate tracks.
The mechanism works like this. After two or three exchanges in a conversation, an ad related to the topic appears under the next answer, in a separate box marked as advertising. The advertiser does not pick a placement and does not see the conversation. It states what it offers and to whom, and the system chooses which ad to show based on context. A user can switch off personalisation and see why a particular ad was shown.
Cost per click
During the pilot the minimum budget was 200,000 dollars. It dropped to 50,000 in April, and on 5 May 2026, when self-service buying opened, it was removed. A daily budget can start at 25 dollars.
There are two ways to pay, per click or per thousand impressions. OpenAI recommends starting with a bid of 3 to 5 dollars per click, and a bid under 3 dollars triggers a warning that the ad may not deliver. Paying by impressions runs between 25 and 60 dollars per thousand, depending on the category.
On those numbers, a 25 dollar daily budget buys five to eight clicks. That is enough to test whether the channel brings in enquiries, and too little to conclude anything after a single day. If you sell a service priced at a few hundred shekels, work out in advance how many clicks you are willing to pay for before one enquiry arrives.
What an ad is made of
Opening an account takes the business's legal name, a tax identification number, a credit card and a favicon, the small icon shown in the browser tab. The ad itself is simple: a headline of up to 50 characters, a description of up to 100 characters, a square image of at least 256 by 256 pixels and a destination URL. There is no video and no carousel, and no built-in tool for comparing two versions of an ad.
Targeting works by country and by category, and to a limited degree by the intent of the question. Targeting by age, gender or a defined audience does not exist yet. That leaves the wording to do most of the work. An ad that answers the question a customer actually asks, say bookkeeping for an osek patur in Haifa, will match the right conversation better than one describing the business in general terms.
Knowing whether it worked
OpenAI automatically appends utm_source=chatgpt.com to every destination URL, so visits from the ads show up in the site's analytics as a separate source. To track what happens after the click, a lead form or a purchase, there is a pixel you install on the site and an interface that sends conversions from the server. Set up both before the campaign goes live, or the first week's spend leaves you with no answer. The advertiser receives data only on what happened after the click. The conversation itself never reaches it.
Israeli advertisers already there
Two Israeli companies were in before the opening. Dentsu Israel joined at the alpha stage. Natural Intelligence, which runs comparison sites, joined at the beta stage and has since logged about 100 million impressions across some 50 categories. A small business entering now joins an auction where, in some categories, competitors already have around half a year of experience.