Before your ads can run on OpenAI's ChatGPT Ads platform, your business has to be verified, the same legitimacy check every major ad platform now requires. OpenAI runs it through Persona, a third-party identity provider, which confirms four things: your exact registered business name, your registration number, your business address, and a payment card that matches the entity and its country. The card is where most advertisers trip, and the honest advice is to complete verification before you launch, not while ads are already running.
What verification checks
Persona confirms that your business is real and that you are authorised to represent it. It cross-references your legal name and registration number against public records, checks your address, runs sanctions and identity screens, and OpenAI separately confirms your products and services are eligible under its ad policies. The representative completing it may be asked for a passport and a liveness check.
Documents by country
The specifics vary, but the shape is the same everywhere: prove the company exists, prove where it is registered, prove you can pay from that country. A UK example makes it concrete.
| What Persona wants | UK example |
|---|---|
| Exact legal name | As registered at Companies House, including “Ltd” |
| Registration number | The 8-character Companies House number |
| Registered address | Exactly as on the Companies House record |
| Tax number, if held | VAT number (GB + 9 digits) when VAT-registered |
Get the Legal Name field on the account to match the registration character for character before you submit. Until 25 September 2026 the account carried one name, so a brand spelling that differed from the registered name was an easy, avoidable rejection. Ads Manager now keeps three names and the difference is allowed, which is the next section.
Account name, brand name, legal name
Since 25 September 2026 an Ads Manager account carries three names, editable separately under Settings then General. The Account Name is internal and only labels the account for whoever is logged in. The Brand Name is public: it is what appears alongside your ads in ChatGPT. The Legal Name is the registered entity, used for billing and for the verification above. At signup the single advertiser name you type fills all three, so an account that has never been touched still has them identical.
The reason this matters on a live account is what each change costs. OpenAI states it plainly in its account setup article:
| Change | What it triggers |
|---|---|
| Account Name | Nothing. Ads Manager only, no review. |
| Brand Name | Brand review, and ad serving pauses until the new name is approved. |
| Legal Name | Business review restarts, and serving may pause. |
Treat a brand-name edit as a scheduled change rather than a tidy-up. A trading name that reads better in an ad is a good reason to change it; doing so in the middle of a campaign that is spending is not. Set the three names before launch, in the same pass as verification, and the pause never happens.
All three are also writable through the Advertiser API, on POST /v1/ad_account/brand, as account_name, brand_name and legal_name. Omitted names are left alone. The older name field still works and sets all three at once, which is rarely what you want now.
The card that must match
The payment card must be in the company's name with a billing address in the account's country. A UK account expects a UK-billing business card; a personal card, or a card from another country, is the single most common point of failure. OpenAI states this plainly in its billing documentation: the payment method should match the business entity and the country used when the account was created. Because the account country is permanent, the card decision is not one you can quietly fix later.
Verification also decides where you can advertise. OpenAI says some new self-serve accounts can at first run campaigns only in their home country, and other supported countries unlock once verification is approved and the account has spent enough on campaigns at home. A stalled verification therefore holds back the cross-border plan as well as the launch.
The $100 hold and the timeline
When you add the card, the platform places a temporary authorization hold of about $100 to verify it. It is not a charge and usually clears within a few days. Verification review itself typically takes a few business days, though it is running slower than usual right now.
Verify before you launch
The platform will let ads begin serving before verification finishes, then interrupt them if it stalls. We verify first anyway. A campaign paused mid-flight, after you have spent to build momentum, costs more than a launch that waited a day for the green light. Sort the entity, the name field and the card first, then launch clean. When you would rather not navigate it alone, we support you through the verification process.
