Businesses registered in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Brazil and Mexico can open a ChatGPT advertiser account as of mid-2026. The ads themselves serve to users in seven markets: the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea. Eligibility follows where your business is registered, not where your customers live.
Those two sentences answer most eligibility questions, and they also contain the trap that catches most advertisers: there are two different country lists, and people treat them as one.
The two lists everyone confuses
The advertiser list says who can open and verify an account. The serving list says whose users actually see ads, on ChatGPT's free tier and the Go plan. Brazil and Mexico sit on the first list but not the second: a Brazilian company can open an account today, yet no ads reach users inside Brazil for now.
| Country | Can open an advertiser account | Ads serve to users |
|---|---|---|
| United States | Yes | Yes |
| Canada | Yes | Yes |
| United Kingdom | Yes | Yes |
| Australia | Yes | Yes |
| New Zealand | Yes | Yes |
| Japan | Yes | Yes |
| South Korea | Yes | Yes |
| Brazil | Yes | Not yet |
| Mexico | Yes | Not yet |
| Everywhere else | Not yet | Not yet |
The timeline behind the table: the platform launched in February 2026 in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, opened self-serve to all US advertisers in May 2026, and announced the UK, Japan, South Korea, Brazil and Mexico that same month. The UK became the first European market in June 2026. You can register interest for other markets at openai.com/advertisers.
Registration decides everything
The platform checks one thing: the country where your legal entity is registered. A German company selling mostly to American customers still cannot open an account, because Germany is not on the advertiser list. A UK company selling to German customers can open an account, but cannot reach users in Germany, because Germany is not on the serving list either. Audience never overrides registration.
Eligible advertisers choose target countries per campaign from the serving list. Sub-country targeting, meaning states, cities, DMAs and postal codes, exists only in the US today. Every other market is targeted at country level.
Three account rules that catch people
The setup rules are stricter than on Google or Meta, and two of them are permanent:
- +The account's business country and currency are locked at setup. There is no support ticket that changes them later; a different country means a brand-new account under a different entity.
- +One legal entity per account. Verification checks your exact registered name, registration number and address, so the entity you pick at the start is the entity the account belongs to forever.
- +The payment card must match the entity and its country. A UK account expects a UK-billing card in the company's name; a personal card from another country is the most common verification failure.
OpenAI states the card rule plainly in its billing and payment documentation: the billing information and payment method should match the business entity and country used when the account was created.
One operator note the public docs bury: the platform will let ads start serving before business verification is finished, then interrupt them if it stalls. We verify first anyway. Reviews are running slower than usual right now, and a campaign paused mid-flight costs more than a launch that waited a day for the green light.
Not eligible today? Your real options
An existing entity in an eligible country is the cleanest route: if your group already has a US or UK company, that company can open and verify its own account today. Some brands also work with partners registered in eligible markets. Beyond that, the honest move is to get launch-ready now, because the brands that open with a full campaign win the cheap early auctions when a market unlocks. That is exactly what we did on our own account before the format was crowded, which is why we treat it as a first-mover window rather than a guess.
Getting launch-ready means learning the format, the costs and the 100-ad launch bar before your market opens, and all of it is in the complete ChatGPT Ads guide. For your specific situation, the 30-second eligibility checker gives you the verdict and the next step, and the availability page lists every market and carries a waitlist we update the day anything changes.
Already eligible? Then the question becomes execution, and that is what we do end to end: account, verification, campaign and launch within 48 hours of kickoff.
