How to advertise and sell inside AI assistants.
Three things changed in 2026: you can manage your ads from an AI assistant, ads arrived inside ChatGPT, and people can now buy from you without leaving the chat. Here’s how each one works, with the real steps.
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Advertising used to mean buying space on a platform and sending people back to your site. In 2026 that loop is collapsing into the AI assistant itself.
Three shifts landed in quick succession, and they stack into one story — the buying journey is moving into the chat window:
- You can manage your ads from an AI assistant. Connect Claude to Google Ads, Meta, and GA4 and run audits, find waste, and move budget in plain English — the one layer you can fully run today.
- Ads arrived inside ChatGPT. OpenAI began testing ads on January 16, 2026 and rolled them out on February 9. A self-serve Ads Manager opened in beta on May 5.
- People can buy from you without leaving the chat. The Agentic Commerce Protocol, built by OpenAI and Stripe, powers Instant Checkout so a purchase completes inside ChatGPT.
None of the three depends on the others. Read the layer that maps to your business — here’s how each one works, with the real steps.
The three layers at a glance
| Layer | What it is | Status (2026) | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Manage | Run Google + Meta from Claude | Live today | Anyone already running paid ads |
| 2. Advertise | Ads inside ChatGPT (OpenAI Ads Manager) | Beta, opened May 2026 | Brands testing a new demand channel |
| 3. Sell | 1-click checkout in ChatGPT (ACP) | Approved partners, expanding | Stores with a product catalog |
Layer 1 is the one you can fully run right now. Layers 2 and 3 are new and moving fast, so the steps below are current as of June 2026 — check the source links before you build.
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- Find account structure gaps
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- Spot PMax & brand-search overlap
- Check conversion-tracking health
- Benchmark CPC vs your industry
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Layer 1 · live today
Manage Google + Meta ads from Claude
The first shift is the one you can run today. You connect an AI assistant to your live ad accounts and work them in plain English — no exports, no dashboards. With Claude, that connection is an MCP connector: you authorize Google Ads, Meta, and GA4 once, and from then on you ask questions and get answers from today’s numbers. It stays read-only until you allow a change.
Most of a media buyer’s week is the same handful of checks. The ones worth handing to Claude:
- The account audit — “rank what’s costing me money” across wasted spend, audience overlap, and Performance Max.
- Wasted search terms — pull terms with $20+ spend and zero conversions, then add negatives.
- Creative fatigue — flag Meta ads above frequency 3 while CTR slides, and refresh before ROAS drops.
- Budget reallocation — pull from campaigns overpacing on a bad CPA, feed the ones beating your ROAS floor.
- Scaling a winner — find campaigns with headroom and add budget in steps under 20% so you don’t reset learning.
Save each as a scheduled task and the checks run on their own — a Monday audit, a midweek fatigue check — pinging you only when a number crosses a line. For the full prompt library and thresholds, see our Media Buyer’s Guide to Claude.
Why this matters
The other two layers are about new places to reach and sell to people. This one is about running the spend you already have more tightly — and it’s the only layer that’s fully available right now. Ryze connects Claude to your accounts so you can start today.
Layer 2 · beta, opened May 2026
ChatGPT ads, and how to run them
ChatGPT now carries ads. OpenAI began testing on January 16, 2026 and rolled out on February 9. Ads show for logged-in adults on the Free and ChatGPT Go ($8/month) tiers; Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Education accounts stay ad-free. They appear as clearly labeled, subtly tinted boxes below the answer — and they don’t change the answer itself.
How targeting actually works
Targeting is contextual, matched to the live conversation — the real-time query, the topic, past chats, and prior ad interactions — not keyword bids or behavioral tracking. The play is relevance to intent in the moment, not building audience lists.
How to run a campaign
- Use the self-serve OpenAI Ads Manager at ads.openai.com (beta since May 5, 2026). Register as an advertiser and add billing.
- Build in a three-level hierarchy: campaign → ad group → ad, with conversational targeting from context hints.
- Pick an objective: Reach buys on CPM, Clicks buys on CPC. OpenAI suggests a starting max bid of $3–$5 per click. There’s no minimum spend.
- Upload the ad, set budget and pacing, and submit — every campaign is reviewed before it serves.
- Measure with the Conversions API (CAPI), which reports post-click events: landing-page views, catalog and page views, and add-to-cart.
Automating it looks like Google and Meta: generate ad variants, set bids and pacing, watch CAPI, and adjust. Because there’s no minimum spend, you can test a single ad group against one clear intent and judge it on the same cost-per-result math you already use.
Run Google + Meta from one chat.
- ✓Connects Claude to Google Ads, Meta and GA4 — live
- ✓Runs your audits on a schedule you set
- ✓Pings you only when a number crosses a line
2,000+
Marketers
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Countries
Layer 3 · approved partners, expanding
1-click checkout in ChatGPT (Agentic Commerce Protocol)
The third shift removes the click to your site entirely. The Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) is an open standard codeveloped by OpenAI and Stripe that powers Instant Checkout — a buyer completes the purchase inside ChatGPT. Etsy is live, over a million Shopify merchants (Glossier, Vuori, Spanx, SKIMS) are rolling on, and Salesforce supports the protocol too.
Under the hood it’s three pieces:
- Product discovery — a machine-readable feed of your catalog.
- Conversational checkout — a stateful flow the agent runs inside the chat.
- Tokenized payment — shared payment tokens, so the buyer’s card is never exposed to you.
Making your items purchasable, step by step
Apply for merchant access
Onboarding feeds in ChatGPT is currently limited to approved partners. Apply at chatgpt.com/merchants.
Ship a product feed
Send your catalog by daily file upload (full snapshot) or via API (full feed once, then intraday upserts). Validate every required field against the canonical schema — title, description, images, price, availability — and respect the prohibited-items policy. Promotions can only be sent via the API.
Wire up payments
If you already process with Stripe, you can enable agentic payments by updating about one line of code. Not on Stripe? ACP is open — adopt it with your existing payment provider using shared payment tokens.
Keep control of fulfillment
You decide what’s sold, how your brand shows up, and how orders are fulfilled and returned. The protocol only handles discovery, checkout, and tokenized payment.
Reconcile attribution and inventory
Because the sale completes in ChatGPT, update your attribution model and keep inventory in sync at a cadence that matches your feed method.
The full spec lives at agenticcommerce.dev and on GitHub. If you sell on Shopify, the fastest path is to wait for the native rollout rather than build the endpoints yourself.
Dan K.
Performance Lead
Growth Agency
I run Google and Meta from one Claude chat now. The wasted-search-terms audit alone caught $1,200/month across our accounts in the first week, and the Monday report just shows up.”
$1,200/mo
Waste caught
Week 1
Time to result
2
Platforms, one chat
Which layer to set up first
You don’t need all three. Pick by what you already do and how much engineering you have.
If you run paid ads
Start with Layer 1.
- It’s live, needs no engineering, and pays back immediately by cutting waste from spend you already have.
- Connect Claude to Google Ads, Meta, and GA4, run the audit, and put the weekly checks on a schedule.
If you want a new demand channel
Test Layer 2.
- ChatGPT ads have no minimum spend, so a single ad group against one clear intent is a cheap test.
- Use a Clicks objective and a $3–$5 max bid, and measure with the Conversions API before scaling.
If you sell products online
Plan for Layer 3.
- If you’re on Shopify, the native Instant Checkout rollout is the lowest-effort path — wait for it rather than building endpoints.
- If you’re custom and on Stripe, the lift is small (about one line for payments) once you’re approved and your feed is clean.
The short version: the three layers are independent. Managing your ads from Claude is the only one you can fully run today, so it’s the obvious first move. ChatGPT ads and Instant Checkout are worth setting up now if a new channel or in-chat buying maps to your business — both are early, and both are moving fast.
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Frequently asked questions
Does ChatGPT have ads now?
Yes. OpenAI began testing ads in ChatGPT on January 16, 2026 and rolled them out on February 9. Ads show for logged-in adults on the Free and ChatGPT Go ($8/month) tiers; Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Education accounts stay ad-free. They appear as labeled, tinted boxes below the answer and don't change the answer itself.
How do I advertise on ChatGPT?
Through the self-serve OpenAI Ads Manager at ads.openai.com, in beta since May 5, 2026. You build campaign → ad group → ad with contextual targeting, choose Reach (CPM) or Clicks (CPC), and set budgets and bids. OpenAI suggests a $3–5 starting max bid per click, there's no minimum spend, and every campaign is reviewed before serving.
What is the Agentic Commerce Protocol?
An open standard codeveloped by OpenAI and Stripe that powers Instant Checkout in ChatGPT. It lets people buy from a merchant inside the chat using a product feed for discovery, a conversational checkout flow, and shared payment tokens that never expose the buyer's card to the merchant.
How do I make my products purchasable in ChatGPT?
Apply at chatgpt.com/merchants, submit a product feed (file upload or API), and enable agentic payments. Merchants on Stripe can turn it on with about one line of code; others adopt the open protocol with their existing payment provider. You keep control of what's sold, your branding, and fulfillment.
Can I manage Google and Meta ads from an AI assistant?
Yes. Connect Claude to your live Google Ads, Meta, and GA4 accounts through an MCP connector and run audits, find wasted spend, catch creative fatigue, and reallocate budget in plain English — read-only until you allow changes. It's the one layer you can fully run today.
Is advertising on ChatGPT worth it for a small business?
It's testable: no minimum spend, targeting is contextual to the live conversation rather than audience lists, and the Conversions API reports post-click events. Start with a Clicks objective and a $3–5 max bid, then judge it on the same cost-per-result math you use for Google and Meta.
