How to Make Your Company Show Up in ChatGPT and AI: ChatGPT Ads Are Officially Open in Saudi Arabia, but They Don't Put You in the Answer

Your company can show up in ChatGPT through two separate doors. The first is paid: OpenAI's official Ads Manager availability page now lists Saudi Arabia among 89 available countries, so a business registered in the Kingdom can launch its own campaign from SAR 50 a day, and the ad appears below the answer, labeled, to Free and Go users only. The second cannot be bought: being named inside the answer itself, because OpenAI states that ads do not influence its answers. That door opens with a website OAI-SearchBot can read, pages that answer customers' questions with figures, and mentions of the company on other sites. If your customers are companies on ChatGPT Business or Enterprise, they will never see the ad, and only the second door reaches them.

What does it mean that ChatGPT ads are officially available in Saudi Arabia?

OpenAI publishes an official Ads Manager availability page, and it now lists Saudi Arabia as Available among 89 countries, alongside the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman. The page sets one condition: the legal entity that advertises and is billed must be based in a listed country. Saudi Arabia was not on that list when we covered the topic on September 6.

In its latest announcement, OpenAI said more than 100,000 advertisers have run campaigns since ads launched just over 8 months ago, and that more than 1.2 billion people use the assistant each week. The minimum daily budget for an account billed in riyals is SAR 50, according to the official minimum spend table, and each campaign targets either views or clicks. OpenAI's ads page also offers new advertisers 500 in ad credit when they spend 500; we see the amount in dollars or euros depending on region, and the offer ends on December 31. Check that it appears for a Saudi account and read its terms before counting on it. Account setup and budget rules are covered in our article ChatGPT Ads Now Open to Saudi Businesses.

Where does the ad appear, and who will never see it?

According to the OpenAI Help Center, one ad unit appears below the response, labeled and kept separate from it, and OpenAI is also testing a multi-image ad shown during image generation. The system picks an ad from the context of the conversation, the landing page, the ad title and copy, then ranks eligible ads by relevance and bid. These people will not see an ad:

• Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Edu users: those accounts have no ads at all.
• People under 18: OpenAI does not show ads to accounts it identifies as belonging to minors.
• Sensitive and temporary chats: no ads near personal health, mental health or politics, and none in Temporary Chats.

The first point matters most if you sell to other companies. An employee working on a paid company account will not see the ad at work, so inside ChatGPT the only way to reach that person is the answer itself.

Does advertising make ChatGPT recommend a company?

No. In the Help Center's own words: "Ads do not influence ChatGPT's answers. Ads run on separate systems from our chat model, and advertisers have no ability to shape, rank, or alter ChatGPT's responses." The page adds that seeing an ad does not mean OpenAI endorses or recommends the advertiser.

In other words, an ad buys a spot under the answer, not a sentence in it. If a customer asks "What is the best air-conditioning maintenance company in Riyadh?", they may see the ad below the reply, but the names in the reply itself come from what the model finds in web search and what it has learned, not from advertising budgets.

Ad or answer: a quick comparison

How do you get ChatGPT to mention a company in its answer?

There is no guaranteed method, and OpenAI's own web search help page says placement in its results "is not guaranteed". These steps raise the odds, and each rests on OpenAI documentation or published research:

1. Allow OAI-SearchBot. According to OpenAI's crawler documentation, sites that block it will not be shown in search answers. Check robots.txt, and ask the hosting provider or CDN to allow the IP addresses OpenAI publishes, because a block there never shows up in robots.txt. A change takes about 24 hours to apply. GPTBot is for training only, and blocking it does not hide a site from search.
2. Make page text readable without JavaScript. A Vercel and MERJ study from December 2024 found that OpenAI's crawlers, OAI-SearchBot included, do not execute JavaScript, even though GPTBot alone made 569 million requests in one month across Vercel's network. A page built in the browser looks empty to them. Ryan Siddle, managing director of MERJ, put it this way: "brands must ensure that critical information is server-side rendered."
3. Answer the customer's question in the first paragraph, with figures. In the GEO study published at KDD 2024, adding statistics, quotations and source citations raised a page's visibility in AI engine answers by 30% to 40%, while keyword stuffing did not help and ran about 10% below the original text on Perplexity. The good news for small firms: sites ranked fifth in search results gained the most, with visibility up 115.1% when they cited sources.
4. Use one name and one description everywhere. The website, LinkedIn page, business directories and platform profiles should all say the same thing; inconsistency leaves the model unsure who you are.
5. Get mentioned on other sites. Industry articles, comparison pages and customer reviews are what the model reads while writing an answer. The same search page says it sometimes sends queries to partner search providers and names Microsoft and Shopify, so make sure the site is indexed in Bing, not just Google.
6. Measure the same way every time. Write a list of about 30 questions customers ask in their own words, without the company name, and run them every month at least three times each, since answers change from run to run. Track visits from chatgpt.com in analytics.

For the difference between SEO, GEO and AEO in detail, see our guide to appearing in ChatGPT and Gemini.

A 30-day plan for a Saudi company

1. Week 1: check robots.txt and CDN settings, confirm that OAI-SearchBot and OAI-AdsBot, which reviews landing pages, can reach the site, and that the text of key pages is in the initial HTML.
2. Week 2: rewrite the 5 most important service pages so each answers one question with figures and sources, and open an Ads Manager account in the company's name, billed in riyals.
3. Week 3: launch a clicks campaign at SAR 50 to 100 a day, point each ad to a page that answers a specific question, and install OpenAI's measurement pixel before the first riyal. OpenAI's conversion measurement page asks advertisers to send conversion data only after informing visitors and obtaining consent where the law requires it.
4. Week 4: compare the cost per customer from the ads with what Google and Meta cost, run the fixed question list to see whether ChatGPT has started to mention the company, then decide whether to continue. The campaign launch guide warns that spend data can lag by 7 to 8 hours.

How Origami can help

Origami is a technology company, and we work on both doors:

• ChatGPT ads: we open the Ads Manager account in your company's name, build a landing page that answers the customer's question in Arabic and English, install measurement and define conversions, then write the ad, run the campaign and read its numbers every week.
• Inside the answer: we audit the site the way OpenAI's and Google's crawlers see it, fix whatever stops them from reading it, rewrite service pages with figures and sources, and make the company's identity consistent across the web.
• Measurement: each month we put a fixed set of questions from your market to the assistant and report who gets mentioned in your field and who does not, plus the visits it sent you.

We will not promise that ChatGPT will mention you; nobody can. We promise evidence-based work and numbers you can check yourself. Reach us through our contact page or book a meeting on the appointments page.

Key takeaways

• ChatGPT ads are officially open to Saudi businesses from SAR 50 a day and appear below the answer for Free and Go users.
• An ad does not put you in the answer and does not reach Plus, Business or Enterprise users.
• Showing up inside the answer starts with a site OAI-SearchBot can read, pages with figures and sources, and mentions of the company elsewhere.
• Start with a site audit, test ads on a small budget, and measure both routes before spending more.

Sources

• OpenAI Help Center: Ads Manager availability
• OpenAI Help Center: Ads in ChatGPT
• OpenAI: ChatGPT Ads expands to 89 countries
• OpenAI Help Center: minimum campaign spend
• OpenAI Help Center: Launch campaigns
• OpenAI Help Center: Conversion measurement
• OpenAI Developers: ChatGPT Ads measurement pixel
• OpenAI Developers: Overview of OpenAI crawlers
• OpenAI Help Center: Searching the web with ChatGPT
• OpenAI Ads: Advertise in ChatGPT
• GEO: Generative Engine Optimization, KDD 2024
• Vercel: The rise of the AI crawler, December 2024