ChatGPT Ads Now Open to Saudi Businesses: Campaigns Start at SAR 50 a Day

A Saudi company can now advertise inside ChatGPT on its own, with no agency and no OpenAI sales team. OpenAI's official Ads Manager availability page lists Saudi Arabia among 89 countries open for self-service, on one condition: the legal entity that advertises and is billed must be based in a listed country. The minimum daily budget in riyals is SAR 50, and you pay per thousand impressions or per click, not per customer. That reverses what we wrote in our September 6 article, when Saudi Arabia was not on the list. Before opening an account, prepare three things: a Saudi commercial entity with a card in the same name, a landing page that does not block OpenAI's crawlers, and a first test of no more than two weeks.

What changed since September?

On August 31, 2026 OpenAI opened self-service in several Arab countries, and neither Saudi Arabia nor the UAE was among them. Today Saudi Arabia appears on the official availability list as Available, alongside the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Egypt and Jordan. The page sets the one rule that decides who benefits: the legal entity that will advertise and be billed must be based in an available country.

In its latest announcement OpenAI added 26 new countries, bringing ChatGPT Ads to 89 countries. It 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 ChatGPT every week. PPC Land reported the expansion on October 21, 2026.

What you actually pay: the budget in numbers

According to OpenAI's campaign creation guide, every campaign has one of three objectives:

• Views (CPM): you pay per 1,000 impressions, suited to building awareness.
• Clicks (CPC): you pay per valid click, suited to sending visitors to your site or store.
• Conversions: delivery is optimised towards an event you choose, such as a quote request or a purchase, but you are billed per click or per impression, not per conversion.

The minimum daily budget for an account billed in riyals is SAR 50, per the minimum spend table in the same guide, against USD 25 for a US account. Watch how it is counted: the daily budgets page explains that a daily budget is an average over 7 days, that spend on a single day can reach twice the budget, and that weekly spend never exceeds 7 times it. So a SAR 50 budget may spend SAR 100 in one day, but never more than SAR 350 in a week. The budget week runs Sunday to Saturday in your account's time zone.

Who will see your ad, and who will not

• Ads appear only to users on the Free and Go plans; Plus, Pro and Enterprise stay ad-free, as OpenAI's announcement states. Your audience is the general user, not necessarily the decision-maker at a large company paying for a subscription.
• Ads are not shown to users OpenAI predicts are under 18, nor next to sensitive and regulated topics such as health, mental health and politics, under OpenAI's advertising principles. If you are in healthcare, check this before building a plan.
• Advertisers do not see users' conversations, OpenAI does not sell their data, and ads are separate from answers and do not influence them.
• New self-serve accounts may at first advertise only in their home country. International targeting opens after identity verification is approved and the required spend is reached at home, per the campaign creation guide. That suits most Saudi businesses, which target the local market anyway.
• A custom audience you upload needs at least 25,000 matched users to be targeted; exclusions can be smaller.

Prepare these before you open the account

• Entity and card: the billing page says your payment card should match the country and entity the account was created with, and that country, currency and entity may not be editable afterwards. Open the account in the company's name and in riyals from day one.
• Landing page: the launch guide requires a valid landing page that is not blocked by OpenAI's crawlers. Ask your web developer to review robots.txt and the firewall before launch.
• Ad copy: titles of 16 to 24 characters are recommended with a 50-character maximum, body copy of 32 to 48 characters with a 100-character maximum, and a square PNG or JPG image no larger than 1200 by 1200 pixels. Write in the language of the customer's question, not the language of an offer.
• Measurement: install tracking and define what counts as a conversion before the first riyal. Spend data can lag 7 to 8 hours, and ads may keep running up to 24 hours after you pause a campaign, and that cost is billed.

For the full step-by-step setup, see our guide to launching a campaign in ChatGPT.

The Origami view

Joining the self-service list makes ChatGPT as easy to start with as Google or Meta, but not yet as proven. The return figures OpenAI publishes are its own examples, not independent benchmarks, and the platform is still adding formats and objectives. We treat it as a measured test: a small budget, one measurable goal and a fixed period.

More importantly, ads do not replace showing up naturally in ChatGPT's own answers. A company that blocks OpenAI's crawlers loses both: its page is rejected as an ad landing page, and its content stays out of the answers. If you want your site reviewed for AI advertising and AI search visibility, talk to us.

The bottom line: a two-week plan

• Open an Ads Manager account in your Saudi company's name, in riyals, and complete identity verification.
• Start with a Clicks campaign on a daily budget of SAR 50 to 100; your weekly ceiling is known in advance at 7 times the daily budget.
• Point each ad at a page that answers one specific question, not your homepage.
• After two weeks, compare cost per customer with what you pay on Google and Meta, then decide.

Sources

• OpenAI Help Center: Ads Manager availability by country
• OpenAI: ChatGPT Ads expands to 26 new countries
• OpenAI Help Center: Creating campaigns for ChatGPT Ads and the minimum spend table
• OpenAI Help Center: Daily budgets
• OpenAI Help Center: Launch campaigns
• OpenAI Help Center: Billing and payment
• OpenAI: Our approach to advertising
• PPC Land: ChatGPT ads reach 89 countries, October 21, 2026