ChatGPT Ads in Indonesia: Data and How to Advertise (2026)

Key takeaways

ChatGPT ads went live in Indonesia on 23 September 2026, together with Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and Taiwan. Self-serve buying through Ads Manager was available from day one, and eligibility depends on where the advertiser's business is registered, not where its audience is.
Ads appear only to users on the Free and Go plans, in a labelled "Sponsored" card that sits beneath the answer. OpenAI says ads do not change answers and that advertisers cannot see conversations.
The entry price has collapsed in eight months: from a US$200,000 minimum commitment in the February pilot to no minimum for self-serve buyers, with daily budgets starting around US$25 in documented currencies.
Early data from nine markets shows click-through rates of 0.60% to 1.91%, higher in Japan, South Korea, Brazil and Mexico than in English-speaking markets. There is no published performance data for Indonesia yet.
ChatGPT is where the AI ad inventory is in Indonesia: it holds about 85% of AI chatbot traffic, while Perplexity has left advertising and the Gemini app carries no ads. Google's AI ads in Indonesia run only inside English-language AI Overviews.

Seven markets in one announcement

On 23 September 2026, OpenAI switched on advertising in ChatGPT across seven Asian markets at once: Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and Taiwan. It was the largest single expansion in Asia since ads first appeared in the United States in February, and it brought the platform to what OpenAI describes as "more than 60 countries".

Two details make this rollout different from the earlier ones. First, self-serve buying was open from the first day. Advertisers in the United Kingdom and India had waited weeks for that. Second, eligibility for self-serve accounts is tied to the location of the advertiser's legal entity, according to PPC Land's tracking of OpenAI's help pages. A company registered in Indonesia can now open an account and buy ads without going through a sales team.

Larger buyers have other routes. OpenAI says advertisers can work with its Ads Solutions team, with technology partners, or with five agency holding companies: dentsu, Havas Media, Omnicom Media, Publicis Groupe and WPP. Shopee, which first worked with OpenAI on ads in Brazil, was named as a launch partner for Southeast Asia and Taiwan. "We are at the beginning of a new chapter in advertising," said Dave Dugan, OpenAI's head of global ads solutions.

7 Asian markets added on 23 September 2026, including Indonesia

>60 countries where ChatGPT ads are now live, according to OpenAI

US$1 billion annualised ad revenue run rate reached in under 200 days, according to OpenAI (a projection from one month of revenue)

From one country to dozens in eight months

ChatGPT ads rollout in 2026. Switch views to see how the price of entry fell.

Sources: OpenAI, 23 September 2026; PPC Land rollout tracker, 24 September 2026. Market counts include only markets with a published go-live date. OpenAI's help page listed 63 countries on 24 September, 15 of them in the Middle East, North Africa and Turkey without published dates. Minimum commitment figures are in US dollars.

What a ChatGPT ad actually is

A ChatGPT ad is a single card labelled "Sponsored" that appears below the model's answer. It carries a brand name, a square image, a short headline, a short description and a link. There is no video, no carousel and no ad inside the answer text itself. OpenAI's stated principles are that ads do not influence what ChatGPT says, that conversations are not shared with advertisers, and that customer data is not sold. Users on the paid Plus, Pro, Business and Enterprise plans see no ads at all.

The targeting model is the main departure from search advertising. There are no keywords. Instead, each ad group carries "context hints": plain-language descriptions of the kinds of conversations where the ad would be useful, such as "someone planning a family trip to Bali on a budget". The system matches those hints to the conversation and runs an auction that, according to third-party guides, weighs relevance alongside the bid. A more relevant ad can win against a higher one.

Advertisers choose between three ways to pay: per click (CPC), per thousand impressions (CPM) or an optimised conversion objective. Measurement runs through an OpenAI pixel or a server-side Conversions API, and OpenAI appends utm_source=chatgpt.com to destination links so that clicks can be identified in analytics tools. That tagging has not always been reliable: SISTRIX found that many ChatGPT links lost their UTM tags between 9 and 16 October after a change to how links were displayed.

Some contexts are off limits regardless of bid. OpenAI's ad policies exclude ads from conversations about mental health, self-harm, child safety and other vulnerable situations, and from political content. Whole categories are disallowed for advertisers, including gambling, alcohol and tobacco, cryptocurrency, dating and adult content, recreational drugs, political and social-issue advocacy, and unsubstantiated wellness claims. Financial services are allowed only for approved advertisers, case by case.

What the early numbers say

There is no public performance data for Indonesia yet. The best available benchmark comes from Similarweb and Graphite, whose "State of ChatGPT Ads" report, published on 28 September, measured nine markets between 30 March and 16 September. Click-through rates ranged from 0.60% in New Zealand to 1.91% in Brazil. The pattern that matters for Indonesia is that the non-English markets in the panel, including the only two Asian ones, Japan and South Korea, recorded roughly twice the click-through rate of the English-speaking markets, though with a shorter history.

Ads get clicked more outside the English-speaking world

ChatGPT ad performance in the nine markets measured by Similarweb and Graphite.

AsiaOther non-English marketsEnglish-speaking markets

Source: Similarweb and Graphite, "The State of ChatGPT Ads", 28 September 2026, via PPC Land. Click-through rate is all-time, 30 March to 16 September 2026; Japan and South Korea have data from 22 June, Brazil and Mexico from 17 August. Eligible reach is the share of ChatGPT users on ad-supported plans, as of September 2026. No data is published for Indonesia or the other markets added on 23 September.

Two other figures put those rates in context. Similarweb estimated that 26% of ChatGPT responses on US desktop carried an ad in June, up from 14% in May, and the same report found that 51% of ad impressions fall within the first three turns of a conversation. Ads are concentrated where a user is still forming a question, not deep into a long exchange. On pricing, the pilot launched at a US$60 CPM. Third-party guides now report observed CPMs closer to US$25 and typical CPCs of US$2 to US$5, with software and finance advertisers paying US$8 to US$18 per click during the pilot. None of these figures is from Southeast Asia.

The ad sits under the answer, not inside it. That makes ChatGPT advertising closer to a sponsored next step than to a paid search result.

Why Indonesia matters, and where the AI ad inventory actually is

Indonesia is one of ChatGPT's largest markets in Asia, and the AI chatbot market here is unusually concentrated. In September 2026, ChatGPT accounted for 84.91% of AI chatbot visits in Indonesia, according to StatCounter, ahead of Perplexity at 8.08% and Gemini at 6.13%. Over the year to August 2026, DataIndonesia.id put ChatGPT's share at 82.71%.

That concentration matters because the other assistants are not selling ads. Perplexity, which tested sponsored answers from late 2024, said in February 2026 that it would wind advertising down, with executives warning that ads could leave users "suspicious of everything". Google has said there are no ads in the Gemini app. Claude carries no ads. For an Indonesian advertiser who wants to appear inside an AI assistant's interface, ChatGPT is, for now, nearly the whole market.

In Indonesia, one assistant holds almost all the AI ad inventory

Share of visits in Indonesia, September 2026, and whether each platform sells ads inside its AI answers.

Sources: StatCounter Global Stats, AI chatbot market share and Google vs ChatGPT market share, Indonesia, September 2026. Ad status: OpenAI (23 September 2026); Campaign (Perplexity); Google statement on the Gemini app (December 2025); Google Ads expansion notes (December 2025 and 28 October 2026). Shares measure visits referred through StatCounter's network, not users.

Google remains the bigger channel by a wide margin, but its AI ad formats reach Indonesia only partly. Ads above and below AI Overviews run in every language where AI Overviews appear. Ads inside the AI Overview itself arrived in Indonesia in December 2025, for English-language searches only. When Google extended ads inside AI Mode to ten more countries on 28 October 2026, including Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore, Indonesia was not on the list. In practice, an Indonesian-language query on Google today can show ads around an AI answer, but not inside one.

Platform	AI ads in Indonesia	How advertisers buy	What to know
ChatGPT	Yes, since 23 September 2026	Self-serve Ads Manager, OpenAI sales team or agency partners	Free and Go users only; context hints instead of keywords
Google AI Overviews	Inside the answer: English queries only. Around it: all languages	Existing Search, Shopping and Performance Max campaigns	No separate opt-out from AI placements; sensitive verticals excluded
Google AI Mode	Not yet	Same campaigns, once available	Expanded to ten countries on 28 October 2026, not Indonesia
Microsoft Copilot	Not confirmed for Indonesia	Microsoft Advertising campaigns	0.28% of AI chatbot visits in Indonesia
Gemini app, Perplexity, Claude	No	Not available	Perplexity is winding down ads; Google says there are no ads in the Gemini app

Status as of 1 November 2026. Sources: OpenAI, Google Ads, PPC Land, Relevant Audience, Campaign, StatCounter.

How to run a first ChatGPT ad campaign

The steps below follow OpenAI's announcement and ad policies, along with setup guides published by practitioners who have used Ads Manager. OpenAI's own help-centre pages for Ads Manager were not accessible at the time of writing, and some interface details, especially character limits, differ between sources. Treat the numbers as starting points and check them in Ads Manager.

1. Check that you are eligible

Self-serve eligibility depends on where the business is legally registered, so an Indonesian company (a PT or CV with a tax ID) qualifies now that Indonesia is live. Check the product against OpenAI's ad policies before building anything. Gambling, alcohol and tobacco, cryptocurrency, dating, recreational drugs, political or social-issue messaging and unsubstantiated health claims are disallowed, and financial services need case-by-case approval.

2. Create the advertiser account

Sign in at ads.openai.com with an OpenAI account tied to a business email. You will need the legal business name, a tax ID (an NPWP for Indonesian companies), a square logo or favicon, a payment card and an email address for invoices. Guides report that OpenAI reviews new accounts manually and that approval takes a few business days. Agencies are added as users on the advertiser's account rather than running ads from their own.

3. Set up measurement before launch

Install the OpenAI pixel on your site, or connect the Conversions API, so that conversions appear in Ads Manager. Keep your own UTM parameters on destination links as well. OpenAI adds utm_source=chatgpt.com automatically, but the October tagging gap means it is safer not to rely on that alone.

4. Build the campaign

The structure is campaign, ad group, ad. At campaign level, choose an objective: Clicks (CPC) for traffic, Reach (CPM) for awareness, or Conversions once the pixel is collecting data. Set the country, a daily or total budget and a maximum bid. Guides report a daily floor of about US$25 in documented currencies and a delivery warning when the maximum CPC is set below US$3. Rupiah billing had not been documented as of OpenAI's August list.

5. Write context hints, not keywords

Each ad group needs context hints: plain-language descriptions of the conversations where the ad should appear. Guides suggest five to ten hints per ad group and one intent per group. "Someone comparing accounting software for a small Indonesian business" is a hint. "Accounting software" is a keyword and will match less precisely. OpenAI also offers an opt-in setting that adapts ad text to the conversation and translates it.

6. Prepare the creative and landing page

Each ad needs a brand name, a square image of at least 256 by 256 pixels, a headline, a description and a destination URL. Reported character limits vary between guides, so write a short version first. Send people to a specific page that matches the ad. Generic homepages are a common reason for rejection, and the landing page must not introduce anything the policies disallow. Prepare three to five variations per ad group.

7. Launch, then judge it after two to three weeks

Ad review usually takes up to a day. An ad marked "Not serving" shows the reason when you hover over its status. Compare click-through rates against the 0.60% to 1.91% range in the Similarweb panel, keep the campaign stable for two to three weeks before changing bids or hints, and compare conversion rates with your search campaigns, not only clicks.

The calculator below shows how budget, bid and click-through rate translate into delivery. It is a simple model for planning, not a forecast: actual delivery depends on the auction and on how often the conversations in your context hints occur.

What a daily budget buys on ChatGPT

Set a daily budget and a cost per click, then pick a click-through rate from the observed range.

Daily budget: Cost per click:

Clicks per day

Impressions per day

Clicks per 30 days

Effective CPM

Model: clicks = budget ÷ CPC; impressions = clicks ÷ click-through rate; effective CPM = CPC × click-through rate × 1,000. Click-through range from Similarweb and Graphite (September 2026); the US$25 daily floor and US$3 bid warning are reported by third-party setup guides. All values in US dollars. Illustrative only: no performance data has been published for Indonesia.

Running ads in Google's AI answers

There is no separate campaign type. Existing Search, Shopping and Performance Max campaigns are eligible automatically. Broad match, AI Max for Search, Shopping and Performance Max can serve on the broader, exploratory questions that AI answers attract, while exact and phrase match serve only on queries with direct commercial intent. Placements inside AI answers cannot be switched off separately from Search, but negative keywords and brand exclusions still apply. In Indonesia, in-answer ads currently require English-language queries, and sensitive verticals such as finance, healthcare, alcohol, gambling and politics are excluded.

Microsoft Copilot

Copilot ads are bought through Microsoft Advertising campaigns, and Microsoft has added conversational formats such as Showroom ads in some markets. Availability for Indonesia has not been confirmed, and with Copilot at 0.28% of AI chatbot visits in the country, it is a minor channel here for now.

What it means for organic visibility

The arrival of ads changes the economics of the space where publishers have been chasing citations. An ad does not replace a citation. In ChatGPT it sits below the answer, separate from the sources the model cites. But it competes for the same moment of attention, and it is concentrated in the first turns of a conversation, where users are most likely to click away. Our earlier analysis of how unstable AI citations are found that half or more of the sites cited on a given day are gone the next. A paid placement is the first way to buy consistency in that environment.

Perplexity's exit is the counter-argument. Its executives concluded that even clearly labelled ads made users doubt whether answers were neutral. OpenAI is betting the opposite, and the early numbers support it commercially: a US$1 billion annualised run rate in under 200 days, and tens of thousands of advertisers. Whether users in Indonesia trust answers less once a sponsored card appears beneath them is not something any published data can answer yet.

What to watch next

Southeast Asian benchmarks. The first click-through and CPC data for Indonesia and its neighbours, likely in Similarweb's next report.
Rupiah billing and local floors. Whether OpenAI adds Indonesian rupiah to its documented currencies and sets a local daily minimum.
Google AI Mode ads in Indonesia. Google says more locales will follow in the fourth quarter of 2026, and whether Indonesian-language queries become eligible matters more than the country being added.
Multi-turn ads. Google has started showing ads on follow-up questions in AI Mode in the United States. If ChatGPT follows, the 51% of impressions now in the first three turns could spread deeper into conversations.
Regulation. Indonesia's Ministry of Communication and Digital Affairs has not yet issued guidance on advertising inside AI assistants.

Frequently asked questions

Are ChatGPT ads available in Indonesia?

Yes. OpenAI launched ChatGPT ads in Indonesia on 23 September 2026, together with Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and Taiwan. Indonesian businesses can buy through the self-serve Ads Manager at ads.openai.com, through OpenAI's sales team or through agency partners.

Who sees ads in ChatGPT?

Only users on the Free and Go plans. Users on Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Edu plans do not see ads. Ads are also excluded from sensitive conversations, including mental health, self-harm, child safety and politics.

How much do ChatGPT ads cost?

There is no minimum commitment for self-serve advertisers. Setup guides report a daily budget floor of about US$25 in documented currencies, typical CPCs of US$2 to US$5 and observed CPMs around US$25, against US$60 in the February pilot. No pricing data has been published for Indonesia.

How does targeting work if there are no keywords?

Each ad group uses context hints: plain-language descriptions of the conversations where the ad is relevant. ChatGPT matches the hints to the conversation and runs an auction that weighs relevance as well as the bid. Advertisers do not see the conversations themselves.

Do ads change ChatGPT's answers?

OpenAI says they do not. Ads appear in a separate card labelled "Sponsored" below the answer, and OpenAI says conversations are kept private from advertisers and that it does not sell user data.

Can Indonesian businesses advertise inside Google's AI Mode?

Not yet. Google extended ads inside AI Mode to ten more countries on 28 October 2026, but Indonesia was not included. In Indonesia, ads can appear inside AI Overviews for English-language queries, and above or below AI Overviews in any language, through existing Search, Shopping and Performance Max campaigns.

Does Perplexity or Gemini sell ads?

No. Perplexity said in February 2026 that it would wind down advertising, citing user trust. Google has said there are no ads in the Gemini app. Google's AI ads run in Search, in AI Overviews and AI Mode.

ChatGPT Ads Are Live in Indonesia. What It Means for Search, and How to Run Your First Campaign