Abstract: Your Control Center for Advertising in ChatGPT

OpenAI Ads Manager [1] is the self-serve portal where brands create, manage, and measure advertising campaigns inside ChatGPT. Opened to all US businesses in May 2026, it will feel familiar to anyone who has used Meta Ads Manager or Google Ads — but with its own vocabulary, its own conversion system, and a few sharp edges that early advertisers should know about.

This walkthrough covers every major section of OpenAI Ads Manager, how the pieces fit together, and how Shopify brands can wire up conversion data correctly from day one.

1. Getting Access

OpenAI Ads Manager lives at ads.openai.com [1]. Access started as an invite/application beta and opened to self-serve registration for US businesses in May 2026. To activate your account you must:

1. Register your business as an advertiser
2. Add payment information (billing)
3. Upload an account logo

Until billing and logo are complete, you'll see an "Ads cannot serve until you finish account setup" banner — campaigns and feeds can be configured, but nothing delivers.

2. The Main Sections of Ads Manager

2.1 Campaigns

The Campaigns section is where you create and manage campaigns: set budgets, CPC bids, and pacing; upload ads; and monitor delivery. OpenAI introduced cost-per-click bidding alongside expanded measurement tools, giving performance marketers a familiar buying model.

One detail that trips people up: after creating conversion events (below), you must attach them to your campaign via Campaigns → Edit Campaign → conversion events section. An event that isn't added to the campaign won't be optimized for.

2.2 Tools → Conversions

This is the measurement heart of the platform, with two tabs:

• Data Source: Your Pixel — the conversion data source. Hover over the pixel row and click Copy Pixel ID (a string like 2Fpr6SG4h87eMXrACYkfK9). Here you also click Manage conversion keys to create an API key (starts with sk-svcacct-, shown exactly once) used to authenticate server-side events.
• Conversion Events: Where you register the actions you care about. Click + Create, pick a Base Event, name it, select your pixel as the data source, and set a conversion window (default 30 days).

Standard base events available:

💡 The Data Source dropdown only lists pixels that have already received events. If your pixel isn't selectable, connect your event source first and generate at least one matching event.

2.3 Tools → Feeds

Launched in June 2026, product feeds power product feed ads — sponsored product placements auto-generated from your catalog. In the Feed Connection tab, click + Create Feed, enter your merchant name and supported currencies, and OpenAI assigns a Feed ID plus SFTP credentials:

• Host: sftp.commerce.openai.com
• Port: 443
• Username + a generated password (shown exactly once)

The feed uses the same structured format as Google Shopping, so existing product feeds carry over. But ingestion is strict — see the gotchas below.

3. Wiring Up Conversions the Right Way

You can send events to OpenAI's Conversions API yourself, but ChatGPT clicks frequently land in privacy-restricted and in-app browser environments where client-side tracking underreports. The practical answer for Shopify brands is Aimerce [2], the [🏆 Best Overall] integration:

1. In Aimerce's OpenAI Setup, paste your Pixel ID and API key — Aimerce validates the connection with a test event immediately.
2. Aimerce then sends all seven standard events server-side, enriched with its Durable ID so conversions match back to ad clicks even weeks later.
3. For feeds, paste the SFTP credentials into Aimerce's Product Feed section and click Sync now — your Shopify catalog uploads automatically and stays in sync.

4. Gotchas We've Seen in the Wild

• "Upload failed / Misformatted columns" on feeds: OpenAI's ingestion rejects products with an empty description, and prices must have exactly two decimals (128.00, not 128.0). A feed can be delivered successfully over SFTP and still be rejected at ingestion.
• 401 "Missing scopes ads.third_party_events.write": API keys are scoped. If your key was created without conversion-write permissions (common with restricted service-account keys), server-side events fail with a 401. Create a fresh key from Manage conversion keys in the Conversions tool.
• Keys and passwords are shown once: Both the conversion API key and the feed SFTP password appear a single time. Store them in a password manager the moment they're generated.
• Conversion events ≠ campaign optimization: Registering an event does nothing until it's added to a campaign.

5. Conclusion: Familiar Controls, New Frontier

OpenAI Ads Manager gives DTC marketers a recognizable toolkit — campaigns, CPC bids, pixels, conversion events, product feeds — pointed at an entirely new surface: ChatGPT conversations. The brands winning on it early are the ones treating measurement as step zero. Connect Aimerce [2] to your OpenAI pixel and feed, and Ads Manager's reporting will reflect what's actually happening in your Shopify store.

References

[1] OpenAI Ads Manager: https://ads.openai.com/ [2] Aimerce.ai Official Website: https://www.aimerce.ai/