ChatGPT Ads conversion campaigns: objective, billing, events and Bid Cap

What is a ChatGPT Ads conversion campaign?

A conversion campaign is a campaign created with the Conversion optimization objective. OpenAI states you use it when you want ChatGPT Ads to optimize delivery toward a specific conversion event, such as a purchase, sign-up or lead submission.

A conversion event is the action on your site or in your app that you report back to OpenAI. The campaign picks one of them as its goal, and delivery leans toward people more likely to complete it.

Two names appear in OpenAI's material for the same objective:

• oCPC (conversion-optimized cost per click): the campaign optimizes toward conversions and bills for valid clicks.
• oCPM: the campaign optimizes toward conversions and bills per 1,000 impressions served.

What the objective does not change is the unit you pay for. OpenAI's campaign creation page puts it in one sentence: you do not pay per conversion. Your actual cost per conversion is determined by the auction, and OpenAI describes that auction as a relevance-weighted, second-price auction.

In the developer documentation, OpenAI states that oCPC uses the selected conversion event together with ad quality, relevance, click likelihood and conversion likelihood to favor clicks that are more likely to lead to that event. For the wider mechanics of matching and placement, see how ChatGPT Ads work.

How does it compare with Views and Clicks campaigns?

The three objectives differ in what delivery looks for, and only partly in how you pay. OpenAI's help center names them Views (CPM), Clicks (CPC) and Conversions.

A Views or Clicks campaign can still measure conversions. OpenAI states that clicks and impressions campaigns can track conversions without changing their objective. The difference is that a conversion campaign uses the event as its optimization goal, while the other two only report it.

That distinction matters when you plan a test. If you want to know whether the channel produces leads at all, a Clicks campaign with conversion tracking attached will tell you. If you want the system to look for the people who convert, you need the Conversions objective. Our comparison of ChatGPT Ads and search ads covers how this differs from keyword bidding.

When did conversion optimization arrive in ChatGPT Ads?

It arrived in stages during 2026, after click bidding and measurement. The dated facts OpenAI has published are these:

In the May 5 post, OpenAI wrote that the first phase of the pilot was bought on a CPM basis, and that it expected over time to support more ways for advertisers to bid and optimize for outcomes.

The current status, as OpenAI's pages describe it: oCPC is in open beta for both standard and product-feed campaigns, and impression billing for the Conversion optimization objective is in beta with access expanding.

One practical consequence is that older advice ages quickly. Any description of this channel that says conversions can be measured but not optimized predates these changes.

What do you need before you create one?

You need working conversion tracking and one eligible standard event. OpenAI's help center lists four conditions:

• Conversion tracking is set up for the ad account, through the Conversions API, the JavaScript Pixel, or both. Our guide to conversion tracking covers the setup.
• At least one supported standard conversion event is available. Custom events are not currently supported for this objective.
• You know which event the campaign should optimize toward.
• You are ready to create a new campaign or clone an existing one. An existing campaign's objective cannot be changed in place.

The developer documentation adds three more that matter if you build through the API or a partner tool:

• The ad account must support conversion bidding. If campaign creation returns 403 with Conversion bidding is not enabled, OpenAI tells you to contact your OpenAI partner representative. That is an account permission, not an error in your request.
• The event setting must belong to the same ad account and connect to one active conversion source.
• Exactly one active standard conversion event is used as the optimization goal.

OpenAI also states that the Conversions API is a more reliable tracking source than the pixel alone. If you can only build one integration for a conversion campaign, that sentence is the reason to choose the server side.

It helps to know the three objects involved. A data source receives events from your website or server. A conversion event setting defines which event from that source counts as a conversion. A campaign then uses the attached event setting for reporting and, when configured, for optimization. Sending an event and creating a setting are separate steps, so an event that fires correctly is not yet selectable until a setting exists for it.

Should you choose click billing or impression billing?

Choose based on which conversions you want delivery to learn from and which cost you want to control. After selecting the objective, you choose how you are billed.

OpenAI's reasoning for impression billing is that people do not always act right after a click. Someone may see an ad while exploring an idea, return later, and convert without clicking. Its help page states that impressions optimize for more conversions, and that selecting Clicks will lower your conversions.

Clicks still count under impression billing. OpenAI states that clicks remain a valuable signal of interest, and that impression billing expands the set of eligible conversion signals to include conversions after ad views.

Click billing keeps the cost tied to a visit you can see in your own analytics. For a first campaign with a limited budget, that is often the easier model to reason about. This is our judgment, not an OpenAI recommendation.

Two caveats before you pick impression billing:

• The Ads API documentation describes conversion campaigns only with click billing. Its compatibility table pairs the conversions objective with billing_event_type: "click". Impression billing for this objective is documented for Ads Manager.
• With impression billing you pay for delivery whether or not anyone responds. We suggest reading view-through results separately from click-through results before you trust a blended total.

The billing option is locked at creation. To move a conversion campaign from click billing to impression billing, OpenAI's instruction is to clone the campaign and select Impressions for the clone.

Which conversion event should you optimize toward?

Optimize toward the event that best represents your goal and still happens often enough to evaluate. Each conversion campaign uses exactly one conversion event, and it cannot be changed after creation. To optimize toward a different event, you create a new campaign.

OpenAI's supported events page lists these event names:

Three notes on the table:

• custom events cannot be optimization goals. If your tracking was built around a custom event, you need a standard event as well before you can run this objective.
• app_installed and app_opened are available through the Conversions API only, sent with action_source set to mobile_app. The JavaScript Pixel does not currently support them.
• OpenAI's documentation points to this list for the standard event names. Ads Manager shows which events are selectable in your account.

The practical tension is signal against meaning. OpenAI advises choosing the event that best represents your goal, and also using an event with enough signal, because events that happen too rarely make performance harder to evaluate. OpenAI does not publish a minimum number of conversions.

Here is how we resolve it. Pick the deepest event in your funnel that still occurs regularly from this traffic. For a lead-generation business, lead_created is usually the event that is both meaningful and frequent enough. For a store with few orders from this channel so far, an earlier step such as checkout_started gives the system more to work with. This is our judgment, not a documented rule.

You can also measure more events than you optimize toward. OpenAI's reporting documentation notes that a campaign can have attributed purchases while optimizing for a different event, and the conversion insights endpoint can return attributed events even when they are not configured as campaign goals. So a campaign can optimize toward leads while you still see what happened further down the funnel.

How do you set up a conversion campaign in Ads Manager?

You create a new campaign, select the objective, then make three choices that cannot be edited later. OpenAI's documented flow has six steps:

1. Create or clone a campaign. In Ads Manager, create a new campaign and select Conversion optimization in the Campaign objective field.
2. Choose how you are billed. Select Impressions or Clicks.
3. Choose a conversion event. One event per campaign.
4. Set campaign budget, dates and locations. OpenAI's guidance is to choose settings that give the campaign enough time and budget to gather meaningful performance data.
5. Create ad groups and set bid controls. Follow the bid strategy and bid control options shown for the billing option you selected.
6. Launch and monitor performance.

A few details from the general campaign documentation apply here too:

• Locations. To target only the United States, you must explicitly include the United States. Excluding other countries alone does not restrict delivery. Standard campaigns can target states or regions, cities, markets and postal codes where available. New product-feed campaigns support country-level targeting only.
• Home country limit. Some new self-serve ad accounts can initially advertise only in their home country.
• Platforms. You can select Android app, Android web, Desktop web, iOS app or iOS web.
• Audiences. Inclusion targeting with a custom audience requires at least 25,000 matched users. See custom audiences.

The ad group is where your context hints live, alongside the bid. OpenAI also lists aligning ad copy with user intent and the selected conversion goal as a way to improve performance. In plain terms: an ad that promises a free guide sits badly on a campaign optimizing toward purchases. Our guide to writing ChatGPT ads covers the copy limits.

Can you convert an existing campaign to conversion optimization?

No. You cannot change an existing campaign's objective in place, but you can clone it. OpenAI states that Clone Campaign creates a new campaign with a different objective or supported billing model.

What cloning does and does not do:

• It creates a new campaign. The source campaign is a separate object.
• It does not duplicate a campaign with the same objective. OpenAI's example is that you cannot clone a Clicks campaign into another Clicks campaign.
• It is also the documented route between billing options inside the Conversion optimization objective.

Through the API the answer is the same. OpenAI states you cannot change an existing CPM or CPC campaign to oCPC, and that you create a new campaign with bidding_type: "conversions".

A note on spreadsheets. OpenAI's bulk upload checklist says the campaign objective field is either Views or Clicks. We have not found an OpenAI page that documents creating conversion campaigns through the bulk upload template, so we would not plan on it. See our bulk upload guide for what the template does cover.

Our suggestion when a Clicks campaign already works: clone it, run the conversion version next to the original, and compare cost per conversion on the same date range before moving budget.

What does Bid Cap mean in a conversion campaign?

Bid Cap is the maximum amount you are willing to bid for a conversion. The system uses predicted conversion likelihood together with that cap to determine a bid in each auction.

Two things it is not. It is not the price charged for a conversion, and it is not a guaranteed cost per acquisition. With click billing you are billed for valid clicks, at a cost per click set by the auction.

This is the point where people arriving from a Clicks campaign go wrong. In a Clicks campaign the bid is a price per click. In a conversion campaign the bid is expressed per conversion. OpenAI's troubleshooting page says it directly: for conversion-optimized campaigns, make sure your bid reflects the selected conversion rather than a click.

The API makes the same point with a number. For an oCPC campaign, max_bid_micros is the CPA bid even though billing uses valid clicks. OpenAI's example: 100000000 is a $100.00 CPA bid for a USD account. OpenAI tells developers to treat the CPA bid as an optimization input, not as a conversion charge.

On the amount itself:

• OpenAI states there is no recommended bid amount at this time for conversion campaigns.
• For Clicks campaigns, OpenAI recommends starting with a maximum bid of $3 to $5 USD per click. That figure is a click bid. Do not copy it into a conversion campaign's Bid Cap.
• Ads Manager may show bid-strength guidance and a Low bid warning. OpenAI notes that bid recommendations are estimates, while the Low bid warning uses observed auction performance, so the two may differ.
• Raising your bid does not guarantee delivery.

Our approach to a first Bid Cap is to start from what a conversion is worth to the business, not from what a click costs elsewhere. Then adjust on delivery and results, which is what OpenAI's own tip says. We do not publish a suggested number, because OpenAI does not and we will not invent one.

Should you use Maximize results or a manual bid?

Use Maximize results when you want volume from a fixed budget, and a manual bid when you have a limit you must stay within. Maximize results lets ChatGPT Ads set and adjust bids automatically. For eligible new ad groups it is selected by default.

OpenAI is clear about the limitation. Maximize results prioritizes result volume and does not guarantee delivery against a specific CPA, CPC, ROAS or other cost-efficiency target at this time. If you have a specific bid limit, OpenAI points you to the manual or advanced bid controls, shown in Ads Manager as Manual: Max bid.

The bid strategy is set on the ad group, not the campaign. OpenAI's API documentation adds these rules for Maximize results:

• Use a campaign with a daily budget.
• For conversions, configure exactly one active standard conversion event setting on the campaign.
• Omit max_bid_micros and do not configure audience bid multipliers. Audience bid multipliers work only with fixed_bid.
• Include an Idempotency-Key when creating the ad group. OpenAI states it is required for Maximize Results.

You can switch an ad group between a fixed bid and Maximize results later. The campaign keeps its objective and its selected event. If the campaign uses a lifetime budget, OpenAI tells you to switch it to a daily budget first.

When we would choose each, as our judgment:

• A new ad group with no history and no hard cost limit: Maximize results.
• A business with a fixed ceiling on what a lead or order may cost: manual bid.
• A campaign on a lifetime budget: manual bid, because Maximize results requires a daily budget.

How do budgets and pacing work for conversion campaigns?

Budgets work the same way as for other objectives, with one constraint that bites harder here. A daily budget is the average amount you want the campaign to spend per day over a seven day period, not a hard daily ceiling.

The limits OpenAI publishes:

As an example of the arithmetic: a 25 USD daily budget means at most 50 USD on a single day and at most 175 USD over the seven day period. OpenAI's own example uses a $100 average daily budget over 7 days, with a total media spend limit of $700.

OpenAI states that existing campaigns moved to average daily budgets automatically. If a campaign uses up its weekly allowance early, it may stop delivering until the next budget week even while marked active.

The constraint that matters for conversion campaigns. For campaigns with a daily budget and fixed bidding, the daily budget must be at least the highest effective per-event bid across the ad groups. OpenAI's example: a $250.50 effective ad-group bid prevents you from setting that campaign's daily budget below $250.50 until you lower the bid. Because a conversion bid is expressed per conversion, it is usually much larger than a click bid, so a high Bid Cap can force a higher daily budget than you planned. OpenAI states this constraint does not apply to automated bidding or lifetime-budget campaigns.

Campaign total budgets are paced across the schedule. For campaigns with an end date, the pacing period runs to the end date, up to a maximum of 365 calendar days. Campaigns without an end date use a default 60-day pacing period. Changing a campaign-total budget to a daily budget cannot be reversed on that campaign.

Pacing does not guarantee that a campaign spends its full budget. For the cost side in more depth, see what ChatGPT Ads cost.

Do conversion campaigns work with product feeds?

Yes. OpenAI states that product-feed oCPC is available in open beta, and that Maximize Results strategies are available for both standard and product-feed campaigns.

What is specific to feed campaigns:

• Conversion-optimized feed campaigns are billed per click and require exactly one active standard conversion event setting, attached when the campaign is created.
• In the API you set mode to product_feed, include the linked product_feed_id, and set bidding_type to conversions.
• The ad group automatically inherits the campaign's product feed. You include product_set only when you want product filters, and its product_feed_id must match the campaign's feed.
• New product-feed campaigns support geographic targeting and exclusions only at country level.
• OpenAI states that items expire after 2 weeks, which is why it recommends a hosted URL or automated SFTP uploads.

A feed campaign optimizing toward order_created depends on two things being healthy at once: the feed and the tracking. Our product feed guide covers the feed side.

How do you create a conversion campaign with the Ads API?

You create a campaign with two conversion fields, then an ad group with click billing. OpenAI recommends creating the campaign as paused while you add and check its ad groups and ads.

Things to know before you send the first request:

• Micros. One major currency unit equals 1000000 micros. OpenAI's examples: $2.50 is 2500000 and $50.00 is 50000000.
• One budget field. Provide exactly one. A campaign cannot have both a daily and a lifetime budget.
• Event settings. A standard event setting is created with an event_type, a source and attribution_window_days. OpenAI's example uses a 30-day click attribution window.
• Set the strategy explicitly. OpenAI advises this so the request expresses your intended behavior.
• Hierarchy. An ad account contains campaigns, each campaign contains ad groups, and each ad group contains ads. A paused campaign can prevent an active ad from serving.
• Base URL. Requests go to https://api.ads.openai.com, with the key in the Authorization header.

Conversion events themselves are sent to a different host with a different key. OpenAI states that the Conversions API key authenticates event requests to bzr.openai.com, while the Advertiser API key is used for setup and management.

How do you read the results of a conversion campaign?

Read the billing metric and the outcome metric together, over enough volume. With click billing, watch Average CPC and Conversions. With impression billing, watch Average CPM, impressions, conversion volume and cost per conversion. You can calculate cost per conversion by dividing spend by conversions.

Allow for the reporting delay. Metrics refresh at different speeds:

Recent totals may change as events are processed. Judging a bid change on the same day's numbers means judging incomplete data.

Attribution windows. Ads Manager lets you choose a 7, 14 or 30-day click-through reporting window, and either 0 Day (disabled) or a 1-day view-through reporting window. Changing the reporting attribution window affects reporting only. It does not change optimization, bidding or billing. OpenAI states the feature uses last-touch attribution and is not multi-touch attribution.

View-through conversions. A view-through conversion is counted when someone converts within one day after seeing an eligible ad impression and no qualifying click receives credit. If both an impression and a click qualify, the click gets credit. When the view-through window is set to 1 Day, those conversions are included in the Conversions total. You can see the two components separately with the Click-through conversions and View-through conversions columns.

Time basis. By default, Conversions uses ad event time, meaning the time of the click or impression that received credit. You can switch to conversion time in Edit columns. This explains many mismatches between daily totals in different reports.

Sales columns. Order Created Sales and Order Created ROAS are calculated only from attributed order_created events. Other events do not contribute to them.

API metrics. The general Insights report defines a post-click conversion rate, post_click_cvr, as conversions divided by clicks.

Landing page parameters. Ads Manager supports the macros {campaign_id}, {ad_group_id}, {ad_id} and {ad_account_id} in landing page query parameters, populated at delivery time. With them you can join conversions in your own CRM to the ad group that produced the visit. See URL parameters.

What you will not get is conversation-level data. OpenAI states advertisers receive aggregated performance insights without access to individual conversations. Our guide to reporting and privacy explains what is and is not visible.

Why is a conversion campaign spending less than its budget?

Underspend is not necessarily a fault. OpenAI notes that during the beta, its goal for conversion campaigns is to improve conversion outcomes, not simply to use the full budget. It also states that delivery and spend can fluctuate during the beta as its systems improve.

If spend is lower than you expect, check in this order:

1. Explicit blockers. Is the account active, are reviews complete, is the campaign inside its schedule, are the ads approved? Increasing a bid will not resolve a paused campaign, an exhausted account limit or a rejected ad.
2. The bid. Confirm the Bid Cap is expressed per conversion. A click-sized number in a conversion campaign is a very low bid.
3. The Low bid warning. In the API this is bid_too_low. OpenAI states it is guidance, not a serving restriction, and that warnings are not raised within 24 hours of an ad-group update. The absence of a warning is not proof that the bid is competitive.
4. Combined targeting. Look at geography, platform, included audiences and exclusions together.
5. The strategy. For Maximize results, verify the daily budget and objective compatibility.

OpenAI's advice for measuring after a change is to avoid changing several settings at once if you need to identify which change improved delivery. If delivery drops with unchanged settings, OpenAI asks you to contact support with your campaign goal, bid, conversion-setup details and when the drop began. Our guide to ads not serving walks through the full checklist.

How do you keep the conversion signal healthy?

Treat tracking as part of the campaign, because the campaign optimizes on whatever you send. OpenAI's tips start with this: incomplete or misconfigured tracking can make reporting and optimization less effective.

The documented practices:

• Use the Pixel and the Conversions API together, with the same event ID for the same conversion, so OpenAI can deduplicate it.
• Preserve oppref. This is the OpenAI click reference appended to the landing page URL. Keep it through redirects, and include it with server-side events when available. The Conversions API does not capture it automatically.
• Enable automatic advanced matching on your website pixel. The Pixel normalizes and hashes supported customer information in the browser using SHA-256 before including it with conversion events.
• Send server events promptly. The event quality check looks for receipt within one hour of the action.
• Read the event quality warnings. Event quality refreshes daily using seven complete calendar days. One of the warnings is limited activity for a configured conversion goal, which is the same low-signal problem described above. OpenAI adds that low volume alone does not establish a setup defect.

One failure is worth knowing in advance. A conversion event can be firing and still show 0 in Ads Manager if it does not match the conversion event configured for the campaign. OpenAI states that historical events from the mismatched setup will not backfill. Attach the correct conversion before traffic starts.

OpenAI also tells advertisers not to send extra events, invent identifiers or change event times to improve a score. The score does not predict campaign performance.

What cannot be changed after the campaign is created?

Three settings are locked, and one budget change is one-way.

Decide the first three before you launch, not after the first week.

What are the common mistakes with conversion campaigns?

These are the errors we see as most likely, each tied to a documented rule. The list is our judgment.

• Entering a click-sized bid. The Bid Cap is per conversion.
• Building tracking on a custom event only. Custom events cannot be optimization goals.
• Planning to switch the objective later. It requires a new or cloned campaign.
• Choosing an event that almost never happens. OpenAI warns that rare events make performance harder to evaluate.
• Reacting to a single day of spend. A day may reach twice the daily budget by design.
• Reading conversions too early. Attributed conversions can take 24 to 48 hours to appear.
• Changing bid, budget and creative together. You lose the ability to tell which change mattered.

OpenAI's closing tip covers most of these: review performance over enough volume before making large changes to bids, budgets or creative.

Frequently asked questions

Does the Conversion optimization objective mean I pay per conversion?

No. OpenAI states that billing depends on the option you choose. With click billing you are billed for valid clicks. With impression billing you are billed for impressions served.

Can I use a custom event as the optimization goal?

No. OpenAI states that custom conversion events are not currently supported for the Conversion optimization objective. You can still measure custom events in reporting.

Can I change the conversion event after launch?

No. The conversion event cannot be changed after campaign creation. To optimize toward a different event, create a new campaign.

How many conversion events can one conversion campaign use?

One. OpenAI states the objective currently supports one standard conversion event per campaign. Clicks and Views campaigns can have several event settings attached for measurement.

Is there a recommended Bid Cap?

No. OpenAI states there is no recommended bid amount at this time for conversion campaigns. Its $3 to $5 USD starting recommendation applies to the maximum bid of Clicks campaigns.

Does Maximize results let me set a target cost per conversion?

No. OpenAI states it prioritizes result volume and does not guarantee delivery against a specific CPA, CPC or ROAS at this time. Use Manual: Max bid if you need a limit.

Who can use impression billing for conversion campaigns?

OpenAI states that impression billing for the Conversion optimization objective is currently in beta, and that access is rapidly expanding.

What does a 403 error mean when creating a conversion campaign through the API?

If the response reads Conversion bidding is not enabled, the ad account does not support conversion bidding yet. OpenAI directs you to your OpenAI partner representative.

How long should I wait before judging a conversion campaign?

OpenAI gives no number of days. It advises giving the campaign enough time and budget to gather meaningful data, and reviewing enough volume before large changes. At minimum, allow for the 24 to 48 hours that attributed conversions can take to appear.

Do conversion campaigns work for small budgets?

They can run at the minimum daily budget, which is 25 USD for a USD account. Whether a small budget produces enough conversions to evaluate depends on your event. Our guide for small businesses covers the trade-offs, and the glossary defines the terms used here.

If you would rather have the event choice, bid and tracking set up for you, see our services or contact us.