ChatGPT Ads Reaches 26 More Countries: How Regional Brands Should Assess It

On 21 October 2026, OpenAI published “ChatGPT Ads expands to 26 new countries as over 100,000 advertisers have used the platform”. The entry in OpenAI’s official news feed says that “from local businesses to global brands”, more advertisers can now reach people “as they explore, compare and decide what to buy in ChatGPT”.

For marketing directors in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Qatar, the headline raises two practical questions: can a company based here buy these ads yet, and if it can, is it worth taking budget away from Google and Meta to test them? This piece works through both, using what OpenAI has published and flagging what it has not. One point up front: none of these four countries is among the new markets named in the coverage we could check.

What OpenAI announced, and how fast it got here

The 21 October post is the latest step in a quick sequence. Each entry below comes from OpenAI’s own news feed or its advertiser help centre.

Two things are worth noting. First, the 100,000 figure is a count of advertisers who have used the platform; OpenAI has not said how many are active or what they spend. Second, the product is still labelled beta. The FAQ says ChatGPT Ads is “currently in beta and in the early stages of scaling”, so expect features and rules to keep changing.

Are Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Qatar on the list?

Not as far as we can confirm. We could not open OpenAI’s announcement page itself, so the country detail here comes from trade press. According to PPC Land’s report of 21 October, the post named only 11 of the 26 new markets: Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Peru in Latin America, and Nigeria, South Africa, Serbia, Ukraine, Cambodia, Bangladesh and Pakistan elsewhere. PPC Land quotes OpenAI as “launching in more markets across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia”, without naming any Gulf country or Egypt, and puts the new total at 89 countries.

So this article does not say that Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt or Qatar are eligible, or that they are not. Treat any claim either way (including in agency blogs) as unverified until you have checked it with OpenAI directly. The check is short:

1. Start the sign-up at ads.openai.com. OpenAI’s advertiser FAQ does not list countries; it says eligible businesses sign up directly through ads.openai.com and points readers there to check eligibility. Going through the flow is the most reliable test.
2. Check which legal entity would hold the account. Eligibility is set by market, so a group with a Dubai entity and a Riyadh entity should check each one. If only one qualifies, confirm with your finance team how invoicing and tax would work before you commit.
3. If you are not eligible, register interest. OpenAI’s FAQ invites businesses outside supported regions to register their interest through a form to hear about future availability.
4. Record the date you checked. OpenAI has announced new markets three times since late August. A “no” today can become a “yes” before your next quarterly plan.

What you are buying today

If your company is eligible, here is what OpenAI’s own pages say the product does now. Anything beyond this is either planned or undocumented.

• Self-serve buying in Ads Manager Beta. The FAQ says Ads Manager Beta covers core campaign creation, billing, access management and reporting, and supports conversion measurement and cost-per-click (CPC) bidding.
• Budget and goal setting, with bulk upload. The advertiser site describes setting a budget and a campaign goal, and creating ads directly or uploading them in bulk.
• Ads separate from answers. The advertiser site says ads are “clearly identified” and “remain distinct from ChatGPT’s responses”. You are buying a placement next to a conversation, not influence over what ChatGPT says.
• Campaign budget as a ceiling. The FAQ defines the campaign budget as the maximum you are willing to spend across all ads in that campaign.
• Review and verification before delivery. Ads must be reviewed before they can serve, and may not serve if the account has not been verified. Allow for this in your launch date.
• No benchmarks. The FAQ says ChatGPT Ads does not yet have performance benchmarks across advertisers, industries or campaign types, so results will vary.

The last point is the one to put in front of your CEO. With no published benchmarks, nobody can give you a credible expected cost per lead for a Gulf B2B company on this platform yet. Any test is a learning exercise first.

How to weigh a test against Google and Meta

For most companies in the region, Google Search captures people who already know what they need, and Meta (Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp click-to-chat) builds demand and drives conversations. ChatGPT Ads sits closer to research: someone asking an assistant to compare options, explain a standard or shortlist suppliers. The questions below help decide whether that moment matters for your business.

If most of your answers sit in the right-hand column, the better investment this quarter is fixing measurement and landing pages on the channels you already run. If most sit on the left, a controlled test is reasonable, provided it does not starve campaigns that are already producing leads.

A sensible first test for a regional marketing team

Because there are no published benchmarks, structure the test so it produces a clear answer rather than a vague impression.

1. Ring-fence the money. Fund the test from a small, separate line, not by cutting your best-performing Google or Meta campaigns mid-month. Agree in advance what you will learn and what result would justify continuing.
2. Pick one offer and one question set. For example, a distributor of fire-safety equipment might focus on buyers comparing suppression systems for commercial kitchens, rather than its whole catalogue.
3. Build a matching landing page. The person clicking has just been comparing options in a conversation. Send them to a page that continues that comparison, with specifications, approvals and a clear inquiry route, not to the homepage. Our guide on landing pages versus homepages for B2B ads covers the structure.
4. Set up conversion measurement before launch. Use the conversion measurement Ads Manager supports and make sure the same inquiry is recorded in GA4 (our guide to GA4 key events for lead tracking covers the setup) and your CRM, so you can compare ChatGPT leads with Google and Meta leads on quality, not just cost per click.
5. Keep the account in your company’s name. Whoever runs the campaign, the ad account, billing and data should belong to the business. At RX, client ad accounts stay in the client’s name.
6. Judge on qualified leads, over enough time. Review weekly, but decide after the sales team has had time to qualify the inquiries. A few strong B2B leads can matter more than a high click-through rate.

If you want an outside view on whether your channel mix and tracking are ready for a new platform, this is the kind of question our performance marketing and marketing strategy teams work through with clients before any money moves.

If your market is not eligible yet

Not being able to buy ChatGPT Ads does not mean being absent from ChatGPT. The people your ads would reach are already asking it about your category, and the answers draw on what is published about your company on the open web.

• Register interest through the form in OpenAI’s advertiser FAQ to hear about future availability.
• Work on organic visibility. Clear service and product pages, accurate company information and well-structured content in Arabic and English improve your chances of being cited. See our guide on how to appear in ChatGPT search.
• Fix measurement now. The companies that will learn fastest when ads open here are the ones that can already trace an inquiry from first click to signed deal.
• Prepare comparison content. Pages that answer “which option suits which project” are useful for search, sales teams and, later, ChatGPT ad landing pages.

OpenAI is adding markets quickly, and the product is changing with each release. For a Gulf or Egyptian company, the practical position is to confirm eligibility with OpenAI directly, keep budgets on proven channels, and get the landing pages and tracking ready so a test, when it comes, gives a real answer.