ChatGPT Ads have been live in Austria since 24 August 2026. OpenAI announced the expansion to 31 European markets on 18 August and calls it the largest geographic expansion of its advertising business so far. Ads appear below the answer, are labelled as advertising and are shown exclusively to users on the Free and Go plans.

Important for Austrian businesses is that you can’t book them yourself yet. Self-service via Ads Manager isn’t available in Austria at launch and, according to OpenAI, will follow later in the summer. ChatGPT Ads can currently be booked in three ways, through the OpenAI Ads Solutions team, through technology partners and through the big agency networks. Digiday names Publicis, Omnicom, WPP, Havas, Dentsu and MediaPlus. You can already register as a business or agency, though.

This applies equally across the whole DACH region. Self-service isn’t open at launch in Germany or Switzerland either. So if you read that you can book ChatGPT Ads in Germany yourself in Ads Manager right now, you’re reading a mix-up with the markets outside Europe.

So much for the facts. Now for the part hardly anyone is adding this week. The channel is open, but the Austrian market isn’t yet.

What exactly changes with ChatGPT Ads in Austria?

Until now, ChatGPT was a purely organic playing field for brands. You could work on showing up in answers, but you couldn’t buy your way in. As of today, you can.

The scale behind this is no niche matter. Under Article 24(2) of the Digital Services Act, OpenAI Ireland reports 159.1 million average monthly users of ChatGPT Search in the EU for the six-month period to 31 March 2026. For comparison, the threshold above which the DSA’s special rules for very large platforms kick in is 45 million. The European Commission is accordingly examining whether ChatGPT Search should be classified as a very large online search engine.

For Austria, HORIZONT confirmed the launch date on 19 August. Technically, OpenAI’s announcement includes CPM and CPC bidding plus conversion optimisation, geo-targeting, custom audiences and measurement via OpenAI Pixel, Conversions API and third-party integrations. According to OpenAI, “tens of thousands” of marketers worldwide have already advertised in ChatGPT since the pilot launched in the US in February 2026.

“The channel has been open since today. The Austrian market hasn’t.”

— Olivia Ulbing-Sommeregger, Founder oha! digital

How do ChatGPT Ads differ from Google Ads and Meta Ads?

The decisive difference isn’t the placement but the signal. Google Search knows your search query. Meta knows your behaviour. ChatGPT knows the course of the conversation, meaning budget, timeframe, requirements and everything someone has already ruled out.

That has an uncomfortable consequence for planning. ChatGPT Ads replace neither search nor paid social. They fill the gap in between, the moment when the need is clear but the brand isn’t yet. If you simply shift your Google budget across, you lose more at the bottom of the funnel than you gain in the middle.

A word of caution. Ready-made format lists for ChatGPT Ads have been doing the rounds in recent days. In its official Europe announcement, OpenAI gives no definitive list and explicitly announces further formats. The only binding information right now is what’s documented in the OpenAI Help Center. Everything else is a snapshot.

Why is Austria the hardest market for ChatGPT Ads?

Because the demand is there, but the permission isn’t.

A Shopfully study surveyed 6,605 people aged 25 and over in Austria and seven other European countries in the first quarter of 2026. It found that one in five people in Austria had used AI for a purchase decision in the past twelve months, 89% of them via ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and co. That’s the good news for anyone wanting to shift budget now.

The bad news sits two paragraphs further down in the same study. 42% of Austrians surveyed reject AI features when shopping on principle and want to make their purchase decisions without AI. The European average is 34%. That makes Austria noticeably more sceptical than its neighbours, and this is exactly the audience in which OpenAI is opening the ad break today.

A representative Marketagent survey of 1,016 Austrians from April 2026 fits the picture. 85% call for mandatory labelling of AI content, and 54% now trust online content less. At least OpenAI delivers exactly that. Ads are labelled, conversations stay private from advertisers according to its advertising principles, and advertising doesn’t influence the answer. If you want to win in this market, you don’t just have to respect this separation, you have to make it visible.

How do you get into ChatGPT Ads sensibly?

Not with budget. With a stocktake.

1. Measure organically first. Ask ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude the ten questions your brand should show up for. If you don’t, you’re buying your way into a conversation that carries on without you.

2. Check landing pages for context, not keywords. Someone coming from a conversation has already spelled out budget, timeframe and requirements. A generic category page breaks that thread.

3. Sort out access, don’t wait for self-service. Register at ads.openai.com and contact the OpenAI Ads Solutions team at the same time. If you want to start faster, go through a technology partner or one of the big agency networks.

4. Set up measurement before the first euro. OpenAI Pixel and Conversions API belong before launch, not after. Without them you see clicks and nothing else.

5. Start small and additive. Take test budget from the mid-funnel pot, not the search budget. Search keeps catching specific purchase intent.

6. Adapt your tone to Austrian scepticism. With 42% rejection, no ad wins by pretending to be a recommendation. Showing up clearly as an offer beats disguised closeness.

7. Build your own benchmarks. There are no reliable reference values for Europe yet. The first four weeks are your baseline, so document them properly.

At oha! we’ve been registered as advertisers since the Austrian launch and are preparing the first campaign setups. The insight from this preparation is not very glamorous but still decisive. The bottleneck is almost never the ad copy, it’s the landing page. Someone coming from a conversation is already three steps further along than someone coming from a Google search, and still lands on a page that starts from zero. How we solve that is covered under Performance Marketing. The organic side of it, meaning whether your brand shows up in AI answers at all, is something we cover under AI & Technology.