How to Run Ads on ChatGPT in Indonesia

ChatGPT ads in Indonesia went live on 23 September 2026, and we run them from Bali in OpenAI's self-serve Ads Manager.

Our account opened on a green box offering IDR 1,500,000 in ad credit if we spent the same within 14 days.

The short version: a business billed in Indonesia can now buy ChatGPT ads on its own, from IDR 90,000 a day.

But your category decides it. Health services outside the US are generally prohibited, so clinics and dentists here can't buy them.

What stops an ad serving is usually what has to be ready first: the right category, a card for billing, a logo, review, and tracking that still sees a booking when it finishes on WhatsApp.

Everything below was checked against OpenAI's own pages on 20 October 2026.

The one thing I can't give you yet is demand.

No public tool counts how many people in Indonesia ask ChatGPT about villas or surf lessons, and Ads Manager only reports on ads you've paid for.

So your first campaign is your first real measure.

Looking for a Bali setup? There isn't one. You open an Indonesian account, then narrow the campaign to a region or city where OpenAI lists it.

Who Can Advertise on ChatGPT in Indonesia

Indonesia got ChatGPT ads on the same day as Vietnam, Taiwan and four other markets. Only Free and Go users see them.

Most small businesses in Indonesia, from a bakery in Surabaya to a surf camp on Lombok, will buy on their own in Ads Manager, which OpenAI opens to "eligible businesses" next to its agency partners.

The bigger filter is what you sell. If you run a clinic, this is the part you won't expect:

OpenAI's ad policy says "ads for health services outside the US are generally prohibited." Dental services and minimally invasive cosmetic procedures are on its list, but only for approved US advertisers, case by case.

And in Indonesia? None.

Here are the businesses I see most in Bali, checked against the policy's 10 September 2026 version. Find yours:

Business in Bali	Can it run ChatGPT ads?	What the policy says
Villa or guesthouse stays	Yes	Travel is one of the launch categories
Surf school, cooking class, day tour	Yes	Travel and experiences
Cafe or restaurant	Yes	Local services
Pilates or yoga studio	Likely, with no health claims	Workout programs may be permitted; health coaching isn't
Online course	Yes	Digital products and education
Beach club	Only if alcohol isn't the focus	Alcohol ads are disallowed
Dental or aesthetic clinic	No	Health services outside the US are generally prohibited
Villa for sale or long-term rent	No	Individual housing listings are prohibited

So picture two people asking ChatGPT on the same afternoon. Which of them can an advertiser reach?

One types "I'm in Canggu for two weeks and I've never surfed. Where can I take beginner lessons that aren't packed?" A surf school can pay to sit under that answer.

The other types "My tooth hurts and I'm in Seminyak. Which dentist is open now and not too expensive?" No dentist can. Then again, OpenAI keeps ads off personal-health conversations anyway.

That one stings for me, because clinics and dentists are two of the industries we work with most.

But only the paid slot is shut for them. ChatGPT still names clinics in Bali, and OpenAI says ads don't change what it answers.

Everyone on the yes side can read on, or see what our ChatGPT ads setup covers.

What ChatGPT Ads Cost in Rupiah

The floor is IDR 90,000 a day, and OpenAI averages it over the week, so one busy Saturday can take double while a quiet Tuesday takes less, as long as the week stays inside seven times your budget.

Here are the numbers for a new Indonesian account, from the Create Campaigns help page and our own sign-up:

Item	In rupiah	How it works
Minimum daily budget	IDR 90,000	The lowest for an ad account billed in rupiah (OpenAI sets it by billing currency)
Minimum if billed in US dollars	About IDR 450,000	OpenAI's $25 a day for accounts billed in USD
Most it spends in one day	IDR 180,000	Up to 2x the daily budget when there are more chances to show
Most it spends in a week	IDR 630,000	7x the daily budget, never more
Suggested first bid on Clicks	About IDR 54,000 to 90,000 a click	OpenAI's $3 to $5, at IDR 18,000 to the dollar on 20 October
The credit offer our account showed	IDR 1,500,000 back	Spend IDR 1,500,000 within 14 days, about IDR 107,000 a day

Billing in rupiah makes the floor about five times lower than the $25 you'll see quoted, so check which currency your account bills in.

At $5 a click, the IDR 90,000 minimum buys one click a day; at $3, one or two. That's thin.

So I'd plan on at least IDR 150,000 a day for a Clicks campaign you actually want to learn from, and keep the minimum for a Reach test.

Even a Conversions campaign bills per 1,000 impressions (CPM) or per click (CPC), whatever event you ask it to chase.

OpenAI's Conversion-optimized Campaigns page asks "Does the Conversion optimization objective mean I pay per conversion?" Its answer: "No."

Your bid is a ceiling.

On a Conversions campaign it caps what a booking is worth to you, and the auction turns that into a click or impression price. It's a second-price auction, so you usually pay a little under it.

Spend shows up in Ads Manager 7 to 8 hours late, so your campaign can look dead at lunchtime and still have spent most of your day's budget by the time the numbers catch up in the evening.

And if an agency runs the account, its fee comes on top of the spend. Ours for Google and Meta ads is 15% of spend with a monthly minimum, all on one pricing page.

Setting Up the Account

A new ad account can't serve anything until billing and a logo are in. Ads Manager puts both on its Overview page marked Required, next to a third task, verifying a phone number.

Here's the order we'd do them in:

1. Business and account details. Indonesia as the country, rupiah for the lower floor, and your own time zone (WIB for Jakarta, WITA for Bali), because OpenAI's budget week runs Sunday to Saturday in whatever time zone the account uses. Get these right first: OpenAI says billing country and currency may not be editable after setup.
2. Billing. A company credit card. The credit offer sits there doing nothing until it's in.
3. The logo. A logo or favicon, which shows next to your business name on every ad.
4. Phone verification. Ads Manager wants a number from the ad account's country, so an Indonesian one, to keep advertising past a verification point.
5. Review. Every ad is checked before it can go live.

Until billing and the logo are in, a yellow banner sits across the top of Ads Manager: "Ads cannot serve until you finish account setup."

Cards only. The billing form takes Visa, Mastercard, JCB or American Express, with no GoPay, OVO or bank transfer.

The card has to match the country the account was set up in, says OpenAI's billing help page. Saving it puts a temporary $50 hold on it, usually released within 8 days.

You pay after the ads run.

The card is charged each time unpaid spend reaches your payment threshold, and again at month end. OpenAI starts that threshold low and raises it as payments go through.

The catch for tourism is the home country. Some new accounts can only advertise in their own country until identity verification clears and they've spent enough there.

OpenAI doesn't say how much.

That hurts a villa more than a cafe. The cafe's customers are already on Jalan Batu Bolong, asking ChatGPT where to eat.

The villa wants the family in Perth planning next July. A new account can't reach them yet.

Campaign, Ad Group and Ad

A ChatGPT ads account has the same three layers as Google's: the campaign holds the objective, budget and locations, the ad group holds the context hints, and the ad is what people see.

Two choices at the very top can't be changed later.

Pick Standard unless you sell from a product catalogue. New Product feed campaigns can only target whole countries, with no province or city.

Then the objective: Reach, Clicks or Conversions. Conversions needs tracking set up first.

Locations go down to a province or city, and any of them can be left out, the way our test drops Jakarta.

That's OpenAI's rule: a list needs at least 25,000 matched users before you can target it. Anything smaller can only be excluded.

For most small businesses, a customer list is there to keep past customers out of a campaign meant for new ones.

Context hints are where ChatGPT ads differ most from Google.

OpenAI's own field calls them a guide for matching, not exact-match targeting rules, and asks you to describe the conversations where you'd fit.

Ours in that test are three short keyword lines. I'd write them the way customers actually ask:

• "We're a family of five flying into Bali in July. Which villas near Canggu have a private pool and a cook?"
• "Where can I take a batik class in Yogyakarta on a free afternoon?"
• "Can someone drive four of us from Surabaya to Mount Bromo for the sunrise and back by lunch?"

Each ad is a picture, your business name with the logo from setup, a headline and one line of copy.

Creative enhancement is switched on by default. It lets OpenAI write personalised and translated versions of your headline and description.

Ads Manager says those "may be shown without your individual review", so read what it writes before you leave it on.

Conversion Tracking Setup

ChatGPT ads count conversions the way Meta does: an OpenAI Pixel on your website, the Conversions API from your server, or both. Neither can see inside a WhatsApp chat.

And that's where most bookings in Indonesia end.

Ads Manager lists four steps, from a data source and a conversion event to the code on your site and the campaign it reports to, and on our account the first two are already ticked.

The two ways of sending events, from OpenAI's Conversion Measurement page:

	OpenAI Pixel	Conversions API
Runs	In the visitor's browser	On your own server
Catches	Taps and form sends on your website	Bookings your own system records
Set up by	Pasting code, or Google Tag Manager	A developer
OpenAI's click reference (oppref)	Kept in a first-party cookie	Sent with the event, when you have it

Run both if you can, and give the same booking the same event ID in each, so OpenAI counts it once and your cost per booking isn't halved by a duplicate.

For a villa, a tour or a class, pick Appointment scheduled or Lead created, not Order created.

The name is only a label. Ours, Order Submitted, sits on the standard Order created event.

Attribution windows default to 30 days after a click and 1 day after a view.

OpenAI's Measure Results page says changing them affects reporting only.

Conversions show up 24 to 48 hours late, so don't judge Monday's ads before Wednesday.

What about WhatsApp, then?

The Pixel can still log the tap on your WhatsApp button as Lead created. That only counts interest.

Whether the chat becomes a booking depends on your reply, which is why a proper marketing audit messages you like a customer.

The booking itself has to come back from your side.

If you record bookings anywhere, send them through the Conversions API with the customer's contact details hashed.

OpenAI uses those to match a conversion when the click reference is lost.

Should You Test ChatGPT Ads in Indonesia Yet?

Nobody can tell you how many people ask ChatGPT about your kind of business before you spend. Ads Manager can't either: it only reports on ads you've already run.

I checked the obvious way first:

Google barely registers the topic either. In Keyword Planner, "chatgpt ads indonesia" gets 10 to 100 searches a month, and the term is new this year.

So the first campaign is the measurement. Test it when all three are true:

1. Your category is on the yes side of the policy table above.
2. Tracking can see the booking, even if it's only a Lead created event on your WhatsApp button.
3. You can leave IDR 90,000 to 150,000 a day running for two weeks and judge it on what you learn, without needing it to pay for itself yet.

Wait if you're a clinic, a property listing or a bar, if your bookings happen where no event can see them, or if your customers live abroad and a new account can still only advertise at home.

Two weeks also lines up with the credit offer, if your account shows one: spend IDR 1,500,000 in 14 days and OpenAI adds the same again.

If you'd rather we run that test for you, it's part of our ChatGPT Ads management.

Common Questions