How to give an agency access to your ChatGPT Ads account

If an agency runs your ChatGPT Ads, settle one question first: who owns the ad account. The safe setup is that your business creates and owns it, and the agency works inside it with the role you give. This guide shows how to set that up and which role to give. It also covers what OpenAI’s terms ask of agencies, and how to remove access cleanly.

This is our view of OpenAI’s published terms and Help Center, not legal advice.

The short answer

• Your business creates the ad account, using its own legal details.
• The agency is invited with a role, usually Member, and you keep an Admin.
• Billing stays on your card, in your account, paid to OpenAI.
• OpenAI’s terms ask an agency to hold a written agreement with you.
• To end the arrangement, remove the agency’s roles and check what access is left.

Why you create the account

OpenAI’s guidance is to have one person create the advertiser account and invite everyone else who needs access. Make that person someone in your business, then invite the agency.

That works in your favor, because the ad account holds everything that matters. OpenAI’s developer docs say an ad account owns its campaigns, creative assets, feeds, audiences and conversion sources.

What the account holds	Why you want it in your name
Campaign history	It shows what you tried and what worked, even after you change agencies.
Conversion sources	Your tracking and event history stay in place.
Feeds and audiences	Catalogs and audience lists don’t need rebuilding.
Billing	OpenAI says billing details and the payment method should match the business and country the account was created for.

You also decide who has access, and can remove it at any time. Our setup guide walks through creating the account.

Settings to get right before you invite anyone

Some account settings are hard to undo, so settle them first. The advertiser name you enter at signup becomes three names: the account name, the brand name and the legal name. They can be changed separately afterwards, but not all of them freely.

Setting	After creation
Account name	Internal to Ads Manager. Changing it triggers no review.
Brand name	Shown with your ads. A change triggers a brand review and pauses ad serving until it’s approved.
Legal name	Your registered business name, used for billing and business verification. A change restarts business review and may pause serving.
Country, currency and time zone	Cannot be changed.

Use your registered business name for the legal name. A mistake there can interrupt delivery later.

Which role to give

Ads Manager has three account roles. Give the least that gets the work done.

Role	What it allows	Typically for
Admin	Manages the account and who can access it. Every account must keep at least one admin.	Your own account owner. An agency only if it needs to manage users.
Member	Uses and updates advertising resources, without full account administration.	An agency running campaigns day to day.
Viewer	Views advertising resources, without changing anything.	Finance, leadership, or an agency doing an audit.

Two details are easy to miss. A person gets the highest role granted to them directly or through a group. Removing a direct role therefore doesn’t lower their access if a group still grants more. And a role in a ChatGPT workspace or on OpenAI’s API platform gives no access to Ads at all.

Larger organizations manage this in OpenAI’s Admin Console, where tenant-level roles such as Ads admin can create eligible advertising accounts. A tenant-level role doesn’t give automatic access to an existing account, so account roles are assigned separately.

A clean setup, in order

The order below keeps ownership with you at every step.

1. Your business signs up at ads.openai.com and creates the account, using its registered legal name.
2. You complete business verification, which OpenAI says can take up to 7 business days. Our business verification guide covers what it checks.
3. You add a billing profile and a card in your own name.
4. You invite the agency as a Member, and keep an Admin on your team.
5. The agency builds in your account, and you see everything it does.

How to invite your agency

Inviting takes a few minutes, and the agency only needs the email address it signs in with.

1. In Ads Manager, open Settings, then Users, then Invite, and enter the agency contact’s email address. Organizations that manage access centrally can assign roles in the Admin Console under Users and groups.
2. Choose the role: Admin, Member or Viewer.
3. Ask the person to accept the invitation and sign in with the email address you invited.

Agency staff can use one OpenAI login for all the client accounts they’re invited to. OpenAI limits how many accounts a person can create themselves, once they belong to 10 or more. That limit doesn’t stop them being invited to more.

What OpenAI’s terms ask of agencies

OpenAI’s Advertising Terms cover anyone who manages ads on an advertiser’s behalf. The terms call such a party an Advertising Intermediary. Three duties matter to you as the advertiser.

Authority, in writing

The agency promises that it has the rights and authority to manage campaigns for you. Before it submits a campaign, it must also have a written agreement with you. The agreement has to do three things. It authorizes the agency and OpenAI to provide the services. It binds you to OpenAI’s terms. And it lets OpenAI enforce those terms against you.

So expect a good agency to put the authorization in writing before it launches anything. If one doesn’t mention it, ask.

Responsibility for compliance

The agency is responsible for your compliance with the terms and for your acts in connection with the services. That makes the agency’s care about your landing pages, claims and ad policy more than a courtesy.

Money

The terms say an intermediary’s payment obligations to OpenAI don’t depend on collecting from the advertiser. They also describe two ways an intermediary can be billed. If it gives its own legal name and billing address as the invoice recipient, it acts as principal. If it doesn’t, it acts as a disclosed agent and the advertiser is the customer.

So we use your account and your card. Ad spend goes from your card to OpenAI, and our fee is invoiced separately.

Reporting data

The terms also limit what an agency may do with reporting data. It can give you the reporting for your own campaigns. It can’t sell the data or combine it to identify a person. It also can’t use it to build audience segments aimed at OpenAI or its users.

API access for agencies and tools

Agencies and technology partners that use OpenAI’s Ads API work with the API key tied to each client’s ad account. OpenAI says to use that account’s key for every request, and to keep keys in a server-side credential store.

Server-side conversion tracking uses a separate Conversions API key. Keep it out of browser code. Some actions, such as brand updates, pixel management and creating Conversions API keys, must be enabled for the client account first. OpenAI points partners to their partner representative for that.

Don’t share a login

Invite each person with their own email instead of handing over your sign-in. OpenAI’s access model is built on individual roles for each person. A shared login can’t be removed for one person, and it leaves nobody accountable for a change.

It also ties the account to one person’s email address, which creates a problem the day that person leaves. Roles and invitations avoid all of that, and they cost nothing.

Questions to ask before you hire

Five questions tell you most of what you need to know.

Ask	A good answer
Whose legal name is on the account?	Yours.
Whose card is billed?	Yours, paid to OpenAI.
Who is the Admin?	Someone on your team, at least one.
Do we have a written agreement?	Yes, before any campaign is submitted.
What happens when we leave?	You remove the roles, and everything stays yours.

When you part ways

Offboarding is a short checklist, and the order matters.

1. Make sure someone on your side is an Admin before removing anyone. Each account must keep at least one admin.
2. In Users and groups, remove the agency’s direct roles and any group memberships that grant access. OpenAI warns that removing one access path may not remove another.
3. If your organization syncs users from an identity provider, update the group membership there too.
4. Check each person’s remaining access to each advertising account.
5. Decide what happens to running campaigns. Pause them campaign by campaign, or pause the whole account.

Ads can keep appearing for up to 24 hours after a pause, and that spend stays billable. Change the API keys the agency used, too, so nothing keeps working in the background.

Questions