The terms you’ll meet in OpenAI’s Ads Manager and in our guides, in plain English. Each term links to the guide that explains it in context.
Terms A to Z
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| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Ad account | The top level in Ads Manager. It holds branding, billing, currency, time zone, access and every campaign, audience and conversion source. Your business creates and owns it. |
| Ad group | The level inside a campaign where you set the bid strategy, context hints and audience bid adjustments. Each ad group holds one or more ads. |
| Ads Manager | OpenAI’s self-serve platform for buying ChatGPT ads, in beta since May 2026. |
| Ads Manager plugin | A tool for creating, updating and analyzing campaigns with plain-language prompts in ChatGPT, rolling out since September 2026. |
| Advertiser API | OpenAI’s API for managing ad accounts, campaigns, ads and conversion settings in code. It needs an API key created in Ads Manager. |
| Attribution window | How long after an ad click (7, 14 or 30 days) or view (off or 1 day) a conversion can be credited to it. Changing it affects reporting, not bidding or billing. |
| Audience bid adjustment | A multiplier from 0.1x to 10x on an ad group’s bid for people in a custom audience. It works only with fixed bids. |
| Bid cap | In conversion-optimized campaigns, the most you’re willing to bid for a conversion. It isn’t what you’re charged. |
| Budget week | The Sunday-to-Saturday period, in your account’s time zone, over which a daily budget averages out. A week never spends more than seven times the daily budget. |
| Business verification | OpenAI’s check that an advertiser is a real, eligible business before its ads can run. |
| Chat card | The standard ChatGPT ad: your name and icon, a title, copy, an image and a link, shown below a response. |
| ChatGPT-User | The user agent ChatGPT uses when it opens a web page because someone’s request needs it. It doesn’t crawl automatically. |
| Context hints | Short descriptions, set per ad group, of the situations your offer fits. They guide matching but aren’t exact-match keywords. |
| Conversion event setting | The definition of which event from a data source counts as a conversion, attached to campaigns for reporting and optimization. |
| Conversions API | OpenAI’s endpoint for sending conversions from your server rather than the visitor’s browser. |
| Custom audience | A list of your customers or prospects, uploaded as emails, phone numbers, hashes or advertising IDs, used to include, exclude or adjust bids for people. |
| Custom event | A conversion you name yourself for an action with no standard event. It can be reported but not used as an optimization goal. |
| Daily budget | The average a campaign spends per day. One day can spend up to twice the amount. The minimum depends on your billing currency. |
| Fixed bid | A bid strategy where you set the maximum bid yourself. It works with every objective and allows audience bid adjustments. |
| GPTBot | OpenAI’s crawler for content that may be used to train its models. Blocking it doesn’t affect ChatGPT search. |
| Maximize Results | OpenAI’s name for its automatic bid strategies, Maximize clicks and Maximize conversions. They need a daily budget. |
| Measurement Pixel | OpenAI’s JavaScript snippet that records conversions in the visitor’s browser. |
| OAI-AdsBot | OpenAI’s crawler that checks pages submitted as ads. Advertisers must let it reach their landing pages. |
| OAI-SearchBot | OpenAI’s crawler for ChatGPT search. Sites that block it aren’t shown in search answers. |
| Objective | What a campaign buys and optimizes for: Views (CPM), Clicks (CPC) or Conversions. It can’t be changed after creation. |
| obref | A random browser reference stored by the Pixel in a first-party cookie, which server events can pass to help matching. |
| oCPC and oCPM | The two billing options for conversion-optimized campaigns: per valid click or per 1,000 impressions. |
| oppref | OpenAI’s click reference, added to landing page URLs from ad clicks. The Pixel stores it for 30 days; server events must pass it themselves. |
| Payment threshold | The amount of unpaid spend at which a self-serve account’s card is charged. Any balance is also charged at month end. |
| Product feed | A file of your products in OpenAI’s format, used for product ads and, with direct feed access, ChatGPT shopping results. |
| Product-feed campaign | A campaign whose ads are built from feed products: title, description, price, image and link. |
| Sponsored Agents | A format that lets people chat with a business’s AI representative from an ad. A limited alpha with selected advertisers. |
| Standard event | One of OpenAI’s named conversion events, such as order_created or lead_created. Only standard events can be optimization goals. |
| Text customization | An opt-in setting that adapts your headlines and descriptions to the conversation and translates them into the person’s language. |
| View-through conversion | A conversion within one day of seeing an ad, with no click that qualifies. If both qualify, the click gets the credit. |
Missing a term? Tell us, or see the FAQ.
Sources
- Create campaigns, Measure results and Billing and payment, OpenAI Help Center
- Sponsored Agents in ChatGPT Ads and Set up custom audiences, OpenAI Help Center
- Advertiser API overview, Bidding and budgets, Conversions API and Measurement Pixel, OpenAI developer docs
- Overview of OpenAI crawlers, OpenAI developer docs
- Reimagining advertising with AI, OpenAI, 16 September 2026