OpenAI opens ChatGPT Ads in India at Rs 725 a day

OpenAI has turned on ChatGPT Ads in India. The ads reach logged-in adults on the Free and Go tiers. Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Education users remain ad-free, so the surface covers the unpaid base rather than the subscriber base.

The commercial terms are the part to write down. Daily campaign budgets start at Rs 725. That is a minimum daily budget for a self-serve campaign. It is not a CPM, not a total campaign cost, and not an agency minimum. Self-serve access to the ChatGPT Ads Manager begins on 4 September. Campaigns can be optimised for CPM, CPC or conversion-oriented oCPC objectives, which is the same objective vocabulary a performance team already works with elsewhere.

WPP and Omnicom are the first agency partners. More than 50 brands intend to go live with advertisements on ChatGPT in the country this week. None of those brands are named and no category split is given, so there is no way yet to tell whether the early cohort leans towards any one sector.

On scale, India had crossed 100 million weekly ChatGPT users, a figure stated in February and therefore about six months old, with no fresher India number published alongside the launch. India’s active internet user base is put at 958 million. Those two figures come from different sources and different dates, so treating one as a share of the other would be wrong. The report carries no direct quotes from any named individual about the India launch, and nothing in it describes this surface as a replacement for search advertising.

For an Indian brand the useful work happens before 4 September, not after. A Rs 725 daily floor is low enough that a small brand can afford to run more than one campaign at once, which is the only way to learn anything in the first fortnight. Pick two or three products where the buying decision involves a real question rather than a habit repurchase. Agree the landing pages and the UTM structure now, while nobody is spending. And decide in advance what a test is allowed to cost before you call it, because a cheap floor makes it very easy to leave a campaign running long past the point where it has told you anything.