ChatGPT Ads in Southeast Asia: What Advertisers Should Know

By Lawrence Philemon · Head of Performance Ads, Gwenchana Digital · Last updated: 13 October 2026

ChatGPT Ads began rolling out in six Southeast Asian markets on 23 September 2026: Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Taiwan was part of the same announcement but sits outside Southeast Asia. Businesses whose billed legal entity is based in one of these countries can buy through self-serve Ads Manager, OpenAI’s sales team or a partner.

Most coverage of ChatGPT Ads in Southeast Asia stops at the announcement. This piece goes market by market, compares the ways to buy, and adds what we learned running a campaign on our own account. One limit up front: our hands-on experience is in Indonesia only. Our notes for the other five markets are recommendations, and we label them that way.

What changed on 23 September 2026

OpenAI added the six Southeast Asian markets and Taiwan to ChatGPT Ads, which took the product to more than 60 countries, with ads shown only to people on the Free and Go plans.

ChatGPT Ads is OpenAI’s advertising product. It shows labelled, sponsored placements below ChatGPT’s answers to users on the Free and Go plans, and advertisers buy and manage them in OpenAI Ads Manager.

The Southeast Asia launch followed earlier Asia-Pacific launches in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea and India. According to OpenAI’s announcement (September 2026), ChatGPT Ads reached $1 billion in annualised revenue run rate in under 200 days, and tens of thousands of advertisers now run ads in ChatGPT. Plus, Pro and Enterprise subscriptions stay ad-free.

OpenAI says ads are labelled, kept separate from answers and don’t influence what ChatGPT says. Advertisers don’t see people’s conversations.

For marketplace sellers, the announcement also quotes Shopee, which is extending its partnership with OpenAI from Brazil to Southeast Asia and Taiwan. OpenAI hasn’t said what that partnership will mean for sellers’ ads. It has said that new formats, optimisation tools and measurement are coming over the next few months, so expect the product to change while you test it.

ChatGPT Ads market by market

All six Southeast Asian markets have the same self-serve status, but the ad copy, context hints, landing page and conversion route need local work in each one.

Self-serve availability is the status OpenAI gives a country in its Ads Manager availability table. A business can buy ChatGPT Ads self-serve only if the legal entity that advertises and is billed is based in an “Available” country, whatever market its customers are in.

When we checked OpenAI’s Ads Manager availability page on 12 October 2026, all six markets and Taiwan were listed as Available. The list changes as markets open, so check it again on the day you sign up.

The status column comes from OpenAI. The other three columns are our recommendations, not ChatGPT Ads platform rules or test results.

Indonesia

Indonesia is the one market where we’ve run ChatGPT Ads ourselves. Our ads and context hints were in Bahasa Indonesia, with a few English phrases mixed in because Indonesian buyers type that way. The conversion was a WhatsApp chat, and the campaign didn’t serve until our tax ID (NPWP) was verified. The details are in the Indonesia lessons section further down.

Singapore

Singapore buyers can be reached in English, so copy needs less localisation than elsewhere in the region. The checks are administrative: a Singapore entity for billing, a landing page with a local conversion action, and claims that meet Singapore’s advertising code. “Singapore advertising code” even appears as a Google suggestion for “chatgpt ads singapore”.

Malaysia

In Malaysia, decide the language before you write anything. Bahasa Malaysia, English and Chinese-speaking buyers ask ChatGPT different questions, so we’d give each language its own ad group and landing page rather than mixing them in one.

The Philippines

Filipino buyers often move between English and Filipino in one sentence, and your context hints can reflect that. Plan where a lead goes after the click, because many businesses take enquiries over Messenger or Viber, and state your service area and response hours on the landing page.

Thailand

Thai copy should be written or reviewed by a native speaker, not machine translated, and the landing page should match it. If buyers expect to contact you on LINE, make that the main action. We have no ChatGPT Ads experience in Thailand yet, so treat this as a starting checklist.

Vietnam

Vietnamese ads need Vietnamese landing pages, clear delivery terms and a plan for routing leads, often through Zalo. As with Thailand, these are recommendations, not results.

Local advertising rules to check before you launch

Self-serve availability doesn’t clear your product or your claims, so check OpenAI’s ad policies and your market’s advertising rules before you produce anything.

Work through four things before launch:

1. OpenAI’s own ad policies, which restrict some categories and claims in every market
2. Your market’s advertising code, such as the Singapore Code of Advertising Practice administered by the Advertising Standards Authority of Singapore
3. Sector rules for health, beauty, food and financial products, which most markets regulate separately
4. A consent notice on the landing page if you send conversion data back through a pixel or API

Some sensitive conversations won’t carry ads at all. According to PPC Land (September 2026), ads are excluded for users under 18 and from conversations near sensitive topics such as health, mental health and politics. A health brand should expect fewer eligible conversations than a software company. This isn’t legal advice: for a regulated product, check your claims with local counsel before launch.

How to buy ChatGPT Ads in Southeast Asia

You can buy ChatGPT Ads in Southeast Asia in five ways: self-serve, through OpenAI’s Ads Solutions team, through a holding-group agency, through a technology partner such as Criteo, or with an independent partner working inside your own account.

Criteo is the route most launch coverage skips. According to Grocery Trade News (September 2026), Criteo extended its ChatGPT Ads integration to all six Southeast Asian markets, which took it to 61 markets worldwide, and more than 2,000 brands now advertise in ChatGPT using its technology. For retailers already buying through Criteo, that may be the shortest way in.

An independent partner is an agency that works inside the advertiser’s own Ads Manager account as an invited user, so the advertiser keeps ownership of the account, billing and data.

OpenAI’s setup guide supports this model. Its account setup article says one person should create the advertiser account and then invite everyone else who needs access, with a role for each person. Roles are set per ad account, as OpenAI’s access guide explains, so you can give a partner access to one account and keep the rest closed. Gwenchana works this way as an independent partner for ChatGPT Ads and other paid channels.

One question is still open. Some agency guides say new self-serve accounts can only advertise in their home country at first, while others say you can target other markets per campaign. We couldn’t find either rule in OpenAI’s public Help Center or developer documentation when we checked on 13 October 2026. Before you promise a regional launch, check which countries your approved account can actually target in Ads Manager. For the full account setup, see how ChatGPT Ads work and how to set up Ads Manager.

What we learned running ChatGPT Ads from Indonesia

Our Indonesian test showed that verification comes before delivery, Bahasa Indonesia ads pass review, ad groups built around one buyer intent beat broad ones, and WhatsApp chats measure results better than platform conversions.

We ran one campaign on Gwenchana’s own account, from an Indonesian entity, between 7 and 13 October 2026. It was small: one campaign targeted at Indonesia, two ad groups and six ads, all pointing to our digital advertising service page with a WhatsApp button. It’s one week of data from our own account, not a benchmark. The numbers below are counts and rates only.

Verification came before delivery

The campaign sat at “Not serving” until our tax ID (NPWP) verification cleared. In our case that took about a day. OpenAI’s onboarding troubleshooting guide says a review can take up to 7 business days, and it treats account verification, account approval, ad review and ad delivery as four separate checks. Build that time into a launch date, and hover over the status in Ads Manager to see which check is holding you up.

Context hints and ads in Bahasa Indonesia

We wrote 18 context hints for one ad group and 14 for the other. Most were in Bahasa Indonesia, phrased the way a business owner would ask:

• “rekomendasi agency iklan di Indonesia” (agency recommendations in Indonesia)
• “belum pernah pasang iklan facebook” (never run Facebook ads before)
• “iklan sudah jalan tapi tidak ada penjualan” (ads are running but there are no sales)

A few were in English, such as “hire an ads agency in Indonesia”, because that’s how some buyers search. All six ads, written in Bahasa Indonesia, passed review.

Intent mattered more than volume

We split the ad groups by buyer intent. One targeted businesses already looking for an ads agency. The other targeted owners who had never run ads. The beginners’ group got more impressions, but the agency-search group did much better on every step after that:

Source: OpenAI Ads Manager via Windsor.ai, and GA4 sessions tagged utm_source=chatgpt, 7–13 October 2026.

The lesson for a regional test is to write ad groups around one buyer situation each. Context hints that describe someone already shopping for what you sell did far better for us than hints about a general problem.

Count the chat, not the platform conversion

Between 9 and 12 October, 26 WhatsApp chats arrived with the pre-filled message from our ChatGPT Ads landing page. Ads Manager’s “conversions” told a different story, because our campaign was counting page views as conversions by mistake. Our main guide explains how we caught that conversion-tracking mistake and how to check your own account. If WhatsApp is your main conversion, set up Google Tag Manager and GA4 to record the click before you spend.

Where to start your first ChatGPT Ads test in Southeast Asia

Start with one market where you can both fulfil orders and measure results, one buyer decision and a fixed end date, then expand.

The choice of market depends on what you need from the test. The Business Times (October 2026) reported analysts’ view that Singapore offers high-value users while Indonesia and Vietnam offer scale. Whichever you pick, run it in this order:

1. Choose one market where your company is billed, you can deliver, and someone can answer leads in the local language
2. Pick one buyer decision, such as choosing a supplier or comparing two products, and build one ad group around it
3. Write the ads, context hints and landing page in the language that market’s buyers use
4. Set up tracking for the real outcome, whether a chat, form or sale, and test it before launch
5. Fix an end date and a success measure, then decide whether to add a second market

No public benchmarks exist yet for ChatGPT Ads in any Southeast Asian market, so the first test is how you find yours. If you’d like a partner for that first ChatGPT Ads test in Southeast Asia, book a free consultation with the Gwenchana team. We can work remotely through your own chat channel, such as WhatsApp or Slack, plus Google Meet and Google Workspace. For Indonesian readers, we also have an Indonesian-language guide to ChatGPT Ads.