ChatGPT ad credits expire in 90 days, and they only pay off if you can measure conversions

OpenAI has started offering promotional credits to new advertisers so they can try out ads in ChatGPT. A common offer has been to spend $50 in the first 14 days after opening an account and get $50 back in credit. The amounts vary from offer to offer and are still shifting.

The mechanics were laid out in a guide published on November 6 by Reach, a company that sells conversion tracking to Shopify stores. According to the guide, press coverage has also reported $100 credits. The logic is always the same: the advertiser hits a minimum spend within a set window and receives a matching credit.

The reason for the offer, the guide says, is that advertisers have been slow to adopt the channel, partly because the return hasn't been proven yet and measurement is still maturing. The credit is meant to ease that hesitation and get more brands to run a first campaign.

The rules matter more than the dollar amount

The credits fall under OpenAI's ad credit terms. They expire roughly 90 days after they are granted, are applied automatically to eligible charges, have no cash value and cannot be combined with other credits. The guide notes that the setup resembles what Google and Meta use and recommends checking the current terms in your own account, since the details may change.

Another factor is the minimum daily budget of $25 a day (or the local currency equivalent). Because a single day can spend up to twice that amount, a small credit runs out in just a few days.

Without measurement, the test is pointless

The guide's core argument is that a credit is only worth as much as the brand's conversion tracking. With just a browser pixel, some sales get lost to ad blockers, tracking protection and purchases made on another device. When the promotion ends, the dashboard may suggest the channel underperformed when in fact there were sales that simply weren't counted.

The mistake can cut both ways: dropping a channel that was working, or scaling up spend based on a false reading. That is why the guide recommends server-side tracking through the Conversions API, with a single sender per Pixel ID so that no conversion is counted twice.

The suggested playbook has five steps:

• set up measurement before spending a single dollar;
• put the 90-day deadline on your calendar the day the credit lands;
• point the budget at one focused campaign with a clean product catalog;
• look at conversions and engagement together, because real interest with few early sales is a different result from no interest at all;
• let the data decide: scale with your own budget if it converts, or wind it down having learned something cheaply.

For brand marketers, the credit is a low-risk way to test paid presence inside ChatGPT, a channel that is still young. As the guide puts it, the credit lowers the risk of the spend, but only measurement lowers the risk of the decision.