OpenAI gives ChatGPT ad credits a 90-day expiration and bans stacking them with other offers

OpenAI has posted the rules for promotional credits on its advertising platform on its own website. The credits expire 90 days after they are allocated, are nonrefundable, cannot be transferred and are not replaced if they go unused. Ads started running in the United States about six months before the terms were made public.

The details were compiled in an analysis published by Relevant Audience on November 6, based on Marketing Brew reporting from July 31, 2026. The credits also cannot be combined with "other credits, coupons, discounts, rebates, incentives or offsets." OpenAI reserves the right to apply them automatically to "eligible fees" and to "suspend, revoke or void" the credits.

The policy leaves out what matters most for a budget: how much credit is granted, who qualifies, whether there is a minimum spend and how an advertiser becomes eligible to receive it. The analysis recommends treating any figure circulating on these points as unsourced.

The 90-day window sets the size of the test

The number to plan around is the expiration date. The 90 days start at allocation, and account setup, creative approval and the learning period all come out of that same window. A test that starts three weeks late ends with credit that cannot be extended and that, under the policy, will not be replaced.

The ban on stacking offers matters for a different reason. An advertiser with more than one offer has to use them one after another, without pooling everything into a single balance, which stretches the test across a longer calendar than the budget line suggests.

The analysis reads the arrival of written rules as a sign of a platform that is taking on hundreds of new accounts and needs terms that work at scale, without negotiating individually with each advertiser.

Outside the United States, nothing is documented

The cited reporting does not describe ad availability in any market outside the United States. In the analysis's view, that is no reason to pull budget from channels that convert today: the paid opportunity outside the US remains undocumented.

For brand teams, the part you can act on now is organic. ChatGPT already answers questions about products and vendors, with or without an ad next to the answer, and showing up inside those answers is separate work from buying placements. The analysis points to structured, citable pages that an answer engine can pull a fact from and attribute to the brand, and suggests monitoring the paid platform until there are written terms for each market.