Deep Dive
Account Setup and Verification
Bassem starts by navigating to ChatGPT Ads Manager (open.com/ads). The first major requirement surfaces immediately: you need a Zendesk business account, not a personal ChatGPT login. He walks through the signup flow—choosing an account name (he uses 'Basam School'), entering legal business name, adding your website URL, selecting industry (Education in his case), currency (USD), country (Egypt), and timezone (Cairo). After filling in basic business info, he hits 'Create Advertiser Account.' The system then asks for payment details and logo upload. Here's the critical part: OpenAI will charge your card $100 temporarily to verify it's legitimate—this hits hard for first-timers but the money comes back in 1–7 business days. Finally, you need to complete Zendesk identity verification by phone (SMS code), which sometimes gets delayed due to high account signup pressure.
Payment Structure and Billing Mechanics
Once logged in, Bassem shows the Billing overview tab where the credit limit appears. Initially you get a $25 credit limit, meaning if your total spend stays under $25, it won't charge your card until either you hit $25 or the billing date arrives (he shows next automatic payment set for Sept 30). This works like an account credit system—OpenAI trusts you incrementally. As you run more successful campaigns and pull money from your card without fraud, they gradually raise your limit. He emphasizes the payment works on a debit model: you either spend until you hit your credit limit or hit the auto-billing date, whichever comes first. Activities tab tracks all transactions. The system is designed to build trust over time, similar to how Meta's system works, so don't panic if your first limit is low.
Campaign Creation and Objective Selection
To create a campaign, Bassem clicks 'Create Campaign' and immediately faces the objective choice: Reach (brand awareness), Clicks, or Conversions. He picks Clicks for this walkthrough since his goal is traffic to his website. Next comes budget type—daily budget ($25 minimum per day) versus campaign total budget (lifetime spend). He recommends daily budget for beginners because it's simpler to control. The system warns that if you set daily to $25, you might spend up to $50 on some days, but weekly can't exceed 175 (7 days × $25). After that comes geo-targeting: he selects Egypt as the target country but notes that not all countries are available yet (Saudi Arabia unavailable at filming, but Jordan and UAE are open). He also shows the exclude feature—if you want all of Egypt except Cairo, you'd add Cairo to exclusions. Finally, platform selection: iOS, Android, and Web all enabled for broadest reach.
Ad Group Setup and Bidding Strategy
Within the campaign, you create an ad group. Bassem names his 'Basam School Campaign' and chooses a bidding strategy: Maximize Results (let AI optimize for volume) versus Manual Max CPC (you set a ceiling bid per click). He picks Maximize Results for simplicity. The advanced tracking section lets you add UTM parameters to track which traffic comes from ChatGPT ads versus other sources—useful for larger operations but optional for beginners. He pastes his website URL (basemschool.com), then moves to ad creation. The text limits are strict: headline max 50 characters, description max 100 characters. To avoid overthinking copy, Bassem opens ChatGPT in a separate tab and prompts it to generate headlines for a 'ChatGPT-promoted ad for Basem School teaching digital marketing, AI, and content creation'—it instantly gives him 10 options to choose from.
Creative Generation and Campaign Launch
For the ad image, Bassem shows a clever workflow: ask ChatGPT to design a square book-cover style graphic matching your ad theme. ChatGPT generates the image, but since it might not be perfectly square, he asks ChatGPT to resize it to a square crop, then downloads it. Back in the ads manager, he uploads the image and saves the ad. He can create multiple ads within the same ad group to A/B test different headlines and images. Once all ads are created, he reviews the campaign settings one final time (budget, targeting, bid strategy all confirmed), then clicks 'Publish' to go live. He notes that if he switched from daily budget to campaign total budget, the system auto-changes the bid strategy from Maximize Results to Manual Max CPC, requiring manual adjustment. The entire setup—from account creation to publishing—takes roughly 15 minutes if you have all your business info ready.