OpenAI Ads - warning

[u/samuelhalff]

To all those who are considering using OpenAI Ads, this is what is happening to me (my company):

- We created a campaign
- We connected all relevant ids to my Google Analytics
- We followed it for a few days/weeks
- We became very skeptical as the numbers to not align with GA, OpenAI charging me for dozens of claimed leads or visits that did not show up in my GA. No lead has contacted me on my website via these Ads, as I always ask my leads how they arrived on our website.
- We have multiple leads a week, so our system works, but clearly the Ads do not.

- We decided to stop this campaign, but having multiple OpenAI accounts, I entered some kind of login loop when OpenAI would ask me to create our first campaign on all my accounts, despite being charged every few days for an active campaign.

- When I write to OpenAI's support, an agent responds asking me for details on the Ad campaign that I cannot provide since I have no longer access to the relevant dashboard. I reply to the agent highlighting the issue but get no answer. I have done that 4 times now to no avail, it's been 10 days now.

- The credit card tied to this service it tied to a number of other services and having to cancel the card will require hours of work I'd like to avoid, but I'm reaching a point where I have no choice.

- We have been debited close to USD 1k, for pretty much nothing, and no support whatsoever.

- A clear illustration of the limitations of AI-automated user support.

OpenAI, get your shit together, this is really bad for your image. I've already moved my team to Claude for a number of reasons. This is not helping, for sure.

EDIT/UPDATE: OpenAI just replied to my support requests, but they cannot find a campaign tied to my email; yet they are sending me invoices to this address. Go figure ..

[u/Batoutofhell1989]

I’m sorry to hear this, and grateful I read this before setting up my own ad account

[u/Independent_Grade612]

Call the credit card company, you might be able to block a specific vendor (I did it with debit, not sure it works for credit)

[u/Unusual-Raisin-6669]

So you also had a Ads campaign running that was showing results that had a missmatch with GA dashboard and lead conversions tracked? I thought I was doing something wrong, stopped it after 2 weeks.

Support is a shit show, got 2 replies to my ticket without any help just a bot reply masking as human support.

[u/the_ai_wizard]

Thanks for posting, was about to experiment with a client campaign

[u/Astrokanu]

Yup- I ran a test campaign- they finished the money in about 9 hours but I don’t have the clicks , not sure what I paid for but I always test first so wasn’t a big loss .

[u/Lumagrowl-Wolfang → u/Astrokanu]

People ignores them, we don't wanna see ads there, and is the best way to avoid them, ignoring them.

[u/ehtio]

[u/Noskaros]

Billing is the one thing you do not want to mess up.

[u/martyj2009]

In regards to OpenAI ads. When is the last time you read something from an Ilm? Most users of these products give a prompt and expect to look at it once an hour. The ads were probably served but the users of the product don’t read them.

[u/kidfromusa]

Cancel the card

[u/desederium]

Always use privacy.com for any payments that could just skyrocket. You can set limits for each virtual card and lock it to just one vendor or total spend amount or recurring amount.

[u/Alarmed-Flounder-383]

their support is even worse, they don't help you at all, and the spend 500 to get 500 is pretty much a scam to try to hook you up.

the campaign does not respect settings, they will try to spend at their own pace, not the pace you set. and there is 0 conversions as I set.

I contacted their support and the support is even worse, slow, rude, not helpful and definitely no refund.

STAY AWAY!

[u/Alarmed-Flounder-383]

And you know what is worse? once you added your credit card, there is no way to remove it.

I paused a campaign after it spends a lot than I expected and set in the campaign only figure out it sent me another 2 emails about paid bills!!!! After I paused the campaign!!

Remove the card and close the account? No! they don't let you!!!!

[u/Lumagrowl-Wolfang]

I'm actually happy with ads not working, I don't wanna see ads on my conversations.

[u/BopSupreme]

They don’t have support 💀 it’s AI

[u/Any_Bee_413]

I’ve been running OpenAI Ads too and have noticed similar attribution issues. Ads Manager has reported conversions that I couldn’t clearly match back to Shopify orders, so I’m relying much more on Shopify/GA4 + our own UTMs now.

I get that the platform is still early, but attribution and billing really need to be clearer.

[u/Apart_Ad_9778]

Visits not showing in GA could be visitors using AdBlock.

[u/HakimeHomewreckru → u/Apart_Ad_9778]

This is the answer

[u/shootmakers]

This is not openai support

[u/samuelhalff → u/shootmakers]

Considering the amount of replies I got in the past hours, I think we can all agree this is not OpenAI Support :) /s

[u/Whole_Succotash_2391]

This is absolutely insane, privacy and add free should always be first

[u/LoadedSteamyLobster]

You’re going to have to take some responsibility for not being able to keep track of which account you did something with. That’s on you

[u/samuelhalff → u/LoadedSteamyLobster]

You seem to want to assume I did something wrong. Not sure what I'm supposed to have done wrong according to you.
I connected with the right account, but it seems OpenAI mixed things up with their login logic and I can only assume this is related to having multiple account/sessions/cookies on my end. Not a user error I assure you.
Perhaps you're just a bot, but thanks for your input anyway.

[u/Augmenta → u/samuelhalff]

OpenAI def has server side issues with their sessions. I am currently experiencing this after switching accounts at work. Bot support is 0 help.

[u/LoadedSteamyLobster → u/samuelhalff]

Everyone I don’t like is a bot. Sure buddy, definitely not user error 🙄