OpenAI's advertising service is continuing to charge customers for ads that run after they've paused their campaigns, with delays of up to 94 minutes documented in at least one case. The practice, which OpenAI says is standard across the digital advertising industry, has sparked pushback from advertisers who argue the company should be able to stop ads instantly in the modern era of cloud computing.

What's Happening With OpenAI's Ad Billing?

OpenAI began testing ad sales in ChatGPT in February 2026 and has since expanded the service to the United Kingdom, Mexico, Brazil, Japan, and South Korea as of August 2026. The company is pursuing advertising revenue as a way to offset the costs of running its service and to demonstrate a path to profitability ahead of a potential initial public offering.

Ed Bolton, managing director of UK-based Excel4Business, discovered the billing issue while experimenting with ChatGPT Ads in the US and Canada. He noticed that ads were being delivered through the night and morning even after he had paused his campaigns. When Bolton raised the issue with OpenAI's support team, an initial response acknowledged the problem, stating that "the campaign was marked as paused, but the separate ad-level status used by the serving system did not refresh promptly, so an ad that was still active at the ad level continued to run".

OpenAI's support team initially acknowledged invalid charges of £60.72 from the original occurrence and approximately £6.47 from a recurrence on August 4-5. However, several days later, the company reversed course and declined to offer any refund or credit.

Why Is OpenAI Allowed to Keep Billing After Pausing?

OpenAI's reversal was based on Section 11.1 of its Advertising Terms, which explicitly states that ads may continue running for up to one business day after a campaign is canceled or changed, and advertisers remain responsible for any charges during that period. A company spokesperson explained that pausing a campaign constitutes a campaign change and does not guarantee that delivery or associated charges stop immediately.

The company argues that this grace period is necessary because it can take up to a business day to process campaign cancellations or changes across its systems. However, Bolton and other advertisers question why such delays are necessary in an era when applications and servers can be spun up and torn down in seconds. Bolton noted that he has run Google AdWords campaigns for 17 or 18 years and has never encountered this issue, and that if ad buyers were unable to stop a campaign quickly, they could easily spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in unwanted charges.

How Does This Compare to Other Ad Platforms?

OpenAI is not alone in allowing itself a grace period to stop serving ads. Other major advertising services, including Google's AdWords, impose similar terms in their fine print. However, some Google advertising customers have also complained about post-pause ad serving, suggesting the issue is not unique to OpenAI.

Bolton argued that such clauses are intended to cover technical latency issues, not to allow platforms to run ads for 24 hours longer than instructed. He also raised a legal concern: "they cannot retroactively apply a clause from terms and conditions after making a written settlement offer." This suggests that OpenAI's initial acknowledgment of the billing error may have created an obligation that the company later tried to escape by citing its terms.

Bolton

Steps to Protect Yourself When Using ChatGPT Ads

• Review Your Terms: Carefully read Section 11.1 of OpenAI's Advertising Terms before launching campaigns, and understand that pausing a campaign does not guarantee immediate billing cessation.
• Monitor Campaigns Closely: After pausing or canceling a campaign, continue monitoring your account for up to 24 hours to catch any unexpected ad delivery or charges that may occur.
• Document Everything: Keep detailed records of when you paused campaigns and any subsequent charges, as this documentation will be essential if you need to dispute billing with OpenAI's support team.
• Request Written Confirmation: When pausing campaigns, request written confirmation from OpenAI support that your campaign has been fully disabled, rather than relying on the platform's interface alone.

The most delayed ad documented in Bolton's case ran approximately 94 minutes after Excel4Business paused the campaign. OpenAI did not provide information about the average delay time or whether the company has taken steps to reduce the grace period since the issue was raised.

The underlying question is whether the 24-hour grace period serves a genuine technical purpose or represents a financial incentive for ad platforms to continue billing. Bolton suggested that there may be no financial incentive or regulatory pressure to tackle the problem, and potentially a significant financial incentive to ignore it. As OpenAI pursues advertising as a revenue stream ahead of a potential public offering, the company's handling of billing transparency and customer disputes will likely face increased scrutiny from both advertisers and investors.