ChatGPT Ads: iOS vs Android vs Web targeting, what the documentation says

What is confirmed: three targeting values

At campaign level, you can restrict delivery to iOS, Android, Web, or any combination of the three. It is a setting separate from geographic targeting and custom audiences, and it lives in the same place in campaign configuration (full details on our ChatGPT Ads campaign setup page).

In practice, this targeting answers a simple question: do you want your ads to appear only in the ChatGPT app on iPhone, only on Android, only on the web version of ChatGPT, or across several of these surfaces at once? It matters as soon as your own offering depends on the platform, for example an app available on only one system, or a purchase journey built for the web rather than the app.

The catch: reporting still uses two categories

The most important nuance on this page, and the easiest to miss: despite three-value targeting, OpenAI itself has stated that reporting is still organized into two categories. In other words, the granularity you target with is not necessarily the granularity you get back when analyzing results afterward.

The exact labels of these two reporting categories, and how iOS, Android and Web map onto them, are not published in detail as of today. We flag this as confirmed in principle, not detailed in how it works, rather than guess at a mapping we cannot verify. Before routing budget based on supposed "per-platform" performance, check in Ads Manager how your reports actually group your three targets.

Why target by platform instead of running everywhere

Three use cases that follow from the product's logic, not from an OpenAI figure:

• An offering limited to one platform. An app available only on iOS has no reason to pay for impressions seen by Android users who cannot install it.
• A conversion journey that differs by surface. A checkout flow optimized for the web can underperform in an app context, and vice versa.
• A controlled test. Isolating a platform lets you test creative or an offer on a single channel before rolling it out, provided you keep the reporting limit above in mind when reading results.

What it does not replace

Platform targeting is independent of geographic targeting (country, and recently a finer level in some markets, detailed on our ChatGPT Ads location targeting page) and of custom audiences. The three combine: a campaign can target a specific country, exclude an existing-customer audience, and restrict itself to iOS, all in the same setup.

Nor does it replace context hints, which define the topics and intents relevant to your ads at the ad group level (method detailed on our ChatGPT Ads context hints page). Platform targeting filters where your ads can appear; context hints determine which conversations they are likely to be relevant in.

What is not publicly documented

Points we flag as unconfirmed for lack of an official source:

• The exact labels of the two reporting categories and how they map to the three platform targets are not published.
• The actual split of ChatGPT traffic between iOS, Android and Web is not publicly disclosed by OpenAI.
• Any differences in average cost or performance between platforms are not documented: any comparative figure you come across is from third-party observation, not from the platform itself.