OAI-AdsBot: OpenAI's Ads Crawler
What is OAI-AdsBot?
OAI-AdsBot checks landing pages submitted as ChatGPT ads against OpenAI policy. It only visits pages submitted as ads, and its data is not used for model training. OAI-AdsBot visits only pages submitted as ChatGPT ads, and OpenAI states the data it collects is not used for model training.
Key facts
- OAI-AdsBot is operated by OpenAI, and its purpose is ads verification: visits pages submitted as advertisements to check them against policy.
- The user agent for OAI-AdsBot is documented by OpenAI and contains the token OAI-AdsBot.
- The robots.txt token for OAI-AdsBot is OAI-AdsBot, and OpenAI documents that OAI-AdsBot respects that rule.
- OAI-AdsBot never sends a visitor to your site, and OAI-AdsBot attaches no citation when it uses your content.
Specification
| Operator | OpenAI |
|---|---|
| Purpose | Ads verificationVisits pages submitted as advertisements to check them against policy. Only visits submitted pages. |
| Agent kind | CrawlerAutonomous crawler. Appears in your logs under its own user-agent. |
| User agent | Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko); compatible; OAI-AdsBot/1.0; +https://openai.com/adsbot |
| robots.txt token | OAI-AdsBot |
| robots.txt compliance | Documented: respects robots.txt |
| Verification | Published IP range filehttps://openai.com/adsbot.json |
| Sends referral traffic | No |
| Attaches a citation | No |
| Status | Active |
| Legacy Kymo category | other |
| Source | Operator documentationhttps://developers.openai.com/api/docs/bots |
| Verified on |
What this looks like in your logs
203.0.113.42 - - [04/Aug/2026:09:14:07 +0000] "GET /pricing HTTP/1.1" 200 18432 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko); compatible; OAI-AdsBot/1.0; +https://openai.com/adsbot"
The part that identifies the request is the token OAI-AdsBot, inside the quoted user-agent field at the end of the line. Everything before it is the ordinary shape of a Common Log Format entry, and the address shown is a documentation address rather than one OpenAI uses.
What OAI-AdsBot does not do
OAI-AdsBot does not send you a visitor, and it attaches no citation, so a read by it can never turn into a click.
OAI-AdsBot does not affect organic reach, because it only checks pages connected to advertising.
OpenAI publishes no crawl frequency for OAI-AdsBot, so any schedule you read elsewhere is somebody's estimate rather than a documented figure.
How Kymo classifies it
Kymo files OAI-AdsBot under OpenAI as other, classified from the HTTP request on the server rather than from anything running in a browser.
A hit from OAI-AdsBot appears on the Crawlers dashboard under its own operator and is left out of the AI Visibility numbers, because it carries no answer a reader could arrive from.
Seen on our own sites
Not seen on kymo.in or remotestack.in in the 90 days up to 15 Sep 2026.
Allow it or block it
Only relevant if you run ChatGPT ads. Blocking it may prevent your landing pages from passing policy review. Most crawler references omit this bot entirely.
| Allow it if | Block it if |
|---|---|
| You advertise with OpenAI and want your landing pages checked. | You do not advertise with OpenAI. Blocking changes nothing about organic reach. |
robots.txt directives
Both blocks below address OAI-AdsBot only. Rules for one token never apply to another, even from the same operator.
Allow OAI-AdsBot
User-agent: OAI-AdsBot Allow: /
Block OAI-AdsBot
User-agent: OAI-AdsBot Disallow: /
Questions
How do I know a request claiming to be OAI-AdsBot is genuine?
OpenAI publishes the IP ranges OAI-AdsBot uses at https://openai.com/adsbot.json. Check the requesting address against that file. A user-agent string alone proves nothing, because anyone can send one.
Does blocking OAI-AdsBot also block OAI-SearchBot?
No. OAI-AdsBot and OAI-SearchBot are separate tokens, and OpenAI treats each one on its own. A rule naming OAI-AdsBot leaves OAI-SearchBot free to carry on indexing your pages for OpenAI answers. To stop that as well, name OAI-SearchBot in a rule of its own.
Will I see OAI-AdsBot in Google Analytics?
No. Google Analytics runs a JavaScript tag in a visitor's browser, and OAI-AdsBot reads your HTML and leaves without running any script. Server-side logging is the only way to record it.
Does OAI-AdsBot send traffic back to my site?
No. OAI-AdsBot takes content and sends nothing back. A hit appears in your logs as a request with no visitor behind it.
Related crawlers
All AI crawlers and control tokens
See this bot in your own logs
OAI-AdsBot checks your landing pages on OpenAI's behalf, and a browser tag never sees that request.
Kymo reads the HTTP request on your server, so a crawler that never runs JavaScript is still recorded. You see which bots reached the site, which pages they took and how often, next to your human traffic.
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