Guides · Updated 2026-10-23
Why OpenAI Ads shows €0 spend for today
OpenAI Ads reports impressions and clicks within about an hour, but reports spend only once it has been billed, which is usually the next day. So today's spend often shows €0 even when your ads got clicks. It's a reporting delay, not free clicks.
What you can see in real time
- Impressions and clicks: within about an hour.
- Spend, CPC, CPM, cost per conversion and ROAS: once billed, usually the next day.
- Conversions: attributed by OpenAI, per day, and can arrive days later depending on your attribution window.
How to estimate today's spend
Multiply today's clicks by your average cost per click over the last few billed days. For campaigns billed by impressions, multiply impressions by your recent cost per 1,000 impressions. Cap the result at your daily budget.
Saperta does this automatically and marks the result with ≈ and "estimate". When OpenAI's billed figure arrives, it replaces the estimate.
What it means for budgets and rules
Pacing based on reported spend alone will look too low during the day. Keep your daily budget in OpenAI as the hard limit, and treat spend-based rules as a safety net that may act late.
Try it with sample data
Saperta is currently free. Open the web app, create an account and tap "Explore with sample data" to see every screen before connecting your own account.
Open the web app