Short answer
If OAI-AdsBot can't reach your landing page, OpenAI can't review the ad. Allow OAI-AdsBot (required) and OAI-SearchBot (recommended) in robots.txt, allowlist them by user agent in your CDN or firewall, exempt them from CAPTCHAs and JavaScript challenges, then resubmit affected ads. Don't ask for a manual bypass.
Steps
- Add Allow rules for OAI-AdsBot and OAI-SearchBot in robots.txt
- In Cloudflare, check bot-fight and WAF rules (OAI-AdsBot is a verified bot there)
- Exempt the user agents from CAPTCHAs and JS challenges
- If you need IPs, use openai.com/adsbot.json and searchbot.json, combined with user-agent checks
- Check image hosts too
- Resubmit or re-upload ads if status doesn't update
robots.txt
User-agent: OAI-AdsBot
Allow: /
User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Allow: /Questions
Does blocking GPTBot affect ads?
No. GPTBot relates to training. OAI-AdsBot only visits submitted ad pages and its data isn't used to train models.
Facts checked against the sources below on 12 October 2026. Platforms change quickly: if something here no longer matches what you see, tell us and we will update it.
