ChatGPT isn't available in Hong Kong. But OpenAI is open for business

ChatGPT remains officially unavailable in Hong Kong, but that isn't stopping OpenAI from opening the door to advertising dollars from businesses in the city.

In an unusual commercial arrangement, OpenAI has appointed Aleph as its exclusive advertising reseller across 44 markets, including Hong Kong, allowing local brands and agencies to purchase ChatGPT advertising despite the platform banned for Hong Kong users. 

Under the partnership, Aleph will provide local contracting, invoicing, onboarding and first-line support to brands and agencies seeking to advertise on ChatGPT.

Gastón Taratuta, founder and CEO of Aleph, said the agreement was designed to connect businesses in these markets with emerging opportunities in AI advertising. “AI is giving businesses a new way to connect with people. Starting today, advertisers in 44 markets can work with OpenAI through a local team that speaks their language, bills in their currency and extends credit.”

While local businesses can now access advertising sales and support services through Aleph, the arrangement does not mean ChatGPT is becoming available to local consumers or that advertisers can reach Hong Kong audiences through the platform.

Instead, the commercial opportunity appears to lie in helping Hong Kong businesses reach consumers overseas, particularly those operating in international markets.

“There is an obvious irony in pitching Hong Kong businesses to spend ad dollars on a platform that remains geo-blocked in their own backyard,” said Nathan Petralia, head of tech, JAPAC at Tag.

In practice, this is strictly an outbound export play, not a local acquisition channel.

Petralia said the arrangement was particularly relevant for Hong Kong-headquartered businesses in cross-border eCommerce, finance, hospitality and aviation.

“With zero compliant local consumer inventory, this only works for Hong Kong-headquartered brands in cross-border eCommerce, finance, hospitality, and aviation,” he said. “For those export-focused teams, Aleph simply solves a billing and support bottleneck while they target buyers in the US, Europe, or Southeast Asia.”

Meanwhile, Phoebe Yeung, managing director, FABCOM, sees OpenAI's partnership with Aleph as a positive development, particularly for Hong Kong brands looking to expand into overseas markets. "Sectors such as travel, hospitality, eCommerce and education could be among the early beneficiaries, given the importance of consumer research and consideration in their purchase journeys."

An old playbook for a new advertising giant

While the arrangement might appear unusual, the strategy of selling advertising in markets where a platform is unavailable to consumers has a precedent.

More than a decade ago, Facebook was exploring a similar commercial opportunity in mainland China, where the social network was blocked but local companies were increasingly looking to international markets for growth.

In July 2013, MARKETING-INTERACTIVE reported that Facebook was planning to open a sales operation in Beijing to pursue outbound advertising revenue from Chinese brands seeking access to its then 1.1 billion global users.

Companies including Lenovo, Huawei, Haier, Air China and Alibaba were among the Chinese businesses pursuing international expansion at the time.

For OpenAI, the Aleph partnership provides a way to pursue advertising revenue from businesses across a wider range of markets without necessarily extending consumer access to its platform in those territories.

So what does this all mean for Hong Kong marketers?

Petralia said the emergence of paid advertising within AI platforms would require brands to rethink how they approach visibility in AI-generated answers. “Brands can no longer treat AI search as a purely earned-media exercise; it now has to be managed as a unified paid-and-earned shelf, just like Google Search,” he said.

He argued that generative engine optimisation (GEO), which aims to improve a brand's visibility in AI-generated responses, would increasingly need to operate alongside paid advertising.

“Organic GEO builds baseline authority, while paid placements buy predictable visibility on high-intent commercial queries where organic citations fluctuate,” Petralia said.

For brands focused on reaching consumers within Hong Kong, however, Petralia said advertising and AI search investment would continue to favour platforms accessible to local audiences. These include Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot, alongside Xiaohongshu, WeChat and Chinese AI services such as DeepSeek and Qwen for relevant cross-border and Chinese-language audiences.

Reshaping the search landscape

On the search front, Andy Wong, co-founder, Digital Zoo, said brands should not approach ChatGPT advertising simply by copying their Google paid search campaigns. "OpenAI’s documentation says ad matching considers the context and intent of a conversation, alongside information such as the landing page and ad copy. Advertisers can provide context hints, but these are not exact-match keywords and do not guarantee placement in a particular conversation."

It is equally important not to confuse paid visibility with an independent recommendation, he said. "OpenAI states that advertising does not influence ChatGPT’s organic answers, and an ad placement does not mean OpenAI endorses the brand. Agencies should make that distinction clear rather than promise clients that advertising will get them recommended by the AI."

As ChatGPT is different from traditional search engines, brands should not by default expect the same performance or user behaviour, said Gary Cheung, managing director, Hong Kong and Taiwan, NP Digital. 

"There'll be a learning curve, and some testing will be needed to understand what ChatGPT ads can deliver for brands. It makes sense to test what's available, while continuing to strengthen a trusted presence across search and AI platforms by publishing clear, accurate content, building credible third-party mentions and keeping brand information consistent across the web," he added.

Measurement is the gap, said Yoyo Ng, managing director, Greater China, First Page, citing DeepSeek as an example of how this plays out locally. "A lot of Hong Kong brands are still being measured only in English, on English platforms, which misses where a good share of their audience is actually asking. If a client sells in both languages, we test both, because being cited in one tells you nothing about the other."

She added nobody has agreed how to attribute AI ad placement yet, so budgets will drift towards whichever platform reports most neatly rather than whichever one works. "My advice to clients hasn't changed. Own your site, your content, your citations. Whatever gets sold above them will keep changing. What you own won't."

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