Hello Reader
ChatGPT Ads are already appearing in roughly one in four commercial conversations.
SE Ranking analyzed 50,006 commercial prompts across 20 niches and found ads appearing on 25.94% of them.
The advertising ecosystem is taking shape quickly. But does that mean marketers should start shifting budgets away from Google, Meta or LinkedIn?
The early evidence is mixed.
Some consumer brands are reporting promising acquisition costs. Other advertisers are struggling to spend their budgets, even when they're willing to pay for more traffic.
After nearly $70,000 in testing, Hostinger’s head of PPC Hüseyin Ograk reported purchases but inconsistent traffic quality, and CPMs above $65. He also had concerns about CTR, but said specific use cases performed better than broad messaging.
I've been looking at the research and speaking with marketers who are already running campaigns.
Here's what the numbers tell us and how I'd approach ChatGPT Ads in 2027.
Where do ChatGPT Ads appear?
ChatGPT Ads are sponsored placements displayed separately below ChatGPT's responses. Rather than relying primarily on the keywords someone searches for, the platform uses the context of a conversation to determine which ads may be relevant.
Say someone asks ChatGPT where to order Thai food for dinner or how to make meal prep easier during the week.
A DoorDash ad could appear with relevant options, such as "Thai Food, Delivered" or "Meal Prep Made Easy," as shown in the example.
The advertiser doesn't see the conversation, and paying for an ad doesn't influence ChatGPT's answer.
OpenAI determines which ads qualify based on signals including conversation context, targeting selections, ad copy and landing-page relevance.
Who sees ChatGPT Ads?
Ads currently appear to eligible users on ChatGPT's Free and Go plans. Plus, Pro, Business and Enterprise accounts remain ad-free.
A study from Emma Lurie et al. at the University of Pennsylvania and Haverford College, uncovered an interesting pattern: simulated accounts associated with lower-income ZIP codes were significantly more likely to receive ads than those associated with higher-income ZIP codes, and ad delivery isn't uniform across ChatGPT's user base.
Which industries are advertising?
Emma Lurie et al. also found that retail and information businesses, a category that includes software and digital services, accounted for approximately 57% of the advertisements it classified.
The researchers also found that product-related questions generated ads more frequently than many other types of prompts.
For example, conversations about running shoes, streaming services and purchasing electronics were more likely to trigger advertising than prompts involving writing or personal reflection.
The takeaway: ChatGPT is developing as a commercial discovery channel, but its early advertising activity has been concentrated around consumer purchases and product research.
What's new?
OpenAI recently launched a new format for its ads—a visual advertising format designed to help people discover products and services through images.
The format includes visual representations of products, their uses and the experiences they make possible.
OpenAI also announced expanded measurement capabilities, including integrations with Hightouch, Tealium and LiveRamp, attribution partnerships and work on incrementality measurement.
2. Inside a real ChatGPT Ads campaign
Kaan Catalkaya runs mondaybrew, a digital agency managing marketing and advertising campaigns for clients.
He's currently testing ChatGPT Ads for a B2C client alongside the client's existing advertising channels.
His early results challenge the assumption that ChatGPT advertising is more expensive.
“Compared with the other channels we’re running for that client,” he says. “We’re seeing broadly similar CPCs and click-through rates.”
That's encouraging, but Kaan has encountered a different problem.
He can't spend the available budget.
Kaan attributes this to the limited number of relevant conversations available for his client's product. On Google or Meta, increasing your budget and broadening targeting can often help you reach additional audiences.
In ChatGPT, delivery depends partly on the platform finding conversations where your advertising is relevant. If there aren't enough eligible opportunities, you might find it impossible to spend your ad budget, which limits how quickly you can scale.
And conversions?
Kaan says it's still too early to tell.
“I’m seeing encouraging signs but volume is still low and we need more data on conversions before drawing stronger conclusions.”
3. What makes ChatGPT Ads different from traditional advertising?
If you've run Google Ads, much of ChatGPT's advertising platform will feel familiar. You still have campaigns, ad groups, budgets, creative, landing pages and conversion tracking.
The difference is how the platform identifies relevant advertising opportunities.
Here's what that means in practice.
Imagine you're marketing a CRM platform.
On Google, you might target keywords such as "best CRM software" or "CRM for small business."
In ChatGPT, a potential customer might describe a more specific situation:
“Our sales team has grown to 20 people. We're still tracking leads in spreadsheets, follow-ups are falling through, and I can't get a reliable sales forecast. What should we use instead?”
That conversation contains information about the buyer's problem, their team and the outcome they're looking for.
Rather than organizing the campaign around CRM keywords alone, you could build an ad group around sales pipeline visibility and lead management.
You'd then provide context hints, descriptions of the conversations and problems where your advertising might be relevant.
For example:
• Sales teams replacing spreadsheet-based lead tracking.
• Improving pipeline visibility and sales forecasting.
• Managing follow-ups across growing sales teams.
These aren't exact-match keywords. They're relevance signals OpenAI considers when deciding whether an ad fits a conversation.
Your creative and landing page matter too.
An ad promising better pipeline visibility should link to a page explaining how your product solves that specific problem, rather than a generic corporate homepage.
As B2B marketing consultant David Kirkdorffer explains, instead of targeting keywords and audiences you now need to target buyer situations.
4. Is ChatGPT Ads a feasible channel for B2B?
B2B marketers face a different challenge from consumer brands.
Even if millions of professionals use ChatGPT to investigate business problems, advertisers can only reach the subset using eligible plans.
There are other limitations:
- No direct professional targeting: you can't select job titles, seniority, specific companies or company sizes as you would on LinkedIn.
- Custom audience requirements: OpenAI's minimum matched-user requirements make small named-account campaigns difficult.
- Uncertain volume: highly specific B2B conversations may not occur frequently enough among eligible users to support significant spending.
Kaan is more optimistic about the opportunity.
“I think there’s potential for both B2B and B2C. People use ChatGPT for work decisions as well as personal purchases, so I wouldn’t limit it to one category.”
And he's right that professional buying decisions happen in ChatGPT.
Someone researching a CRM migration, marketing automation platform or sales-enablement tool could represent meaningful commercial intent, but there's a difference between that conversation happening and being able to reach enough of those buyers.
5. Do you need a ChatGPT Ads specialist or an agency?
If you've already got an experienced paid-media team, probably not. The underlying skills are familiar.
Your team needs to adjust how campaigns are planned and measured, but it doesn't need to relearn performance marketing.
Your team will need four capabilities:
- Buyer-intent analysis
Your team will need to identify the situations, problems and constraints customers describe when evaluating solutions. You can use sales calls, customer interviews, support questions and search data to understand their language.
- Context-hint development
You need to translate those situations into descriptions OpenAI can use to help match ads to relevant conversations.
- Landing-page strategy
Next you need to create pages addressing specific buyer problems, with clear product information, supporting evidence and next steps.
- Measurement and experimentation
The final step is tracking whether clicks generate qualified conversions, pipeline and revenue, rather than evaluating traffic volume alone.
So when does an agency make sense?
If you don't have internal paid-media expertise, an agency can help with campaign setup, targeting strategy, creative, tracking and optimization.
If you already work with an agency, ask what ChatGPT Ads experience it has before expanding the engagement.
Kaan's agency is running ChatGPT campaigns alongside established channels, comparing performance and identifying delivery constraints that could affect the client's ability to scale.
Your agency should do the same.
Five questions to ask an agency:
1. How many ChatGPT Ads campaigns have you run, and in which industries?
2. What qualified conversions or acquisition costs can you demonstrate?
3. How do you develop context hints and buyer-situation campaigns?
4. How are you benchmarking performance against our existing channels?
5. What can your team do that ours couldn't learn internally?
If an agency can't answer those questions with useful evidence, I'd be reluctant to pay a premium for its expertise.
6. Should ChatGPT Ads get a place in your 2027 budget?
For B2B marketers, I'd treat ChatGPT Ads as an experimental channel rather than immediately shifting meaningful budget from established acquisition programs.
For consumer brands, particularly those with direct purchase conversions and established attribution, there may be a stronger case for testing now.
Either way, the goal is the same: establish whether ChatGPT can acquire valuable customers at a competitive cost and sufficient volume.