Are ChatGPT ads worth exploring for your brand?

As people use ChatGPT to research products, compare services and explore their options, brands have another opportunity to reach them through paid advertising. But does that make it a worthwhile channel for your business? Our Head of Paid Media, Richard Jackson, shares his perspective on where the opportunity lies for brands with ChatGPT Ads. 

Why should brands be paying attention to ChatGPT advertising?

People use ChatGPT to ask questions, explore options and compare products or services before making a decision. For brands, advertising creates an opportunity to reach potential customers during that research. 

ChatGPT offers new avenues to reach audiences as search behaviour changes. If you think your brand is struggling to be seen on AI platforms, you may want to explore paid placements as another way to reach the audiences that use them. 

How do adverts work within ChatGPT?

Currently, adverts appear at the bottom of a ChatGPT response to a relevant prompt, e.g., road running shoes. An image-based advert can include the advertiser’s name, a title, supporting copy and a link to its website. The advert will remain in this spot as the conversation continues, and further adverts may appear later. 

During the advert setup process, advertisers will provide conversation themes and contextual hints about their products to guide ChatGPT on when their products are most relevant to surface as an ad during a conversation. 

For example, a travel company looking to boost sales of their Rome holiday package could provide context hints describing their offer, such as ‘holiday to Rome’, ‘package holiday Rome’, ‘flight and hotel deals Rome’. These hints help establish relevance rather than acting as exact-match keywords. 

OpenAI's advertising platform lets advertisers fully customise their copy and imagery. The suggested ad drafts leverage your website's metadata to pull an image, title and description for your ad; this feature does not generate new copy or imagery with AI. 

Which brands could benefit from ChatGPT ads?

Whether your brand will find ChatGPT ads suitable depends on a couple of factors: whether your audience uses ChatGPT to research relevant products or services, and whether your product or service involves a longer-than-average consideration journey.

Is your audience using ChatGPT to research?

If your target audience already uses AI to discover new products or services when considering a purchase, then ChatGPT advertising may be worth investigating. However, don’t assume your audience has adopted AI. Using audience research tools such as GWI to understand the behaviour of people who match your customer persona can help with this, as can using existing AI-referral traffic. 

Does your product or service involve a longer consideration journey?

Sectors where prospective audiences do substantial research are some of the best use cases for AI Ads. Going back to our travel brand example, prospective holidaymakers may compare several destinations, accommodation and travel options before committing to a purchase. ABTA’s Holiday Habits 2026–27 research found that 14% of people use AI tools for holiday inspiration, rising to 29% among 25–34-year-olds. 

How does ChatGPT advertising fit into your wider AI visibility strategy?

Before putting budget into ChatGPT advertising, it’s worth looking at whether your brand is already appearing in AI answers. You might find that people are coming to your website through ChatGPT, or that competitors are being mentioned in conversations where you’d expect your brand to appear.

Paid ads could help you reach more of that audience, but they won’t improve your position within ChatGPT’s answers. You’ll still need to work on your organic visibility and make sure your website gives people the information they need when they arrive.

For a travel brand, useful destination content can help someone decide where to go, while an advert introduces a holiday package they might consider. The landing page needs to follow through on that offer, with enough detail to help them decide whether it’s right for them.

Our AI audits can help you see where your brand is appearing and where there’s room to improve. From there, we can look at whether paid activity would be a useful addition to your strategy, or whether there’s more work to do on your content first.

Is it the right time for your brand to explore ChatGPT ads?

If your audience uses ChatGPT to research products or services like yours, advertising may be worth a closer look. You don’t need them to be searching for your brand already: part of the opportunity is reaching people who might not otherwise have come across you.

At this stage, I see the strongest case for ChatGPT ads for brands that want to build awareness and are willing to try a new channel. If you need an immediate sales return to justify the spend, it may be harder to make the case internally. Being clear about what you want from the campaign will help you decide whether a test is worthwhile.

You’ll also need enough budget to give it a fair chance. I would suggest around £5,000 over two weeks as a starting point for a small, focused test. At that level, you’d need to keep the scope fairly narrow, with limited room to compare different audiences or creative approaches. £10,000 over a month would be a more comfortable recommendation to truly see its impact.

You don’t need to have all of this worked out before speaking to us. We can help you decide whether there’s a good fit for your brand and what a test could reasonably achieve within your budget, and our Paid Media team can help you plan the campaign.

Want to know whether ChatGPT advertising could work for your brand? Get in touch with our Paid Media team to talk it through.