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ChatGPT ads are coming—here’s how to prepare

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OpenAI is bringing ads to ChatGPT. Here’s what brands need to know—and what they need to do to prepare.
Sage Stahmer By Sage Stahmer

OpenAI announced that it will soon begin testing ads in ChatGPT.

It’s not a huge surprise that ChatGPT is opening up a paid lane (despite Sam Altman’s past protestations). But now that the AI giant is doing what Google did decades ago, we wanted to break down what brands should do to prepare.

ChatGPT answers are splitting into organic and paid. Here's what’s coming, what it means, and what you should do next.

Breaking down the ChatGPT ads rollout

Here’s the TLDR on what OpenAI announced:

  • ChatGPT Go (the $8-a-month plan tier already available in 171 countries outside the US) is coming to America and everywhere else ChatGPT is available.
  • OpenAI will start testing ads among Free and Go users in the US in the weeks ahead.
  • Ads will appear at the bottom of answers in ChatGPT when there’s a “relevant sponsored product or service based on your current conversation.”
  • Ads will be labeled as such and separated from organic AI responses.
  • Ads won’t be packaged in responses to “sensitive or regulated topics” (think health, politics, etc.).

It’s important to keep in mind that this isn’t the “official” launch of ads in ChatGPT, just a test aimed at US adults.

As such, zero information about how this will all work (which ads will go where, how much placements will cost, how ROI will be measured, etc.) has been shared.

Our guess is that OpenAI will kickstart ads with the same partners that’ve been part of recent launches (see: the launch of ChatGPT’s app marketplace).

It’s also unclear exactly which types of ads will be available once the testing phase is over. That said, OpenAI indicated that users will likely be able to interact with ads (as in, converse with them the same way they ask questions of ChatGPT).

Reading the tea leaves on impact

Here are our initial thoughts on what this means for AI search:

Ads won't influence answers (but they'll influence everything else)

The trillion-dollar question everyone’s asking: Will ads hurt my organic AI visibility?

Straight from the horse’s mouth: “Ads do not influence the answers ChatGPT gives you. Answers are optimized based on what's most helpful to you.”

Translation: If your brand was going to show up in a ChatGPT response already, ads won’t interfere.

But it’s safe to say that ads will influence user behavior.

We’ll be keeping a close eye on how users interact with ads versus organic answers (and its impact on LLM-referred traffic).

You don’t have to pay (but your competitors probably will)

OpenAI made a point of saying that ads are a big boost to “small businesses and emerging brands trying to compete.”

In other words: Just because a brand was previously invisible in a ChatGPT response doesn’t mean it has to stay that way.

Brands will soon have a paid path to AI search visibility for the prompts they care about most.

Competitive prompts just got more competitive.

The black box is about to crack open (we hope)

When Google launched ads, it gave marketers access to lots of juicy targeting info and performance metrics.

OpenAI will need to follow suit to justify investment.

What it will look like is anyone’s guess, but brands will be wary of handing over budget without clear-cut answers on who they’re reaching and how to measure success.

Preparing before ads go live

If you want to be an early mover when the ad floodgates open, here’s a four-step checklist to help you prepare:

1. Get up to speed on bottom-of-funnel prompt performance

Ads can help you drive awareness, but ChatGPT's conversational format means customers can ask follow-up questions about your brand and offer.

You need to know what ChatGPT will say when users start interrogating it about your products and services.

This is already important, but it matters even more when you start spending money on ads that will beg for questions.

Now's the time to develop, deliver, and monitor content that supports the decision-making stage of the buyer journey. Track prompts associated with evaluation and comparison, not just top-of-funnel awareness.

2. Get (more) granular with your personas

Ads will only show up in ChatGPT's Free and Go tiers, so make sure your personas reflect those audience segments and that you can adequately monitor them.

If you can’t align your customer profiles with these socio-economic tiers, now’s the time to fix that.

You'll want to track how each group interacts with ChatGPT to understand which prompts matter most for them.

3. Get your ChatGPT referral setup sorted

You need to know who's coming to your site from sponsored content versus organic ChatGPT responses.

Set up tracking now to understand how ads—both yours and your competitors'—impact referral volume from ChatGPT.

4. Get creative

Start thinking about how you want to advertise in a world beyond standard imagery and text. Brands are about to enter a space where users may have full-on conversations with their ads.

Also worth chewing on: Can you get more ambitious with packages, commitments, and custom pricing within ChatGPT ads?

The good news for Scrunch customers: We can help with all of the above.

Scrunch lets you:

  • Filter prompt performance by funnel stage: Measure AI search performance at the advice, awareness, evaluation, and comparison stages of the funnel to see how you show up at different phases of the buyer journey.
  • Deliver optimized content to LLMs: Transform website content into an AI-friendly format and serve it up directly to ChatGPT on autopilot to maximize results.
  • Track prompts by persona: Create customer personas based on unique characteristics (including Free and Go tier usage) and auto-generate prompts based on those personas or assign them to existing prompts for targeted tracking and filtering.
  • Connect AI search to clicks: Connect your Google Analytics 4 account to Scrunch to capture traffic to your site from ChatGPT and measure how it changes over time.

We’ve supported ChatGPT from day one and will be working closely with OpenAI and our customers to support ad visibility as it’s rolled out on the platform, including the ability to parse out paid brand presence versus organic brand presence.

This is just the start of paid AI search. It’s only a matter of time until other major AI platforms follow suit.

Don't worry—we support them, too.

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