August 11, 2026
Back in January, OpenAI announced it would be testing ads in ChatGPT, and now the platform is already showing ads on around one in four commercial prompts.
SE Ranking recently analysed 50,006 prompts with commercial intent across 20 different industries to see when ads appear, which brands are showing up, how relevant those ads actually were to the user’s query, and whether advertisers also appeared organically within its answers.
The findings tell us a lot about this new advertising channel, including where the opportunities lie and its current limitations. Let’s take a look.
ChatGPT’s ad rate is 25.94%.
ChatGPT has gone from no monetisation at all to a fair amount in just a few months. However, it’s still early days for the platform, so there are plenty of opportunities for brands to experiment as everyone gets used to this new advertising channel.
14.35% (around one in seven) of the ads analysed were off-topic.
This was more noticeable in some sectors than others. For instance, more than half the ads analysed in both Relationships and News & Politics (51.1% and 54.2% respectively) were mismatched. Whereas in Pets (2.6%), Travel (4%), and Healthcare (5%), the mismatch rates were considerably lower.
It’s not too surprising considering the amount of context given in a ChatGPT prompt. When people search on Google, it’s typically just a few main keywords, which makes displaying the right ad pretty straightforward. When people ask a question on ChatGPT, however, it’s much more conversational and that appears to be causing some accuracy issues.
The advertiser wasn’t mentioned or cited in the ChatGPT answer in 96.37% of ad placements.
Only 3.63% of advertisers were cited in the answer that triggered their ad. This shows that paying for an ad doesn’t override the platform’s algorithm. ChatGPT will still mention and recommend brands based on what is deemed to be useful, authoritative, and relevant content.
In other words, paying for ads doesn’t guarantee visibility in the answer itself. You still need to be creating genuinely helpful and high-quality content to get mentioned.
The average CTR was 1.30%
Promising… on the surface.
However, when SE Ranking ran its own advertising experiment across four different countries, the campaigns got a fair few clicks and impressions (97,000 and 1,263 respectively), but resulted in very few sign-ups. People were clicking the ads, but not willing to become customers.
The likely cause is that the ads weren’t reaching the right audience, largely because ChatGPT Ads are available to users on Free and Go plans but paid plans are ad-free.
So, if you’re thinking of investing in ChatGPT ads, particularly as a B2B company, it’s worth investigating whether your ideal audience will even see your ads.
It is important to bear in mind that ChatGPT ads are still new and there’s no doubt that things like ad formats, competition levels, and audience visibility will evolve. That being said, this study does offer some interesting insights into the current opportunities and challenges of ChatGPT ads.
If you are looking to invest time and money into this new channel, it’s important to take a considered approach.
First off, you need to establish if your audience is using free or paid plans. If they won’t even see your ads, investing money into this channel may not be the best move at the moment. If your audience is being served ads, it’s best to start small, test a few different strategies, and pay close attention to what happens after the click.
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