ChatGPT shows adverts for a quarter of commercial search queries
A preliminary American study shows that ChatGPT serves ads about as often as Google AI Mode does. That happens in somewhere between 25 and 30 per cent of all commercial search queries.
That is what SEO specialist SE Ranking asserts on the basis of 50,000 prompts in 20 different categories.
Since early 2026, ChatGPT has offered advertisers the opportunity to push their products and services, for a fee, beneath the search results and chats. There is supposed to be a check first to see whether they are relevant in terms of content. At least, that is the intention. However, in one out of seven cases this does not work out.
Put differently: 14% of the ads are not a good content match with the subject of the chat. That is a lot, and it forms a poor basis for rolling out the advertising proposition broadly at this point.
SE Ranking offers an explanation for the mismatch: “ChatGPT ads do not use traditional keyword targeting. Instead, advertisers provide contextual hints: natural-language descriptions of the conversations in which they want to appear, along with a few keyword-like phrases.”
The study further shows that chat ads do in fact generate traffic. The problem, however, is that it is not the kind of audience the advertiser is looking for. In short, in SE Ranking’s view, the quality of traffic from ChatGPT is not good. That makes the AI system an unreliable supplier of potential customers. Lower pricing would not change that.
As a vehicle, ChatGPT Ads are, according to Sander Kwint of Omnicom Media, above all suited to mid-funnel campaigns. For upper-funnel reach and brand building, the current formats are still not appropriate. The mid funnel is located in the middle of the customer journey, where people already have a question and are weighing up options.
Campaigns must be set up around conversations and intent, not around keywords or target audiences, with a strong emphasis on relevant content, landing pages and testing.
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