Gabe & Vuksanovic: ChatGPT Ads Insights from SE Ranking study + paper

Key Takeaways:

• Gabe reported an increase of ChatGPT ads based on a SE Ranking analysis by Deda and Tomko

  • ChatGPT ads appear on 26% of commercial prompts, 61% of prompts regarding Pets

  • 96.37% of brands that got ChatGPT ads displayed are not cited in the answer = only 3.63% of advertisers were also cited as a source in the answer above their ad

  • YMYL: ChatGPT showed substantially more ads for YMYL topics than Google’s AI Mode. Ads appeared on 28.69% of healthcare prompts, compared with 2.64% in AI Mode.

  • News & Politics showed a similar gap, at 28.76% in ChatGPT versus 6.8% in AI Mode

  • 14.35% of ChatGPT ads do not match topic of the answer

• As Vuksanovic points out: Lurie, Encarnación, Friedler and Metaxa analysed the early days of ChatGPT Ads in the US in their paper 'The Beginning of ChatGPT Ads' using synthetic accounts stratified by demographic features:

  • lower-income accounts were significantly more likely to be selected to receive ads. The targeting signal was a ZIP code. Not a purchase, not a stated preference. A proxy for who someone probably is.

  • contextual fit drove almost everything else. Prompts about products, fitness, and cooking pulled ads at 10 to 16 percent. Prompts about relationships pulled under 3 percent.

• Matranga points out that ChatGPT Ads might get interesting for more and more companies due to the adjustment of

  • minimum daily spend droped from $50k-$200k to just $25 per campaign

  • further locations and audience targeting features

With Ads, you cannot impact the answer or rather the recommendations within the answer - you do need AI SEO for that. The topic missmatch for 14% of ChatGPT Ads is telling. - David Epding

Sources:

• https://x.com/glenngabe/status/2087151346143113217

• https://searchengineland.com/study-chatgpt-ads-appear-on-26-of-commercial-prompts-484590

• https://seranking.com/blog/chatgpt-ads-study/

• https://www.linkedin.com/posts/daniel-vuksanovic-38137843_the-beginning-of-chatgpt-ads-share-7491092453555453952-S7WL/

• https://www.linkedin.com/posts/michellematranga_openais-chatgpt-ads-get-location-audience-share-7490497780856262657-OPRm/

• https://www.linkedin.com/posts/thomaspeham_%F0%9D%97%96%F0%9D%97%B5%F0%9D%97%AE%F0%9D%98%81%F0%9D%97%9A%F0%9D%97%A3%F0%9D%97%A7-%F0%9D%97%94%F0%9D%97%B1%F0%9D%98%80-%F0%9D%97%A6%F0%9D%97%BD%F0%9D%98%86-%F0%9D%97%BC%F0%9D%97%BB-%F0%9D%98%86%F0%9D%97%BC%F0%9D%98%82%F0%9D%97%BF-share-7492881055541243904-1GZ0/

• https://arxiv.org/html/2608.05008v1 + https://emmalurie.github.io/chatgpt-ads-library/

• https://seranking.com/blog/google-ai-mode-ads/