Imagine someone opens ChatGPT and types:
Instead of waiting for that person to search Google, scroll through websites, compare products and eventually see an advertisement, imagine your skincare brand being presented in the same conversational environment where the person is already making a decision.
That’s the basic opportunity behind ChatGPT Ads.
ChatGPT Ads introduce a new advertising model built around conversation, intent and relevance rather than traditional keyword matching alone.
For businesses, this creates an interesting new question:
Can you advertise to people based on what they are trying to accomplish in a conversation?
The answer is increasingly yes — but there is an important distinction. ChatGPT Ads don’t work exactly like Google Search Ads. Advertisers provide context hints describing the conversations, needs and use cases where their product or service may be relevant. ChatGPT’s advertising system then considers those hints alongside the conversation context, ad creative, landing page and other relevance signals.
That makes ChatGPT Ads particularly interesting for businesses whose products solve a specific problem.
And we’ve been exploring this concept ourselves through a real-world example: Mobile Mandir, a devotional platform offering Aarti, Bhajan, Mantra, Chalisa and Seva services.
ChatGPT Ads are sponsored advertisements displayed within the ChatGPT experience.
OpenAI’s current Ads Manager Beta allows advertisers to create, manage and measure campaigns. Advertisers can choose campaign objectives including CPM, CPC and conversion-optimized CPC (oCPC), depending on their campaign setup and available features.
A ChatGPT ad can include:
Ads are displayed separately from ChatGPT’s organic response and are clearly labeled. OpenAI also states that ads do not influence ChatGPT’s answers.
This separation is important.
If someone asks:
the advertising system doesn’t rewrite ChatGPT’s answer simply because a phone company is advertising.
The advertisement remains a separate sponsored placement.
The easiest way to understand ChatGPT Ads is to compare them with traditional search advertising.
| Google Search Ads | ChatGPT Ads |
|---|---|
| Primarily keyword-driven | Conversational-context driven |
| User searches a keyword | User explains a need/question |
| Advertiser bids on keywords | Advertiser provides campaign/ad-group signals |
| Search query is central | Conversation context and intent are important |
| Strong transactional intent | Can capture research, comparison and decision moments |
| Keyword targeting | Context hints + relevance signals |
| Search results page | Conversational experience |
This doesn’t mean ChatGPT Ads replace Google Ads.
Instead, they create another opportunity: advertising inside a decision-making conversation.
OpenAI says its system considers factors including the current conversation and intent, landing page, title, copy and advertiser-provided context hints.
This is where ChatGPT Ads become particularly interesting.
Consider a traditional advertising audience:
That’s an audience definition.
Now consider this ChatGPT conversation:
That’s an intent signal.
The second example tells us much more about the immediate problem.
Another example:
This is exactly the type of scenario we identified for Mobile Mandir.
Instead of advertising Mobile Mandir to everyone interested in spirituality, we can build an ad group around the need: people looking for Aarti, Aarti lyrics or devotional content for daily worship.
OpenAI’s context hints help advertisers describe these situations. However, they aren’t exact-match keywords or guarantees that an ad will appear for a particular phrase.
Let’s take a practical example.
Mobile Mandir provides devotional content and Seva services through its website and app.
Instead of running a generic ad — “Download Mobile Mandir” — we can create an intent-focused campaign.
Aarti & Devotional Content
Listen to Aarti, Bhajan and devotional content with Mobile Mandir.
Explore AartiThe person is already interested in Aarti.
We aren’t trying to convince someone who has never expressed devotional intent that they need a devotional app.
We’re attempting to provide a relevant next step to an existing need.
That’s the fundamental idea behind conversational advertising.
The same strategy can be applied to Seva.
Imagine someone asks:
A traditional social media campaign might target people interested in Hinduism, Gau Seva or spirituality.
With a conversational advertising strategy, the desired context is much more specific: someone is actively looking for a way to perform Gau Seva.
A relevant ad could be:
Perform Chara Seva through Mobile Mandir.
Do Chara Seva →And we can build separate ad groups for different Seva services.
For example:
| Ad Group | User Intent |
|---|---|
| Gau Chara | Wants to feed/support cows |
| Fish Seva | Wants to feed fish |
| Dog Seva | Wants to feed stray dogs |
| Monkey Seva | Wants to feed monkeys |
| Ant Seva | Wants to perform ant-feeding seva |
| Other Seva | Looking for animal/faith-based seva |
This is much better than putting every service into one generic ad group.
OpenAI recommends keeping ad groups focused around a common product category, theme or customer need.
This is one of the most important questions advertisers have.
ChatGPT Ads don’t simply work like: Keyword = Advertisement.
Instead, OpenAI describes a system that considers multiple relevance signals. These can include:
This means your landing page matters.
If you’re advertising a specific Aarti, sending someone to a generic homepage may be less useful than sending them directly to the relevant Aarti experience.
Likewise:
The closer the complete experience is to the user’s need, the stronger the advertising proposition becomes.
Context hints are one of the most important parts of ChatGPT Ads.
Suppose you’re selling skincare.
A weak context hint might be:
A stronger one might describe the actual customer need:
Another:
The idea isn’t to create hundreds of exact keywords.
Instead, you’re describing the situations in which your product is useful.
OpenAI specifically recommends natural, descriptive context hints that explain customer needs and use cases.
Let’s say you sell a premium night cream.
A potential user asks:
Your campaign might have:
Night Cream — US
Dry Skin Night Cream
Wake up to skin that feels moisturized and comfortable.
Shop NowYour specific night-cream product page.
Notice the difference. You aren’t merely saying:
You’re giving the advertising system a description of the customer situation where your product is relevant.
That is the fundamental shift from traditional keyword advertising to conversational advertising.
OpenAI’s current Ads Manager Beta follows a structure of: Campaign → Ad Group → Ad.
This structure allows different customer needs to have different messaging and landing pages.
This is where advertisers need to be careful.
There isn’t a universal “ChatGPT Ads CPC.”
OpenAI currently supports CPM and CPC buying, and also conversion-optimized CPC campaigns. For CPC campaigns, OpenAI currently recommends starting with a maximum bid of approximately $3–$5 per click, although that is a starting bid recommendation — not a guaranteed amount you will pay. The auction is relevance-weighted and uses a second-price mechanism.
More importantly, OpenAI says ChatGPT Ads is still in beta and does not yet have reliable performance benchmarks across industries or campaign types.
So businesses shouldn’t promise clients:
The honest approach is: Test → Measure → Optimize → Scale.
For an initial experiment, don’t start by spending thousands of dollars without measurement.
A better approach is to establish:
For Mobile Mandir, for example, we can compare:
The second may have a higher CPC but could potentially generate more business value.
Tracking is not optional if you want to understand performance.
ChatGPT Ads Manager currently reports metrics such as:
Advertisers can also add UTM parameters to landing-page URLs to identify ChatGPT traffic in existing analytics platforms.
For example:
Your analytics system can then identify the traffic source and campaign.
For an app campaign, you should additionally consider mobile attribution through a supported measurement partner such as AppsFlyer or Adjust, depending on your existing technology stack.
For websites already using Google Tag Manager, implementing tracking through GTM can make campaign measurement easier to manage.
A typical setup could look like:
You can then track actions such as:
The exact implementation should be handled by the development/analytics team according to OpenAI’s current measurement documentation.
ChatGPT Ads aren’t simply about targeting. Creative matters.
OpenAI recommends clear, specific, benefit-focused messaging and multiple creative variations.
For Mobile Mandir, instead of making every advertisement say “Download Mobile Mandir App”, we can test:
Explore Aarti and devotional content with Mobile Mandir.
Keep your daily devotion close with Mobile Mandir.
Perform Chara Seva through Mobile Mandir.
Different messages can appeal to different moments of intent.
This is going to be one of the most interesting comparisons for marketers.
Meta can be extremely powerful for:
ChatGPT potentially has an advantage when the user’s current intent is particularly relevant. For example:
That doesn’t automatically make ChatGPT Ads better. It creates a hypothesis worth testing.
The right comparison should be:
| Metric | Meta | ChatGPT |
|---|---|---|
| Spend | $X | $X |
| Impressions | — | — |
| Clicks | — | — |
| CPC | — | — |
| Landing visits | — | — |
| Installs | — | — |
| CPI | — | — |
| Purchases | — | — |
| Revenue | — | — |
| ROAS | — | — |
The winner isn’t necessarily the platform with the cheapest click.
The winner is the platform that generates the best business outcome.
This is where ChatGPT Ads could become especially interesting.
Potential advertisers:
The campaign can be structured around specific customer needs.
Potential advertisers:
Potential advertisers:
Potential advertisers:
Potential use cases include people researching financial products, although advertisers must pay close attention to applicable advertising and platform policies.
Potential advertisers:
Potential advertisers:
Businesses offering relevant local services could potentially benefit from being present around high-intent conversations, subject to availability, targeting and applicable policies.
Mobile Mandir is an interesting example.
Potential advertiser: Mobile Mandir Aarti
Potential advertiser: Mobile Mandir Gau Chara Seva
This is a very different approach to advertising than simply buying demographic audiences.
ChatGPT Ads may not be the first choice for every business.
Be cautious if:
Because ChatGPT Ads is still a relatively new platform, businesses should treat early campaigns as structured experiments rather than assume mature-platform benchmarks. OpenAI explicitly notes that reliable cross-industry performance benchmarks aren’t yet available.
OpenAI currently provides a self-serve Ads Manager Beta. The starting point is the OpenAI Ads Manager.
OpenAI’s current launch process is broadly:
OpenAI’s official quickstart guide is also useful before you build your first campaign.
And advertisers should review the official OpenAI ChatGPT Ads Help Center documentation before launching, because the platform is still evolving.
Before launching, ask:
The biggest takeaway from ChatGPT Ads isn’t simply:
It’s the possibility of moving advertising closer to the moment when someone explains what they actually want.
Google transformed advertising by connecting ads to searches.
Social media transformed advertising by connecting brands to audiences.
Conversational AI introduces another possibility: connecting businesses to expressed intent inside a conversation.
That’s why a skincare company should think beyond “people interested in skincare.” It should think:
And Mobile Mandir shouldn’t simply think “people interested in Hinduism.” It can think:
That shift — from audience targeting to intent-based relevance — is what makes ChatGPT Ads worth testing.
ChatGPT Ads are still an emerging advertising channel, and businesses should not treat them as a replacement for Google Ads or Meta Ads.
Instead, think of them as a new layer in the performance marketing ecosystem.
The strongest opportunities are likely to come from businesses where the customer naturally asks questions before making a decision.
The more clearly your product solves the problem being discussed, the more compelling the advertising opportunity becomes.
And that’s the experiment we’re currently designing for Mobile Mandir: starting with a small budget, testing Aarti and Seva intent, tracking every important step, and comparing the resulting CPC, installs, conversions and business value.
If you’re looking for an agency to help with ChatGPT Ads strategy, campaign creation, context-intent targeting, conversion tracking, landing-page optimization and performance marketing, SEOILY can help.
From ChatGPT Ads strategy and campaign structure to context-intent targeting, conversion tracking and landing-page optimization — we plan the experiment, run it and report the numbers that actually matter.
Grow your business using the tools, strategies, and support it needs to excel within the industry. Contact Seoily today to find out how our end-to-end solution-based approach can help you turn challenges into solutions to success.
