A ChatGPT Ad Visit Earned Shops 89 Cents. Test Small Before You Move Your Ad Money.
A new study of nearly 10 billion website visits found ChatGPT ads earned far less per visit than Google search ads. Here is how to run a fair test without betting the budget.
By John Martines · November 5, 2026 · 6 min
Anyone can now buy ads in ChatGPT, and the pitches are arriving. A new study found a paid ChatGPT visit brought in $0.89 against $2.45 for a Google search ad. Here is what that means, and a test plan with a stop date.
The owner of a garden center gets an email from a marketing agency. "ChatGPT ads are the next Google. Get in early while clicks are cheap." The pitch suggests moving a third of the Google Ads budget over for the spring season.
It sounds plausible. Lots of her customers say they asked ChatGPT for planting advice. But this week, the first large study of what those ads actually earn came out, and it gives her a better question to ask than "should we be early?"
ChatGPT shows ads now. They appear for logged-in adults on the free plan and the low-cost Go plan in the US, below an answer, marked as sponsored. People on paid plans like Plus, Business and Enterprise don't see them. OpenAI says the ads don't change what ChatGPT answers.
Since May, any US business can buy these ads itself through OpenAI's Ads Manager, with no minimum spend. You can pay per click, like Google Ads, and add tracking so you can see what happens after someone clicks.
The study is a working paper by two marketing professors, Maximilian Kaiser of WU Vienna and Christian Schulze of the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management. They looked at nearly 10 billion website visits across 1,898 websites from June 2025 to August 2026, and compared shoppers who arrived from ChatGPT ads with those who arrived from Google search ads.
What they found, for US traffic:
- A visit from a ChatGPT ad brought in $0.89 in revenue on average. A visit from a Google search ad brought in $2.45. That is about 64% less.
- ChatGPT ad visitors bought 0.37% of the time, against 1.17% for Google search ads.
- For a ChatGPT ad to pay off as well as Google, the researchers estimate a click would need to cost about $0.26. The median Google click in their data cost $0.72.
- ChatGPT's unpaid recommendations, where it simply names a shop in its answer, did better than its paid ads.
The authors are careful about limits. The study observes what happened; it doesn't prove the ads caused the gap. Advertisers chose whether to buy ChatGPT ads, and the measurement credits only the last click before a purchase, so it can miss someone who saw an ad today and bought next week.
How it got here:
- January 16, 2026: OpenAI said it would test ads in ChatGPT, alongside the US launch of its $8-a-month Go plan.
- February 9, 2026: The test began in the US for free and Go users, with large brands buying through agencies at high minimums.
- May 5, 2026: OpenAI opened a self-serve Ads Manager to US advertisers, with no minimum spend, pay-per-click bidding and conversion tracking.
- November 3, 2026: The Kaiser and Schulze study was reported, the first large look at what the ads earn.
You're going to be pitched. Agencies and ad tools are adding ChatGPT ads to their menus, and "get in early" is an easy sale.
Three points from the study help you think it through.
Cheap clicks aren't automatically good clicks. A click that costs less but buys a third as often can still lose money. What matters is what a visitor is worth to you, not what the click costs.
People in ChatGPT are often still learning. Someone asking "what should I plant in clay soil?" is at a different stage from someone searching "garden center near me open Sunday." Google search ads catch people closer to buying. That may be part of the gap.
Being recommended may beat paying. The study found ChatGPT's unpaid mentions did better than its ads. Clear, accurate facts on your own website (what you sell, prices you're willing to publish, hours, service area) are what an assistant reads before it names you. That work costs nothing per click. Our earlier piece on [ads in Google's AI answers](/articles/ads-in-googles-ai-answers) covers the same shift on Google's side.
None of this says ChatGPT ads can never work. Results vary by business, and an online shop is a different case from a dental office or a contractor. It says: test before you move money.
1. Keep your Google budget where it is. Don't take money from something that's working to fund a guess. If you test, use new money, or a small slice you can afford to lose.
2. Know your number first. From your own Google Ads or your sales records, work out roughly what a visitor or a lead is worth to you: revenue from ads divided by ad visits, or jobs booked divided by leads. That's the number a ChatGPT ad has to beat.
3. Set up tracking before the first dollar. Whoever runs your ads should install OpenAI's conversion tracking, or at least tag the ad links, so a ChatGPT visitor shows up as its own line in your analytics. Without it you can't tell what you got.
4. Run a test with a cap and a stop date. Pick one product or service people already ask an assistant about. Set a fixed budget and a fixed end date, say four to six weeks, and write down beforehand what result would make you keep going.
5. Judge on sales or booked jobs, not clicks. At the stop date, compare revenue or booked work per visit against your Google number. If it's well below, stop. If it's close, run one more round. Remember that a later purchase may not show up as a ChatGPT sale, so ask new customers how they heard about you.
- What will you measure: clicks, or sales and booked jobs? How?
- What did ChatGPT ads earn per visit for clients like us, compared with their Google ads?
- What's the test budget, the stop date and the result that means we stop?
- Will this money come out of our Google budget, and why?
- What are you doing about our unpaid visibility in ChatGPT, not just the paid ads?
OpenAI is building ads into its business: Axios reported in May that it aims for $2.5 billion in ad revenue this year. Expect more advertisers and more pitches. Ad formats, targeting and prices will change, and the numbers in this study may look different a year from now.
That's why the right move for a small business is a habit, not a bet: know what a visitor is worth to you, test new channels small, and judge them on sales. Do that, and you can say yes to ChatGPT ads the day they earn their keep, without paying for the lesson first.
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Sources (checked November 4, 2026). Study findings, including revenue per visit, conversion rates, parity cost per click, data set and limits: "ChatGPT ads generate 64% less revenue per visit than Google Search: Study" (Search Engine Land, Nov 2026) and "ChatGPT advertising delivers more than 6 times less value for money than Google Ads" (Tech Xplore, Nov 3, 2026), on the working paper by Maximilian Kaiser (WU Vienna) and Christian Schulze (Frankfurt School of Finance & Management). Ads test start, plans that see ads and labeling: "OpenAI begins testing ads in ChatGPT for free and Go users" (Search Engine Journal, Feb 2026) and CBS News (Feb 2026). Self-serve Ads Manager, no minimum, pay-per-click and conversion tracking: "OpenAI launches self-serve ad platform" (Axios, May 5, 2026) and "OpenAI launches self-serve Ads Manager for ChatGPT" (Search Engine Journal, May 2026). OpenAI's ad revenue goal: Axios (May 5, 2026).