We’re already running
the new ad surface.
Paid placement inside ChatGPT is the first new top-of-funnel surface in a decade. We’re buying it today, across several clients, and we’ll tell you exactly what it can and can’t do yet.
Free. Including “it’s too early for you,” if that’s the answer.
Know when not to spend.
When OpenAI’s closed beta priced at a $200K commitment on $60 CPMs, we told our clients to wait. The math didn’t work. When self-serve opened, we were in that week. On a new surface, that’s the whole job: the answer changes, and you have to be ready when it does.
Where it stands today. Clicks cost about 20% of a Google click. Performance is early. The tooling is missing basics, no negative keywords yet. Measurement is directional, not gospel, because most of the value shows up as impressions nobody can click. We treat every dollar on this surface as a structured test, sized so “not yet” doesn’t hurt.
A structured test, not a leap
A clear hypothesis, a budget that won’t hurt if the answer is not yet, geo holdouts and test design borrowed from ten years of incrementality work.
Measurement that doesn’t pretend
View-through, assisted, direct response reported separately, none of it double-counted. When the channel can’t prove something yet, the report says so.
Senior oversight
We’re on the betas, in the rep conversations, updating the playbook weekly as the surface changes. The person running your test is the person who has been in the account since the doors opened.
Prospects find us through ChatGPT. We run this playbook on our own site.
Your accounts, your tags, your learnings.
Paid LLM is not going to replace your search program in 2026. The volume is real but small. What you get for being early is the learning, and when the volume catches up you’re not starting from zero. The audit is free, and if the answer is that this surface is too early for your business, that’s what we’ll tell you.
Asked on most
first calls.
Should we be spending on ChatGPT ads right now?
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Maybe. The surface is early, the tooling is missing basics, and for some businesses the right move is to wait. What we can tell you quickly is which one you are, because we’ve been in the accounts since self-serve opened.
Is this the same as showing up in AI answers organically?
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No. Plenty of shops sell visibility work for the organic side of AI search. This is paid placement inside ChatGPT, bought like media and measured like media. Different work.
What can you actually measure on this surface?
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Less than anyone selling it will admit. Clicks and direct response are real. A lot of the value shows up as impressions nobody can click, so we report view-through and assisted separately instead of stacking everything into one flattering number.
How much budget does a test need?
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Small enough that a no doesn’t hurt, big enough that the answer means something. We size it to your account, put the hypothesis on paper first, and set the kill criteria before the first dollar goes out.