On October 21, OpenAI rolled ChatGPT ads out to 26 more countries. The format is now sold in 89 markets, and more than 100,000 advertisers have run campaigns since launch, according to the announcement as reported by PPC Land. Two weeks earlier, OpenAI unveiled new visual ad formats. In Europe, ads have been live since August 24.
On paper, it looks like a gift: hundreds of millions of conversations, intent spelled out in plain words and, in at least one published B2B test, clicks that cost less than on Google. For a B2B company, though, two questions come before "should we be there?": who will actually see your ads, and will you be able to tell what they bring in?
Here's what OpenAI announced, what the first B2B tests show, and what we recommend before you commit a budget.
ChatGPT ads are moving fast. After the US in February, OpenAI opened 31 European markets on August 24, including France, according to Blog du Modérateur. On October 21, another 26 countries followed, including Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Peru, according to PPC Land.
On formats, TechCrunch reported on October 5 that OpenAI is adding visual ads displayed next to the images users generate, tested in the US with an initial group of advertisers. OpenAI also broadened its list of measurement partners (click attribution, geo experiments) and is working on brand safety pilots with DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science.
The setup now looks a lot like a regular ad platform: a self-serve Ads Manager opened to US businesses in May, with CPC bidding, a pixel and a Conversions API, according to PPC Land. In Europe, at launch, advertisers had to buy through OpenAI's Ads Solutions team, a technology partner or one of six agency groups (Publicis, WPP, Omnicom, MediaPlus, Havas, dentsu), according to Blog du Modérateur.
TechCrunch puts ChatGPT at about 1.2 billion weekly users. OpenAI says around 20% of conversations show clear commercial intent, a figure reported by Blog du Modérateur, which points out that OpenAI did not explain its scope or how it was calculated.
Your prospects do use AI to research suppliers. When a CFO asks ChatGPT to compare three expense management tools, showing up right below the answer sounds ideal.
That's exactly where you should slow down.
Ads only show on the Free and Go plans. Plus and Pro subscribers, along with Business, Enterprise and Edu accounts, see none, according to Blog du Modérateur. And companies that roll ChatGPT out to their teams do it through those business plans.
The result? The decision-maker researching vendors from the ChatGPT workspace their company pays for will never see your ad. You mostly reach free, personal use.
The second limit is specific to Europe. At launch in the European Economic Area, targeting is contextual only. The ad depends on the topic of the current conversation plus limited context (approximate location, device type). Advertisers get no access to conversations, chat history or personal data: they only receive aggregated view and click data.
Personalization will come later, with explicit consent. So you can't target "CFOs at mid-sized manufacturers" the way you would on LinkedIn.
Case studies are still rare, but two tests published by marketing agencies in August point the same way.
Here's a concrete example. In late August, the agency Workshop Digital published the results of its first B2B test across three audiences (marketing services, manufacturing, financial services). It spent $2,319 and got 69,630 impressions and 739 clicks: a 1.1% click-through rate and a $3.14 cost per click. On Google Search, the same agency paid $6.76 per click with a 5.2% click-through rate. Bottom line: clicks at half the price, but zero qualified leads, against two MQLs from Google.
Symphonic Digital, which ran a one-month test in the US, saw the same pattern. The agency had to raise its bid to about $12 to get any delivery, paid around $9 per click on average, and counted 53 clicks on the platform against 35 sessions in Google Analytics. Still no leads. It also notes that a good share of ChatGPT traffic shows up as "direct" in analytics if links aren't tagged from day one.
Neither test proves the channel is dead. They show that, in B2B, ChatGPT ads currently behave like an awareness play. Their ability to generate leads has yet to be proven.
Our position is simple: for most small and mid-sized B2B companies, ChatGPT ads don't deserve a serious budget yet. They deserve a tightly scoped test, as long as you can measure it.
The real issue isn't ChatGPT. It's whether you can follow a contact from their first click to a closed deal. If you can't already say how many deals come from LinkedIn Ads or Google Ads, adding another channel will only thicken the fog. We made the same point in our article on why your acquisition funnel is useless without a CRM.
Before launching a campaign, we take our clients through four steps 👇🏼
This foundation also lets you compare all your paid channels honestly: it sits at the heart of our CRM and marketing automation work.
✔ Do: test small, on topics where your customers ask specific questions.
❌ Don't: move budget away from Google Search just because a ChatGPT click came out cheaper in one test.
Finally, above the ad sits the answer itself. In B2B, getting cited in it through clear, up-to-date content still pays off better than a sponsored slot. Our marketing team works on both at once.
ChatGPT ads are growing fast: 89 countries, more than 100,000 advertisers, visual formats announced in October. In B2B, though, they mostly reach free, personal use, and in Europe targeting is limited to the context of the conversation. The first tests we found produced no leads, even when clicks cost less than on Google, as in Workshop Digital's case.
if/else tip: measure before you buy. A two- to three-month test, tagged and tracked all the way to pipeline, will tell you whether this channel belongs in your mix.
Want to know if your CRM is ready to measure a new channel? Let's talk.