--- title: "ChatGPT Ads: Our Honest Verdict" date: 2026-08-17T15:19:00+01:00 author: Hannah Uprichard canonical_url: "https://eyekiller.com/blog/chatgpt-ads-our-honest-verdict" section: Blog --- Blog# ChatGPT Ads: Our Honest Verdict Hear what our Senior PPC Specialist, Matt, has to say about ChatGPT ads. ![Profile picture of Matt Skelton](https://eyekiller.s3-assets.com/employees/Matt.jpg) **Matt Skelton**, Paid Advertising Manager Aug 17, 2026 ![Chat gpt ads our honest verdict 01](https://eyekiller.s3-assets.com/blog/featured-images/_1650xAUTO_fit_center-center_none/128132/chat-gpt-ads-our-honest-verdict-01.webp) New paid channels don’t come along very often. So when ChatGPT Ads launched in the UK in June 2026, we wanted to test it ourselves rather than rely on second-hand opinions. We got in early, built focused campaigns and spent the next few weeks seeing what the platform could actually do. This article shares what we found. We’ll cover how the platform works, what’s possible today, what caught us by surprise, what needs improvement, and whether it deserves a place in your paid media strategy. One thing to bear in mind before we start: ChatGPT Ads is still in beta. New features are coming fast, so think of this a snapshot of where things stand today rather than our final word. ## **Our Test** We wanted to answer two simple questions. Could ChatGPT Ads drive meaningful traffic for Eyekiller? And could it become a valuable paid media channel for the brands we work with? We'd already started seeing valuable organic referrals from ChatGPT, so testing paid ads felt like the natural next step. We ran a four-week test with the platform's minimum daily budget of £15, and promoted two of our service areas using the Clicks campaign objective, which is designed to maximise ad clicks within the set budget. Instead of creating one ad group for each service, we built several. This allowed us to test different contextual targeting approaches to reflect the different ways potential customers might search for, ask about or describe the services we offer. Every ad group included multiple ad variations, with each having unique UTM parameters. That meant we could accurately identify ChatGPT Ads traffic in our analytics, understand how those visitors behaved once they reached our website, and compare performance with our other paid channels. ![Chat gpt ads our honest verdict 02](https://eyekiller.s3-assets.com/_2220xAUTO_fit_center-center_none/128137/chat-gpt-ads-our-honest-verdict-02.webp) ## **What Works Well** ### **1. Getting campaigns live takes minutes** If you've used Google Ads or Meta before, the campaign architecture (Campaigns>Ad Groups>Ads) will feel familiar. Where ChatGPT Ads differs is in the amount of control you're given. Google Ads offers an enormous number of settings, optimisation options and reporting features. That's powerful, but it can also make getting started feel daunting. ChatGPT Ads takes the opposite approach. The interface is clean, setup is straightforward, and there are very few decisions to make before launching your first campaign. We were able to go from creating an account to launching ads in a matter of minutes. That simplicity is one of the platform's biggest strengths. It lowers the barrier to entry and makes testing quick and accessible. Of course, there's a trade-off, and we'll come back to that later. ![Chat gpt ads our honest verdict 03](https://eyekiller.s3-assets.com/_2220xAUTO_fit_center-center_none/128140/chat-gpt-ads-our-honest-verdict-03.webp) ### **2. Contextual targeting is genuinely different** One of the biggest differences between ChatGPT Ads and traditional advertising platforms is how you define your audience. There are no keyword lists, demographic targeting, or interest audiences. Instead, each ad group uses “context hints”. These steer the types of conversations your ads appear in, rather than targeting specific searches or audience segments. ![Chat gpt ads our honest verdict 04](https://eyekiller.s3-assets.com/_2220xAUTO_fit_center-center_none/128143/chat-gpt-ads-our-honest-verdict-04.webp) What we found interesting wasn't just the feature itself, but the way it changed how we thought about targeting. Writing context hints made us think less about the exact words someone might use and more about why they'd be looking for us in the first place. What challenges are they trying to solve? What conversations are they having? What else might they be researching before they ever think to search for "Spektrix web agency"? That feels much closer to how people are starting to use AI. Instead of typing a handful of keywords, they're describing problems, asking for recommendations and exploring options through conversation. In that environment, thinking about context rather than keywords starts to make a lot of sense. ### **3. A new moment in the customer journey** Unlike search ads, which compete for attention before someone clicks a result, ChatGPT Ads are shown after a user has had a conversation and received an answer. By that point, they've often shared far more about what they're trying to achieve than they ever would in a search query. That creates a very different opportunity for advertisers. Rather than interrupting someone's journey, the ad feels like a natural next step. If the recommendation is relevant, it extends the conversation rather than distracting from it. As more people turn to AI to research products, compare providers and work through decisions, this could become an important new stage in the customer journey. It's not replacing search, and it's not replacing social. It's creating another opportunity to reach people once they've already developed a clearer understanding of what they're looking for. ### **4. Conversion tracking is already available** From day one, we were able to install the ChatGPT Ads Pixel and track form submissions as conversion events. That meant we weren't just measuring clicks, we were measuring the users who were actually becoming leads. ![Chat gpt ads our honest verdict 05](https://eyekiller.s3-assets.com/_2220xAUTO_fit_center-center_none/128148/chat-gpt-ads-our-honest-verdict-05.webp) We'd recommend setting this up from the outset. Even if you're starting with a traffic-focused campaign, having accurate conversion data in place means you won't lose valuable insight as your campaigns mature. During the later stages of our test, OpenAI introduced conversion-based bidding. While we didn't have enough attributed conversions to switch our campaigns over, it was encouraging to see the platform already moving beyond click optimisation. It's a clear sign that ChatGPT Ads is evolving towards the kind of performance-driven platform advertisers expect. ## **Where it needs to improve** ### **1. It costs more than other platforms** Right now, ChatGPT Ads in the UK need a minimum of £15 per day budget to run, and the system may spend more than that (averaging out over a 7-day period). Reach is also more limited than other platforms. Our 30-day average CPM was £18.36, sitting at the lower range of current platform-wide estimates. Meta, by comparison, tends to sit around the £8 to £12 per thousand people reached, depending on sector. Our average cost-per-click during the test was £2.33. That’s more than Google Search averages (currently around £2) and a lot more than Google Display (around £0.47). So is the traffic worth the premium? That’s the real question, and it’s where your GA4 data can help. For Eyekiller, ChatGPT Ads average engagement time per session was half that of Google Ads traffic, but this did improve once we refined our context hints and altered our location targeting strategy from UK, Australia, and US, to only targeting the UK. Time will tell rather costs come down, but for now, we recommend reviewing on-site metrics like this to determine traffic quality. ### **2. Reporting and optimisation are thin** Compared with Google Ads, you lose a lot of visibility. There's no equivalent of search terms, audience reports or placement reports. That makes optimisation much more dependent on external tools like GA4, Microsoft Clarity and your own conversion data. Moving forward, some level of transparency over the type of conversations or topics you’re triggering for, and the ability to optimise based on these could make the platform even more powerful. ### **3. Audience controls are still fairly limited** ChatGPT introduced custom audience targeting halfway through our test, giving advertisers the option to upload lists of existing customers or prospects, and either target or exclude these users from campaigns. However, these lists must include at least 25,000 matched users, while OpenAI recommends a minimum of 100,000. We’re not shy to say that as an independent agency, we don’t have those numbers. We anticipate these custom audience requirements will be lowered in time, but what would also be useful are options to target by age group, gender, or interests. Context hints can guide that, but being able to layer on more targeting could allow you to dial further in. For now, you’re placing a lot of trust in the platform to place you in the right conversations, with no way to check or correct where it lands. ### **4. One ad format** Right now, you can run sponsored text ads that include a small thumbnail image. There’s no carousel, no video, and no expandable ad formats. It’s functional, but limiting. Our advice: treat the image as branding, no a performance driver. Keep the copy specific, don’t waste characters, and put the most important parts of your messaging at the start of your ad as ChatGPT truncates. ![Chat gpt ads our honest verdict 06](https://eyekiller.s3-assets.com/_2220xAUTO_fit_center-center_none/128152/chat-gpt-ads-our-honest-verdict-06.webp) ## **Who should test this now** This isn’t for everyone yet, and pretending otherwise wouldn’t be honest. **Probably worth testing now** - Businesses with a testing budget - Brands already seeing AI referral traffic - Products or services that involve research - Advertisers comfortable experimenting **Maybe wait** - Businesses needing immediate ROI - Very small advertising budgets - Businesses relying purely on high-volume, low-cost traffic - Advertisers looking for mature optimisation tools Based on our experience, ChatGPT Ads appear particularly well suited to situations where people spend time researching before making a decision. That may include B2B services, software, healthcare, education, financial services and premium consumer purchases. However, it's too early to say these are the only sectors where the platform will succeed. As adoption grows, we expect opportunities to emerge across a much wider range of industries. ### **Where it fits in your paid media strategy** It won’t replace Google or Meta, and it isn’t trying to. Think of it as a new touchpoint at a new stage of the journey, not a performance channel you lean on for volume - yet. **Channel** - Google Search - Capturing existing demand. - Meta - Building awareness and scale. - LinkedIn - Professional audience targeting. - ChatGPT Ads - Reaching people while they're actively researching through AI conversations. There’s a lot of room for the platform to grow, and as we said, it’s changing almost daily. This is a snapshot, and we’ll keep testing. ## **Our verdict** ChatGPT Ads is early, limited, and more expensive than the channels you already run. It’s also one of the most interesting new placements we’ve tested in a long time, and it’s giving us a first look at how paid media works inside an AI conversation. For the right advertiser, with the right expectations and a budget to learn, it’s worth getting in now. If we think your budget is better spent elsewhere, we'll say so. If we think it's worth exploring, we'll help you design a sensible test and measure it properly from day one. 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