ChatGPT ads · what wastes money · Australia
7 ways a ChatGPT ad campaign wastes your money
A new place to advertise eats money in small ways at first. These 7 come from OpenAI's own rules and one published test. Read them before you put a card in.
1. Spend says zero, so you think nothing's been charged
The ad account updates views and clicks about every 15 minutes. A click is someone tapping the ad. Spend is slower. OpenAI says it can be delayed 7 to 8 hours.
In its own words, "a displayed spend of zero does not necessarily mean no charges have accrued". People see zero, leave the ads running overnight, and cop a shock. Look at the spend the next morning, not in the same hour.
2. A daily budget that can spend double in a day
You set a daily budget. It isn't a hard stop for that day. OpenAI's rule is that a day won't spend more than twice your daily budget.
The week is the real limit. Spend over 7 days won't go past 7 times the daily budget. So set the daily number at about half of what you'd hate to lose in a day.
3. Hints written like search words
There's no list of words you bid on here. You write context hints instead. They describe the chats and topics where your work belongs.
A hint of "plumber Sydney" wastes the box. Write the way a person talks about the problem. Hot water gone cold, a tap that won't stop, a drain backing up into the shower.
OpenAI says the hints guide which chats your ad matches. They don't promise you a spot in any one chat.
4. Building the whole plan around a suburb
OpenAI hasn't published which Australian areas you can pick below country level, so a suburb-only plan can fall over on day one. How ChatGPT decides who sees your ad has the detail.
5. Picking how you pay, then wanting to change it
You choose how you're billed when you build the campaign. Per 1,000 times the ad is shown, or per click. There's a third way that aims at one action on your site.
That choice is locked. OpenAI says the aim and the billing can't be changed once the campaign is made. You build a new one instead. So think for a minute before you hit create.
6. No tracking, so the clicks vanish
One US business published its own test of this, and only about 13% of its clicks turned up in its own site numbers. That's one business in the US, so don't read it as typical. What's known so far has the whole test.
OpenAI gives you tags on the link that survive the click. There are 2 more tools, one on your site and one fed from your own system. How to know which calls came from ChatGPT walks through them.
7. Sending a paid click to your homepage
The ad points at a page. If that page opens with a slideshow and your history, the call dies there. What that first screen has to do is on the page your ad sends people to.
That page has a second job you can't see. OpenAI reads the landing page when it works out which chats your ad fits. A page that doesn't match the ad makes the match worse.
3 things people want to know about this list
Which one costs the most?
The tracking one. Clicks you can't see are money you can't judge, so you keep paying or you quit blind. That is what happened in the US test in point 6 above.
Can I start small and learn as I go?
Yes, and that's what I'd do. Set a daily budget you wouldn't miss, remembering a day can take double it. Then read the week before you change anything, because the week is the number that tells you what this really costs.
Can you just do all this for me?
That's the offer below. I set them up and run them, you cover the ad spend, and we work for free. You see the same account and the same numbers I do.
Let ChatGPT show your business to high-intent customers
- ChatGPT has released paid ads, and this changes the marketing game absolutely.
- If you missed out on Facebook ads in 2007, where anything you posted would have popped off, don't miss out on the next big ad platform.
- Unlike Facebook, where people get interrupted mid doom-scroll, ChatGPT shows your business to people who are already researching something related.
- That makes ChatGPT a cheat code. The engine your customers ask for advice shows your business right under its answer.
- Most marketing agencies charge you thousands before you see any results.
- We work for you, for free. You just cover your own ad spend. The first month is free, so you see the results for yourself before you pay us anything.
- Then, if you want to keep getting those results month after month, we sort out a rev-share or a retainer. A rev-share is a cut of what it makes you. A retainer is a flat monthly fee. Agreed in writing before month 2 starts.
- In the free month, we don't get paid if you don't get paid. After that, it's the rev-share or the retainer you chose.
- Only 10 a month. The work up front is heavy and brings us no income at first. That is all we can take.
If the ads make you nothing, you pay us nothing and we stop there. You will have paid OpenAI for the clicks, and that is all.
Read next
To see the steps in order, how to advertise on ChatGPT has them. The money side is on what ChatGPT ads cost. Not sure it suits your business yet? Read the fit test for a small business.
30 minutes, then a straight answer
30 minutes on the phone, mostly questions about your business and your customers. You get 2 straight answers. Do people ask ChatGPT for what you do? And is it worth a run, where we only get paid a rev-share or a retainer, sorted once you have seen the results, to find out?