ChatGPT ads · next to Google Ads
ChatGPT ads or Google Ads? The real differences
On Google you buy the words people type. On ChatGPT there are no words to buy. That one difference changes how the ad is written, how it's aimed and what you can count. Here's the rest, with no made up numbers.
Difference 1: there's no list of words to bid on
On Google you pick the words people type and bid on them. You set how close the match has to be, and the words you rule out. ChatGPT has no such list. You give it context hints instead. OpenAI says hints describe the conversations and topics where your service may be relevant. They guide the match. They don't promise your ad lands in any one chat.
OpenAI names what goes into picking an ad:
- What the chat is about, and what the person seems to want right now.
- The ad's landing page, its title and its copy.
- The hints and targeting the advertiser set.
- Some signals from the person's wider ChatGPT use, if they have ad personalising on.
The page you point at matters twice here. It helps pick the ad as well as being where people land. More on that in how ChatGPT decides who sees your ad.
Difference 2: whole groups never see your ad
Ads show only to people on the Free and Go plans. Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Edu accounts don't get them. Neither does anyone OpenAI identifies as under 18. On Google, anyone searching sees the ads, signed in or not, whatever they pay for. That limit is ChatGPT's alone.
For a trade I think it cuts the right way. A homeowner asking about a leaking pipe is more likely on a free account than a company one. That's my reasoning, not a number OpenAI publishes.
Difference 3: where the ad sits, and what it can't do
A ChatGPT ad appears below the end of a response. It's clearly labelled sponsored and kept visually apart from the answer. You might get 1 ad or a few, from 1 advertiser or several. On Google the ad sits above or below the free results on the results page, also marked sponsored.
Ads do not influence ChatGPT's answers. They run on separate systems to the chat model, and advertisers can't shape, rank or alter what it says. Seeing an ad doesn't mean OpenAI recommends that business either. You can't buy your way into the answer itself.
Difference 4: what you get to see afterwards
- How often it showed, how many clicks, what you spent, the click rate, and your average costs. A click is someone tapping the ad.
- Views and clicks refresh about every 15 minutes. Spend can lag 7 to 8 hours.
- Advertisers get totals only, and nothing that identifies a person.
- OpenAI never passes on chats, chat history, memories, names, emails or precise location.
On Google you see clicks, cost and results for most of the words people typed, and you can count calls with a Google forwarding number. Here you won't be handed the per-word part. You get the totals, plus whatever your own site sees from the tag on the link.
Difference 5: where you get to aim it
On Google you can aim at a radius, a city or a postcode in Australia. Here you pick a country, and OpenAI doesn't publish what sits under that for Australia, so a suburb is not something I promise. The reason, and what the ad aims at instead, is on how ChatGPT decides who sees your ad.
How the ad gets picked, and where your bid comes into it
OpenAI says it runs a relevance-weighted second-price auction between the ads that fit. So your bid is one of the things in it, and fitting the chat is another. For paying per click, OpenAI suggests starting at US$3 to US$5. US dollars, so a bit more here. The full money side sits on what ChatGPT ads cost.
What nobody can tell you yet
There is no independent Australian figure for what a ChatGPT ad does for a trade business, and I don't have one either. Nothing here is dressed up to look like one. What can be traced is the one published small business test and OpenAI's own examples.
Why I'd run both, not swap one for the other
If Google Ads bring you jobs, keep them. A person typing 3 words into a search box and a person typing a paragraph to ChatGPT are in different moments.
OpenAI says people are often learning about a category, comparing options, or deciding what to do next. That last one is somebody about to ring a tradie. The same phone rings either way.
3 questions owners ask me about running both
Should I move my Google budget across?
No. Put a small budget on top and leave what's working alone. Nothing in the figures so far would justify pulling money out of something that already feeds you. Run them beside each other for a month, then decide on your own figures.
Can I see which chat my click came from?
No. Advertisers get totals, like views and clicks, and nothing that identifies a person. On Google you would see the word they typed. The tag on your link tells your own site the visit came from the ad. That, and a number you can count, is how we tie it to a job.
Is it harder to write than a Google ad?
It's different. You're not squeezing search words into a headline. You're describing the kind of trouble your customer is in, so the ad lands in those chats. Then the ad and the page have to say the same thing, because both feed the match.
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
For what's actually running on this side of the world, read ChatGPT ads in Australia. To set one up yourself, the step by step page has the 10 steps. The whole of what I do sits on the ChatGPT ads page.
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?