A new academic study puts a hard number on something a lot of advertisers already suspected: a visit driven by a ChatGPT ad is worth roughly a third of what a Google Search ad visit is worth, and for most advertisers who’ve tried both, it’s worth even less than that.
The research comes from Maximilian Kaiser at Vienna University of Economics and Business and Christian Schulze at Frankfurt School of Finance and Management, published as a working paper in October and currently under review. The headline figures are stark: a ChatGPT ad visit generates $0.89 in revenue on average, compared to $2.45 for a paid Google Search ad visit in the U.S. Conversion rates tell the same story from a different angle, 0.37 percent for ChatGPT versus 1.17 percent for paid search, meaning search converts visitors into buyers more than three times as often.
The numbers get worse the closer you look
Of the 87 advertisers in the study who bought ads on both platforms, 84 of them earned less revenue per ChatGPT visit than per search visit. Seventy-three of those 87 generated exactly zero sales from ChatGPT-driven traffic. And the ChatGPT revenue that did show up wasn’t evenly spread, one single advertiser accounted for 66 percent of all ChatGPT-driven purchases across the full set of 102 sites tracked in the study. That’s about as concentrated as commercial outcomes get, and it suggests whatever is working for that one advertiser isn’t easily replicated by everyone else buying the same ad inventory.
The researchers also tried to estimate what a fair price for a ChatGPT click would actually be, using paid search as the benchmark. That “parity price” comes out to roughly $0.26 per click, with a wide resampled range between $0.05 and $0.57 depending on the advertiser. If OpenAI is charging meaningfully more than that for ad placements right now, and most reporting suggests it is, advertisers buying in are effectively paying a premium for exposure rather than for proven return on ad spend.
How the study actually measured this
The data comes from 102 advertiser sites with full sales tracking, following traffic and purchases through OpenAI’s country-by-country ad rollout using Google Analytics e-commerce data supplied by Grips Intelligence. Kaiser has worked with Grips previously as a scientific advisor, though the paper states the company had no role in shaping the research itself. The tracking methodology uses last-click attribution and deliberately excludes prompts, raw ad impressions, and ChatGPT subscription revenue, focusing purely on what happens after someone clicks through to an advertiser’s site. The dataset runs through August 22, 2026, so it captures a meaningful early window of ChatGPT’s ad business rather than a single snapshot.
One more wrinkle worth flagging: the study found organic, non-paid referral traffic from ChatGPT dropped by roughly 6 to 8 percent after ads started appearing. That’s a modest decline, but it raises an uncomfortable possibility for OpenAI, that introducing ads may be cannibalizing the free referral traffic ChatGPT was already sending to businesses, rather than purely adding incremental value on top of it.
Why search ads have had a two-decade head start
It’s worth putting this gap in context rather than treating it as a surprising failure on OpenAI’s part. Google Search ads work as well as they do because of roughly two decades of continuous refinement: auction mechanics, quality score algorithms, remarketing, conversion tracking integrations, and an entire industry of agencies and specialists built around optimizing campaigns down to the keyword level. ChatGPT’s advertising product has existed for a comparatively tiny fraction of that time, and it’s launching into a fundamentally different kind of interaction, a conversation rather than a list of ranked links a user is actively scanning for the most relevant option. Search ads succeed partly because they slot into a format users already understand is partly commercial. Ads inside a chat interface are a stranger, less familiar intrusion, and user behavior around them is still being established.
That doesn’t mean ChatGPT ads are doomed to stay this far behind forever. Display advertising, now a mature and genuinely large business, also went through an awkward early period where click-through and conversion rates lagged well behind what search would later deliver. But the study’s data suggests OpenAI is earlier in that maturation curve than its ad sales pitch to advertisers might imply, and advertisers deciding how much budget to commit right now should weigh that history accordingly.
What OpenAI says, and what it doesn’t
OpenAI’s own advertising FAQ is notably candid about where things stand, stating plainly that ChatGPT Ads “does not yet have performance benchmarks across advertisers, industries, or campaign types.” The company has separately said it’s “continuing to explore new ways for businesses to interact with consumers in more native ways in ChatGPT,” language that reads as a company still figuring out the model rather than one defending an established, proven ad product. Other data points floating around, including a frequently cited example of a 3x return on ad spend and DoubleVerify data tied to Weight Watchers, use different metrics than this study and shouldn’t be read as contradicting it directly.
OpenAI’s own valuation has climbed to $1.25 trillion on the strength of ChatGPT’s enormous reach, and advertising is clearly meant to be one of the ways that reach eventually turns into durable revenue beyond subscriptions and enterprise contracts. This study is an early, fairly pointed signal that the advertising side of that equation isn’t there yet, at least not at anything close to search-ad efficiency.
The SEO angle advertisers shouldn’t ignore
There’s a second layer to this that matters specifically for anyone running organic search or content strategy rather than paid ads. The study’s finding that organic ChatGPT referral traffic dipped 6 to 8 percent after ads launched suggests ad placement and organic visibility inside AI chat interfaces may already be competing for the same limited attention, much the way paid and organic results have always jostled for position on a traditional search results page. As more AI platforms introduce advertising, expect the same tension to show up elsewhere: AI Overviews, AI Mode, and competing chatbots all face the same incentive to monetize answers, and every dollar of ad revenue they chase is a potential trade-off against the kind of clean, unpaid citation that’s made AI search traffic valuable to publishers and brands in the first place.
The bottom line
Chat-based AI assistants are genuinely good at a lot of things, but based on this data, driving ad revenue the way search has for two decades isn’t currently one of them. If you’re a marketer being pitched hard on ChatGPT ad spend right now, this study is a reasonable reason to start small, measure your own conversion numbers carefully, and not assume ChatGPT traffic behaves anything like search traffic just because both involve someone typing a question.
The Teck Hustlers Editorial Team covers technology, business, finance and gaming news for readers who want the story behind the headline. Every article is researched, written and edited by our in-house team, checked against company announcements, filings and reputable reporting, and updated when new facts emerge. We focus on what each development means for founders, professionals, investors and everyday users. Have a tip or a correction? Reach us through our contact page.
