OpenAI adds visuals to ChatGPT ads
OpenAI is adding visual ads to ChatGPT, expanding conversion measurement, and bringing more third-party measurement companies into its advertising ecosystem. At the same time, TrafficGuard found that ChatGPT’s ad clicks were three times more likely to come from bots than clicks from Google.
The visual ads, which will appear during image generation, are being tested in the U.S. later this month with a group of advertisers. The ads can use images to show products, how they’re used, or experiences associated with a service. They’ll remain separate from the image being generated and won’t influence ChatGPT’s answers, according to OpenAI.
The format expands an ad product that previously relied on simpler sponsored placements with an advertiser name, logo, and product link. OpenAI says ChatGPT now reaches 1.2 billion people each week. Visual ads are another step in turning some of that activity into advertising inventory.
But more inventory and richer creative don’t answer the basic performance question: Who is clicking?
Some ChatGPT clicks aren’t coming from people
TrafficGuard analyzed three weeks of ChatGPT ad traffic from 47 advertisers and found invalid click rates ranging from 0.1% to 34%. According to the ad verification company, some campaigns were largely clean while others paid for substantial traffic that had no chance of converting.
A relatively small number of bots generated much of the activity, with 15 servers at one hosting provider clicking ads from five advertisers 318 times during the three-week period. Four hosting and proxy networks reached 25 of the 47 advertisers and generated half of all the invalid clicks identified in the analysis.
TrafficGuard found that ChatGPT ad clicks were 3.6 times more likely than Google Ads clicks to come from datacenters or proxy networks, and 10 times more likely to come from devices with configurations that couldn’t exist in the real world.
“Even though ChatGPT advertising is in its early days, automated traffic has already found it,” TrafficGuard co-founder and CEO Mathew Ratty said in a statement. “It is coordinated, it is persistent, and it is clicking every day.”
OpenAI is also expanding the ways advertisers can measure ChatGPT campaigns through integrations with Hightouch, Tealium, and LiveRamp to send conversion data to ChatGPT Ads.