ChatGPT Ads are now in Beta in the UK, giving brands an early opportunity to test how advertising works inside AI-led conversations.
The way people discover and evaluate brands is changing. With 900 million weekly active users globally, ChatGPT is becoming part of the research journey, helping users compare brands and products, ask for recommendations and make decisions before they reach a search engine or website.
For brands, that creates a new point of influence. ChatGPT Ads offer a way to appear earlier in the journey, while people are still exploring what they need, who to trust and what to do next.
At STM AGENCY, we are helping brands test ChatGPT Ads through a structured, performance-led approach. The focus is simple: understand the opportunity, test it properly and build insight before the channel becomes more mature and competitive.
ChatGPT Ads Overview
ChatGPT Ads are sponsored placements that can appear alongside relevant conversations in ChatGPT.
The ads are clearly labelled as ads and sit separately from ChatGPT’s response, which is important for trust and transparency. Rather than interrupting the experience, the ads are designed to appear when they are relevant to what someone is asking.
This means the opportunity is built around context. If someone is using ChatGPT to research a product, compare options, shortlist providers or understand what to consider before making a decision, an ad may appear if it matches the topic of that conversation.
That makes ChatGPT Ads different from many traditional ad formats. They are not based on someone passively scrolling through a feed or only appearing once a user has reached Google. They sit within an active research moment, where the user is already asking questions and shaping their next step.
For brands, this creates a useful source of insight as well as a new media opportunity. It can help show what people are asking before they search, what comparisons they are making and what messages may influence them earlier in the decision-making journey.
ChatGPT Ads should therefore be seen as more than a new paid media placement. They are an early signal of how search, discovery and customer behaviour are beginning to change.
How ChatGPT Ads Work
At this stage, ChatGPT Ads are largely driven by the context of the conversation. Ads are selected based on what someone is asking or exploring, rather than relying only on traditional audience targeting or demographic data.
This changes how brands need to think about campaign planning. It is not enough to take existing PPC keywords and reuse them. There is a bigger opportunity to understand the questions people ask before they search.
A good strategy should consider different types of intent, such as exploration, comparison and decision-making. Someone asking “what should I look for when choosing…” is in a different mindset to someone asking “is X better than Y?” or “which provider should I use for…?”
Each of these moments needs a different message.
That is why creative plays such an important role. In ChatGPT Ads, the creative does more than sell the brand. It helps prove relevance to the conversation.
ChatGPT Ad Formats
There are currently three ad formats available in the UK beta: Sponsored Answer Cards, Product Spotlight Ads and Contextual Sidebar Ads.
- Sponsored Answer Cards are the standard ChatGPT ad format, appearing as clearly labelled sponsored placements alongside relevant conversations.
- Product Spotlight Ads are shopping-style placements, populated through an advertiser's product feed and designed to showcase relevant produces within the conversation.
- Contextual Sidebar Ads appear in the right-hand side of the interface, giving brands an additional placement where the ad is relevant to the user's prompt.
Across each format, brands need to be clear, useful and specific. The best-performing creative is likely to be the creative that quickly answers why the brand is relevant in that moment.
Generic brand lines are unlikely to work as hard here. ChatGPT Ads need messages that feel closely connected to the user’s question, whether that is around a product benefit, a comparison point, a problem being solved or a clear reason to choose one brand over another.
For brands, this means building multiple creative variations and learning from the early signals. The aim is not to find one perfect ad straight away. It is to test different messages and understand which ones match different user intents.
Why ChatGPT Ads Need a Different Approach
ChatGPT Ads should not be treated like a standard PPC or display campaign. The channel is still in beta, benchmarks are still forming and user behaviour is still developing. That means brands need to approach it with clear expectations, controlled budgets and a test-and-learn framework.
The opportunity now is to understand how people are using AI tools to research, compare and make decisions before they reach a search engine or website.
That changes how campaigns need to be planned. Brands need to think beyond keywords and consider the questions, prompts and decision-making moments that sit behind them.
Through our media partnership with StackAdapt, we can support brands with access to ChatGPT Ads. More importantly, we help shape the strategy around that access, from planning and creative development through to tracking, measurement and performance analysis.
Our approach gives clients a structured way to test ChatGPT Ads, understand how AI-led discovery is changing customer behaviour and identify how conversational advertising can support wider performance activity.
How We Recommend Testing ChatGPT Ads
We see ChatGPT Ads as an emerging channel that should be tested in phases.
The first phase is exploration
This is where we identify whether the channel is the right fit, which products or services are most suitable, what prompt themes should be tested and how the activity should sit alongside existing media.
The second phase is validation
This is where campaigns go live, creative variations are tested and early performance signals are reviewed. We look at standard metrics such as impressions, clicks and CPC, but we also look at wider indicators such as traffic quality, assisted conversions, branded search movement and engagement by message type.
The third phase is scale
If the data supports it, we expand the activity through additional keywords, prompt themes, ad groups, creative variations or landing pages. If the data does not support further investment, we make that clear too.
This phased approach helps brands avoid treating ChatGPT Ads like a quick win or a one-off experiment. It gives the test enough structure to produce useful learning.
How Should Success with ChatGPT Ads be Measured?
One of the biggest mistakes brands can make is measuring ChatGPT Ads in exactly the same way as paid search.
Paid search often captures demand that already exists. ChatGPT Ads are more likely to influence people earlier, while they are still researching, comparing and deciding what to do next. That means last-click conversions will only tell part of the story.
Success should be measured across both learning and business impact. Early metrics such as CPM, CPC, CTR and conversion events matter, but they need to be viewed alongside broader signals. This could include changes in branded search, direct traffic, assisted conversions and the quality of users landing on site.
This is especially important while the channel is still in beta. Performance may be inconsistent at first, and benchmarks are still forming.
That does not mean the channel lacks value. It means brands need to be clear on what they are trying to learn before judging whether it has worked.
Who Should Consider ChatGPT Ads?
ChatGPT Ads are likely to be most relevant for brands with considered purchase journeys.
If customers usually research, compare, ask questions or need reassurance before buying, there may be a strong opportunity to test. This could include categories where education, trust, differentiation or product understanding play an important role.
The channel may also be useful in competitive markets where paid search is expensive and brands want to influence users before they reach Google.
Sectors such as retail, travel, professional services, education and finance could all have clear use cases, depending on the product, audience and buying journey.
However, ChatGPT Ads will not be right for everyone at this stage. Brands with very limited budgets, short-term sales targets or low margins may find the early volatility difficult to justify. Highly regulated sectors may also face more creative limitations, depending on what can and cannot be promoted.
The key is suitability. The right brands can use ChatGPT Ads to build an early advantage. The wrong brands may simply spend money before the channel is ready for them.
In Summary
We do not see ChatGPT Ads as a replacement for existing performance channels. We see them as an early-stage influence channel that can help brands understand how AI-led discovery is changing customer behaviour.
The biggest opportunity right now is learning. Brands that test early can begin to build their own benchmarks around prompt intent, creative performance, auction behaviour and downstream impact. That insight will become more valuable as conversational advertising develops.
The risk is not only testing and failing. The bigger risk may be waiting until the channel is more mature, more competitive and more expensive, without having any data of your own to guide the strategy.
How STM AGENCY Can Help
We help brands plan, launch and measure ChatGPT Ads activity in a way that is structured, realistic and commercially useful.
We can support with channel suitability, budget planning, prompt and keyword strategy, creative development, campaign setup, tracking and performance analysis.
We can support clients:
- Identify where ChatGPT Ads fit within the wider media mix
- Build prompt and keyword strategies based on real user intent
- Develop concise ad creative tailored to conversational topics
- Set realistic budgets and testing phases
- Track performance beyond clicks, including assisted conversions, branded search impact and wider discovery behaviour
- Create clear test, learn, scale or stop recommendations
Our focus is not being early for the sake of it. It is helping brands test with discipline, learn faster and understand how ChatGPT Ads could support future performance as AI-led discovery continues to grow.
If you are interested in testing ChatGPT Ads or want to understand whether the channel is right for your brand, get in touch with our team to start the conversation.
