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Weight Watchers’ measured cost per acquisition was 15.3% below its benchmark. Barn2 spent $477 for 370 clicks but recorded no conversions during its six-week test.
ChatGPT ad tests have produced widely different customer-acquisition results: Weight Watchers’ measured cost per acquisition was 15.3% below its established benchmark, while WordPress software maker Barn2 recorded no conversions after spending $477. The contrast comes as advertisers gain new tools to buy and measure campaigns on the chatbot.
Barn2 ran ads for four products from June 1 to July 14. Its ad account recorded 19,154 impressions, 370 clicks and $477 in spending, with no conversions. Clicks amounted to about 1.93% of impressions. Founder and CEO Katie Keith cautioned against broad conclusions: “I accept that one advertiser, six weeks, four products and 370 clicks isn't a study.”
A July 23 snapshot covered 50,006 U.S. prompts with commercial intent across 20 niches. Ads appeared beside 12,974 prompts, or 25.94% of the sample. The review classified 14.35% of ad impressions as having no stronger topical match to their prompt than ads paired with randomly selected prompts. The snapshot measured topical fit; it did not establish that a placement caused a campaign to miss conversions.
ChatGPT ad matching considers conversation context and intent, the ad content and its landing page. Advertisers may supply context hints to guide matching, but the hints are not exact-match keywords and cannot guarantee placement. Ads appear below ChatGPT responses. Users on Plus, Pro and Business plans, as well as accounts identified as belonging to people under 18, do not see them.
OpenAI began rolling out a beta self-serve Ads Manager and cost-per-click bidding on May 5, alongside pixel-based and Conversions API measurement. The initial ad pilot used cost-per-thousand-impressions buying, while cost-per-click bidding gives advertisers another way to bid based on clicks.
The figures measure different things: acquisition cost against a benchmark, results for one advertiser and topical fit across a prompt sample. They do not combine into a platformwide measure of campaign performance, and the audit does not establish that topical mismatch caused Barn2’s result.
By Aug. 31, ChatGPT Ads was generating revenue at an annualized pace of $1 billion, a level reached in under 200 days.
John Kim
John Kim reports on the digital-asset business for TokenPost. Send corrections or tips to info@tokenpost.com.