Decoding the ChatGPT Ads in India  – Expert’s Guide

OpenAI rolled out commercial ads, or AI advertising, within ChatGPT across major global markets. This was possible after the successful completion of the beta phase. During the Beta phase, 80% of the participants opted for ChatGPT ads. After the revolution in user search behaviour, advertisers are also now taking advanced steps and leaping into the new era of ChatGPT ads in India. Here, Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is paired with AI-Native contextual advertising.

For PPC specialists transitioning from Google Ads and Meta Ads to AI-enabled ads requires an understanding of search intent, target audience, and attribution. The proper knowledge of ChatGPT advertising allows the PPC specialist a unique opportunity to advertise their or their clients’ products or services on the ChatGPT advertising platform in India.Websites that demonstrate real experience and authority rank higher, gain more traffic, and attract better leads. Those that ignore E-E-A-T risk losing visibility and credibility.

What Are ChatGPT Ads?

ChatGPT advertising is contextually triggered and sponsored placements that are placed naturally within the conversation thread. These are different from the traditional ad placement on the search engine results page (SERPs). ChatGPT ads pop up directly at the bottom of the AI response. They are marked with a “sponsored” tag to let users know the difference between organic AI output and paid recommendations. 

Brand Safety & Policy Boundaries

To prevent users from trusting and using ChatGPT’s service, the ChatGPT advertising platform has enforced some strict boundaries. Based on the policy sensitive topics such as personal & mental health support, ads about political campaigns, Ads about adult content or sexual products, and regulated financial services like stock brokering are strictly prohibited

Additionally Chat GPT will restrict showing ads to those accounts whose registered age is below 18 years.

Available Ad Formats

Advertisers on ChatGPT can utilise three distinct formats to run their ads based on their campaign objective. 

Targeting Logic: How ChatGPT Differs from Google & Meta

Unlike popular ad platforms like Google and Meta there are no targeting options such as keywords, search queries, audience interest, demographics etc. Running Ads on ChatGPT might feel like a completely different experience to those who are spending lakhs every month of traditional ad platforms  

In ChatGPT PPC campaigns, you cannot use keywords, audience targeting, or bid on exact search queries. 

You need to think based on the real-time conversational context because the ads get triggered based on the dialogue, prompt nuances, and the memory settings. 

Also, in ChatGPT, advertising the traditional A/B testing is not possible; thus, the optimisation is challenging.

Which Audiences Will Actually See Your Ads?

Ads are shown to the Free Tier users. Paid subscribers do not see ads. However, the free tier users have total control over hiding any ad, or turning off ads, or clearing the ad history from ChatGPT’s settings tab. 

Many marketers have the misconception that many buyers use the paid plans, but the reality is different. Millions of high-intent users are using the free version of ChatGPT for various purposes, such as evaluating products, researching, and making travel plans etc. 

ChatGPT Ads vs. Google Ads: What can get you Better ROI

ROI for different industries vary and simplest way to measure is to run ads on Google and ChatGPT simultaneously in A/B Experimentation and measure ROI based on common conversion goals (leads generated or revenue generated) vs Ad spends done in both platform

Since ChatGPT puts a lot of focus on privacy, it restricts advertisers from targeting audience based on specific keywords. Your ad will show up in the response only if its relevant to what user is searching for.

Unlike Google wherein search ads take the top positions even above the organic results, ChatGPT operates on a different principle. It works on the answer independence principle. The AI generates an unbiased, organic response as per its knowledge retrieval index and algorithm before showing the sponsored ads. 

However, if your brand has optimized content which aligns with AEO & SEO principles then your organic mention in the conversation thread will always appear on top, along with the sponsored ad that your competitors might be running. In fact running a sponsored ad along with organic content can bring your brand in Spotlight as compared to other competitors mentioned in the organic response. This will build greater visibility & high intent clicks on your ads

Make sure you build the right UTM parameters to track the source of visitors from your ChatGPT campaigns to effectively measure ROI on ad spends. Your Google Analytics Setup should help you identify Ad content used in ChatGPT relevant to the products/services you tried running ads for and landing pages where those users came first.

How to Set Up and Launch Your First Campaign

You should definitely try Chat GPT ads if your oranizations falls into Perfume Industry, Retail Shops, Consulting based services, Abroad Education Consultancy, high-value industrial machinery, D2C Ecom Store and other similar businesses

Here is the step by step process to launch your first Chat GPT Ad

1. Account onboarding: the very first step is to register through the OpenAI ads manager using their official link: ads.openai.com. Fill in the necessary details related to your business, such as GST/EIN, upload your logo and its favicon, etc.
2. As for the next task, you need to wait for the approval; it might take between 2 and 5 working days. 
3. Pixel and feed integration: install the OpenAI conversion Pixel on your website to track various events such as signups, purchases, order value, etc.
4. Now comes the main part: creating the ad campaign. Define the objective from leads Vs. sales, budget caps, and target regions.  
5. At the ad group level, add the context hints, prompts that mirror the conversation, or where you need your ad to appear. 
6. Upload various ad parameters such as headlines (16 to 24 characters), ad copy (32 to 48 characters), high-resolution creative assets (256X 256X), and landing page links, etc.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much budget do I need to run ads on ChatGPT?
The enterprise launch programs have the minimum limit of spending the budget which falls around $3000 to $5000. This much ad spend is necessary for gathering meaningful insights and learnings. 

Will I get a lower Cost Per Click (CPC) on ChatGPT?
The CPC might not be low, but you get high-quality results. Compared to Meta Campaigns, ChatGPT ads run within the conversions, increasing the chances of clicks and getting faster and higher-quality results. 

How can I measure ROAS on ChatGPT?
ROAS is tracked via the OpenAI ads pixel using the first-party conversion events. As cookie tracking is restricted for privacy concerns, attribution relies on other parameters such as UTM tagging, server-side tracking, post-purchase surveys, etc. 

Do I need to hire an agency to run ads on ChatGPT?
If your team is already managing the Google Performance or Meta Advantage+ campaigns, then handling ChatGPT advertising will be very easy for them. However, hiring an ad agency will be an added advantage as it will help you increase your performance, ensure a high organic knowledge graph, and get you maximum ROI. 

Written by the performance marketing team at IQRA Digital Solutions, their years of experience with SEO strategy and and digital marketing for B2B lead generation. LinkedIn