ChatGPT Ad Visits Earn $0.89 vs $2.45 for Google Search Ads

A ChatGPT ad visit generated $0.89 in U.S. revenue, versus $2.45 for a visit from a paid Google search ad. That's the headline finding of a working paper by Maximilian Kaiser of the Vienna University of Economics and Business and Christian Schulze of the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management, dated October 2026 and still under review. The paid-ad figures rest on 102 advertiser sites with full sales tracking, observed during OpenAI's country-by-country ad launch.

Put simply: a Google paid-search click delivered nearly three times the revenue of a ChatGPT ad click in this sample. The conversion gap is just as stark — 0.37% for ChatGPT ads against 1.17% for paid search in U.S. traffic.

What did the advertiser-level data show?

The researchers compared both channels within the same sites. The gaps held even after controlling for device type and week.

Among 87 advertisers that bought both channels in the U.S.:

• 84 earned less per ChatGPT ad visit than per paid-search visit.
• 73 recorded zero sales from their ChatGPT ads, across 18,726 visits between them.
• The remaining 14 advertisers generated all 570 ChatGPT ad purchases.

One advertiser alone accounted for 66% of all paid-ChatGPT purchases across the 102 sites. Remove that account, and both gaps widen. The concentration matters — a single buyer props up the channel's aggregate numbers.

What is the 'parity price' for a ChatGPT click?

The authors used paid search as a benchmark. Of 16 accounts with at least 80% U.S. search traffic, the median paid-search click cost $0.72. Scaled for the revenue-per-visit difference, they land at roughly $0.26 per ChatGPT click — the price at which a ChatGPT click would match search on revenue per ad dollar.

Because one advertiser drove 76% of U.S. paid-ChatGPT revenue, resampling put the estimate anywhere between $0.05 and $0.57. For context, the largest publicly known account paid $1.72 per click over 15 days of spend, as reported by the agency Opascope — more than six times the parity price. OpenAI's own ads basics page recommends starting CPC campaigns at a $3 to $5 maximum bid.

The parity calculation assumes similar profit margins across channels and counts only the tracked last click. The authors found no detectable traffic spillover to other channels for advertisers, though the test can only rule out large increases.

Did ads hurt organic ChatGPT referrals?

Kaiser and Schulze tracked unpaid visits from ChatGPT responses to 1,898 sites as a proxy for product utility. Over the first 13 weeks post-launch, organic ChatGPT referrals fell an estimated 5.9% relative to organic search referrals to the same sites, and relative to the EU, where no ads ran at the time. The raw range, –12.6% to +1.2%, includes zero. Adjusted for faster North American adoption using OpenAI's regional index, the estimate shifts to –7.2% to –8.4%, excluding zero. The authors call it a moderate decrease of roughly 6%–8%.

Caveats apply. Before launch, the combined pre-trends test showed no clear rollout-versus-EU difference, but four of five rollout groups failed the test individually. The same test also flagged 49 of 100 simulated rollouts where no ads ran. Conversion among the organic visits that did arrive was flat, moving –0.02 percentage points from a 2.21% baseline.

How solid is the study?

The data covers a 60-week window ending Aug. 22, 2026. ChatGPT ads launched in the U.S. on Feb. 9, 2026, and reached Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, Japan, Korea, Brazil and Mexico by early August. The EU saw no ads until Aug. 24 — two days after the window closed. The e-commerce tracking came from Google Analytics, provided free by Grips Intelligence; Kaiser advises Grips and previously worked there, though the paper states the company had no role in the research and no OpenAI commercial relationship. The data excludes prompts, impressions and subscription tiers, and advertisers chose to buy the ads, so the results reflect their outcomes rather than proving causation.

OpenAI's ads FAQ, for its part, says ChatGPT Ads "does not yet have performance benchmarks across advertisers, industries, or campaign types." That's the company's own position — the rest is tool-signal research.

More favorable figures exist but use different metrics. OpenAI said on Aug. 31 that one e-commerce advertiser saw 3x return on ad spend over 28 days, and DoubleVerify reported Weight Watchers' attributed cost per acquisition came in 15.3% below benchmark.

What should advertisers watch next?

You can compute your own parity price: divide ChatGPT revenue per visit by paid-search revenue per visit, then multiply by your search CPC. Check first for ad-review crawler visits, which OpenAI says can hit landing pages with tracking parameters and register as paid in third-party analytics.

The paper's authors argue sponsored cards sit apart from the answer, which may cap their value; moving ads inside answers could raise click value but also user distrust. OpenAI's Oct. 21 post says ads stay labeled and separate, while the company explores "more native ways" for businesses to reach consumers. With the channel now live in 89 countries and more than 100,000 advertisers running campaigns, that native-format question is the one to monitor.