ChatGPT Just Announced Ads - Here's What You Should Know

So OpenAI, they have just announced they are putting ads into ChatGPT. Now, we’ve been talking about this for a while, but they’ve finally actually announced it, and they’re finally testing it in the US. Google, of course, is doing the same thing with Google Ads. We’ve been doing that for a while and, of course, with putting ads with AI Max into places like AI Mode and Google AI Overviews. So if you’re sitting here thinking about that announcement, thinking, oh, great, that’s another channel I’m going to have to learn, I’m going to have to throw a little bit of my marketing budget towards that. Firstly, I’ll pump the brakes, and let’s look at some fundamentals and look at the whole big picture.

First, though, if we haven’t met, my name is Jordan. Welcome back. First episode for 2026. It is great to be back. And honestly, the start of 2026 really has started with a bit of a bang. Marketers, we haven’t really had the chance to have a bit of a summer holiday, because we have seen some big announcements, a lot of advancements in the world of advertising, in the world of marketing and digital marketing online. Of course, January 16th was the day that OpenAI come out and announcing that they are bringing ads to ChatGPT. And as I said in the intro there, testing for this has started in the US for the free tier.

So people that are not on a paid subscribing plan. And they’re also doing it for a brand new tier that they’re testing over there as well, called the Go subscription. So that sits at $8 US per month. So it’s like a cheaper version. But that will also be tested for the ad platform as well. So that is the big news that’s come out of ChatGPT and OpenAI. And again, as I said in the intro, something that we have been talking about for a while and starting to think about how we can prepare for.

And then, of course, let’s talk about Google. Google have been a little bit cagier more about advertising, especially within the Gemini app. Firstly, their VP of ads last year publicly said that they’ve got no current plans for any ads being released into Gemini, their chatbot. And this was late last year, but already this week, Adweek are saying that’s potentially not the case, and that there’s been some internal conversations with large advertisers that Google is talking to, that they are saying that potentially there will be advertising being added to Gemini this year as well. So that’s kind of opening up a bit of a can of worms.

But like I say, Google’s just being a much more cagier all about that so far. But of course, as we know, through Google Ads there have been ad placements throughout places like AI Overviews that we’ve seen over the past little while. And by November 2025, a stat that I read as well was that 40% of searches on Google were showing AI Overviews, and 40% of those searches were including ads. Okay. And that was up from only 3% from January 2025. So it’s grown that much over the course of one year. So we can only assume and know what is coming for 2026 as well.

So yes, digital advertising, search, discovery, it is changing at a really rapid, rapid pace. So I want to take a high look at this, high-level look, should I say, together. And we’ll start making some plans about how we can prepare for some of these big changes that we’ll see later on this year. And as I said at the start of 2025, that was going to be a big year for AI and marketing online. But I think that this year is going to continue just to explode and to evolve. So we need to stay as advanced and as ahead of the game as what we can.

So the first big thing is why AI search ads are changing everything for people discovering your business and your brand and your product and your service. So let’s think: when someone searches Google, currently, you see those 10 blue links. They choose which one they’re wanting to click. When someone asks ChatGPT, for example, or they’re using Google’s AI Mode, instead of them making the decision and seeing the 10 blue links, they’re actually getting just one answer, maybe two answers. And that AI assistant is actually making that decision about what is worth showing, as opposed to us looking at the 10 blue links and making that decision.

The change really is that the AI assistant is essentially doing that work for us. And I personally think that is a fundamental shift. And it essentially means that there are fewer slots. Back in the day, we always wanted to be position one or two and get above the fold. And that’s now getting more and more emphasised, I guess, because there are fewer slots to be seen on some of those AI searches. Because the AI is summarising, it’s literally doing the recommending, it’s filtering all of those different results, and it’s giving you customised results based on you and your data. And it’s doing it all at once. So if you and your business aren’t in that answer, then essentially you don’t exist for that search, which is a real challenge.

And the way that consumers are actually searching now as well, and even if you think about your own search behaviour at the moment, it probably is evolving. We’re not going to Google anymore and just putting in a couple of keywords. We’re actually asking long-form questions, and we’re getting long-form answers as well. I even think about my own user behaviour. I’m definitely asking longer questions and trying to give more detail so that I can get really good specific answers. Even using voice to ask those questions as well.

And I know we’ve been talking about voice search for years, and back in the day, when they first started talking about voice search, it seemed like one of those hare-brained ideas that no one would actually adopt. But with the advancements of these tools, it is becoming really easy to actually find answers to the common questions that you have.

And the thing we’ve got to remember here as well is that OpenAI currently now has 800 million weekly active users. It’s a massive market. People are using it. Google Gemini even got 650 million monthly users. And that’s not even thinking about how many people are still using Google, or AI Mode, and all those other tools that we have for us as well. So we need to obviously remind ourselves we’re not dealing with niche tools anymore. They are becoming a primary part of all of our primary research and discovery for when we are looking for products and services, and looking to buy and get answers to certain things as well.

So then that opens up the question around, well, how will ChatGPT and Gemini, if Gemini does ads, how will those ads differ from the ads that we’re seeing right now? So if we take a bit of a step back with traditional ads, and honestly, I feel really old having to even say that, traditional search ads, obviously what we were doing is bidding on certain keywords. So we would bid on a keyword, you would show up on that list, the 10 blue links, and then the users decide whether they want to go look at your content or look at the offer that you have on your landing page.

The difference that we’re seeing now is the AI-assisted ads. Back to what I was saying before, the model is deciding what’s actually going to be helpful, and it’s going to weave that into more of a conversational answer. And again, there might only be room for one or two brand mentions from within that answer.

Now, OpenAI has been really explicit about how ads are going to work. They’re saying that ads aren’t going to influence ChatGPT’s responses. Okay, so it’s not like you can pay to be seen higher in a response. Essentially, the ads, the sponsored links, are going to appear at the bottom of the answers, and it will be clearly labelled. So you can stop thinking that you can actually pay to get seen into one of the answers, because obviously that then opens up a massive piece for ChatGPT around whether people can even trust the platform if you can just buy your way to the top. So you can’t buy your way to the top of these responses. What you can do, though, is get some sponsored answers at the bottom.

So they’ve also, this is ChatGPT, OpenAI, have also said that users can turn off personalisation, so we can’t personalise ads based on the different settings and different things that it knows about you. Plus, same rules apply to what you see with Google and Google Ads today. There’s no ads about health-related products, mental health products, or political topics and things like that as well. So that is how we can see these AI platforms differing from our traditional search advertising that we have at the moment.

So what this actually means for our marketing strategy, from my perspective, is that practically, our ad creative now needs to feel more like it’s helpful, and not that you’re trying to interrupt anyone’s search. So when you’re creating ads for ChatGPT or Google Gemini, instead of trying to interrupt someone’s search, like we would if we were advertising on Facebook or Meta or LinkedIn, you’re trying to interrupt their scrolling or their discovery on those platforms, instead, it needs to feel helpful and relevant to that user’s search and that user’s question, as opposed to trying to interrupt that process.

The other big thing that I think practically for brands is that we do need to focus more and more and more, and I’ve said this, I’d love to actually maybe put this into an AI tool and find out how many times I’ve said this in podcasts last year, brand authority, trust signals, building the E-E-A-T: the expertise, experience, authoritativeness and trustworthiness. Those signals matter more than ever. We need to continue to think about that.

The other practical thing that AI ads is going to mean to your advertising strategy is that attribution is going to become even more messy than what we see right now. It’s going to be so much harder to understand where your users are coming from. That data is going to get harder and harder to interpret, because the influence is happening inside that AI assistant before anyone’s actually visiting your website. So it’s going to be really hard to understand what information did they take on before they actually went to your website and actually converted to become a customer.

And then the other thing that I think this will practically change for our strategies will also be that impact in branded search and direct traffic. We will see an impact in some of that branded search and direct traffic. And I think it’s even going to change some of those conversions as well. So it’s just a few things I think that we will start to spot over the next 12 months or so as well.

So all that’s well and good, but how then do we take the fact that search is still changing, the fact that people are still adopting these tools and technology more, the fact that ChatGPT is now actively testing advertising on its platform, how do we actually prepare our businesses to make sure that we are ready for AI search ads in 2026?

So like I said, this is just testing in the US first. And this happened about this time last year as well, when they were starting to talk about Google’s AI Mode, and Google launched that just in the US market first. And that was a great thing, because as Kiwis and Aussies, we were able to watch and see how businesses were reacting over there and how they were changing their strategy, so we could start to put some of those things into motion from our side as well. So we don’t know exactly when this is going to roll out in New Zealand and Australia, but what we can do is, while we’re waiting for that finished product, I guess, to get launched here, we can actually start preparing our businesses and our strategies now.

So this is my perspective on what I think makes sense for us right now, and what we should continue to focus on from here on out. The first thing is I would recommend you continue to audit your AI visibility, and try to do it as often as possible: understanding what different AI tools are actually saying about your brand and your business, your product and your service. So simply open ChatGPT, go onto Gemini, ask those questions that your customers are asking, and try to do this in incognito mode as well. So incognito means that it’s not going to use any of your existing data, which may prioritise some of your own business and your own things that you want to see.

Okay, so make sure you do it incognito. Ask yourself these questions. Is your brand getting mentioned for some of those different questions that you’re asking? What competitors or publications are actually coming up instead? And also, if you do have a paid model, like with OpenAI, with ChatGPT, do the extended thinking, and you can actually click that drop-down and actually have a look to see what things it actually searched for, what was actually part of its thinking process as well.

And these audits are great, because it essentially says if you’re not showing up, that’s the first problem you need to solve. Don’t even think about advertising just yet, or pumping money into these different tools, unless you’re actually thinking about, are you actually showing up at all in any of these organic listings in the first place? Because I honestly think that no amount of ad budget is going to fix essentially the invisible.

Second thing is those trust signals. And I said this before, the E-E-A-T principles: experience, expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness. Those are the ones that you need to still continue to focus on. And those are the principles that AI models are actually recognising as well. We saw these stats all from last year. We need to remind ourselves that AI models aren’t just reading your website and saying, sweet, well, that’s what they do, and we’re going to promote them as the authoritative person. They’re actually learning about you from what other people are saying about you.

That big thing: 25% of AI citations are actually coming from your own website, but the rest of it is coming from those reviews, from the mentions, from the articles, from those testimonials, those external sources that are really signalling trust. So if you want to show up on AI-generated answers, you need to continue to build a trustworthy brand and a trustworthy business. Focus on the Google reviews. These are still one of the strongest independent, I guess you could say, trust signals available. AI models are pulling from Google Business Profile data. If you do a search, you will see it. It literally gets mentioned. So if you’ve got literally five reviews, and the last one was left in 2019, that’s a real problem. So you need to start incorporating that as part of your business process.

Even thinking about your testimonial strategy. I’m trying to think about how do you gather actual results and case studies and testimonials for your website content. How do you present that content? Can you do that via video, and actually having trustworthy real people talking about your product and your brand and your service, and get really specific about it as well? So not just going for testimonials talking about what a great service it was, actually thinking about being specific.

So with an agency like ourselves, we’d be trying to get a testimonial where a client can actually say, they helped reduce our ad spend, or increase our conversions by X amount, or reduce the ad spend by this, by getting a better cost per conversion in terms of this. And those type of things is what we’re looking for. Give the AI something really concrete to actually reference, and make sure you’re trying to update these as regularly as possible. And just try and include those real outcomes. And that goes back: E-E-A-T, experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness.

Also, if you can, try to get others talking about you. Thinking about industry publications. Maybe try to get some interviews on podcasts. Get mentioned in local business directories. There may be some other online communities that you can really get involved with there as well. Every credible mention is going to help AI just connect those dots a little bit more about who you are, what you’re known for, who you’re serving, what your product and service does. And it just builds up that overall online picture as well.

And then that other big piece as well is continuing around building that consistency with your content across your other social platforms and your website and things like that. Thinking about your thought leadership, your other PR efforts that are actually helping to feed into AI visibility. Remember that the more your brand is being seen and discussed in places that not only AI trusts, but where your audience actually is, the more likely you’re actually going to be able to surface as a credible answer as well.

And when I say this, I don’t mean that suddenly you’ve got to go out and post six times a day. It’s not about just posting more. It’s about how can you create more content that is actually worth referencing, actually worth sharing and saving to someone’s feed, for example. You’re actually trying to build that, I guess, that body of evidence that is really telling AI that your brand is real, that you are trusted, and that you’re actually worth citing in these type of models as well.

The other thing you should be focusing on is probably starting to get your brand data consistent across as many platforms as you can. And what I mean by your brand data is things like just the fundamentals. Is the address right, the phone number right, the email address is all right? Are the social profiles all connected? Are you described consistently across the website? That’s one of the big ones. You don’t want a certain piece of messaging on your LinkedIn profile, but then on your Google My Business there’s something completely different about what you do.

So if you’ve had some changes in the business, and how you serve your people, or the product or services that you offer, make sure you’re staying consistent across the entire web. Using your structured data across your website, where it makes sense, obviously, is a key part. And just remembering that the more consistent you are with your presence, the easier it is for the AIs to actually both recognise, but also trust you as an entity and as an organisation.

And then the only other thing I’d be thinking about is, when it gets launched, and obviously we’ll keep you in the loop with this, but start to think about planning small ad experiments for when these ChatGPT ads arrive. If it’s something that you’re like, yeah, this is something we really want to focus on, really want to give it a bit of a crack with, I would say, starting with one or two clear offers and one or two small campaigns that are mapped to very specific queries. Not going too wide with your advertising, and not going too wide with your expectations of that as well.

Make sure you measure on assisted conversions. Seeing, are you getting branded search lift, organic? Are people Googling your brand more based on what they’ve seen on ChatGPT models and things like that? Is the lead quality better based on when you launch these ads? Those are the things that I’d be encouraging you to have a bit of a look on. And I wouldn’t say that you want to be chasing any click metrics, because that’s going to essentially, well, it’s going to steer you wrong. It’s going to lie to you in this format. Clicks, CTRs, those type of things are getting harder and harder to track. So we need to be thinking about other ways that you can be attributing the success of these ads.

And look, I would be treating it like I would with any new AdWords campaign as well. If we take on a client that has not done any Google AdWords in the past, we’d be taking small bits, we’d be learning fast from those. We would be taking small geolocations, small topic clusters, and really starting to build out once we actually learn and get more data into the system. It’s all about trying to get as much data into the system for it to be able to learn as fast as possible. So that’s essentially what I would be thinking about, if you’re thinking, actually, ChatGPT could be an interesting place for us to advertise when it does launch.

So look, to wrap up, AI assistants, they are going to be like paid discovery channels in the future. And we’ve known this for a while, because these companies are there to make cash. So the place where a growing number of your customers are researching and comparing and deciding, that’s obviously places like ChatGPT and Google’s AI Mode. So if we can take the time to really understand how these platforms both see us today, and then do the work to become trusted sources for our product and service, we will then have, I see it as, a much better advantage when the ads actually do roll out properly.

So my advice right now is to focus on the fundamentals. Continue to focus on those fundamentals, their consistency. One hour with your team this week or this month, run that AI visibility audit. Sit down, spend 15, 20 minutes going through that, and just try to understand that a little bit more. Identify some content on your website that you may need to upgrade and make more consistent with the other places that you’ve got across the web.

Maybe sketch out your ideas about that first experiment once ChatGPT ads do launch, because chances are they’re not going to give as much warning when it comes. So if it does well and they’re making cash in the US, they’re going to roll it out as quick as they can, as far as I see it. So if we can start to think about whether this is something that we would take a punt on, it’s probably worth sketching out how you would approach that, what products and services you would likely start to test when that time comes as well.

So that’s what I think the move is this year, and what you should be focusing on. So fundamentals first, and then just starting to sketch out how that could play out for you. Because as I said at the start of this podcast as well, there are going to be some massive changes that we’ll see over the course of 2026. And of course, if you’re wanting help running that audit, maybe thinking through your AI visibility strategy, anything like that, just chatting around how marketing is going to potentially change, that’s exactly the type of work we do with our clients here at Done By Nine.

Of course, you can get in touch with us via our website. You can drop me a message anytime as well. I’m more than happy to chat. And hopefully today’s episode is just going to get you thinking about potentially where things are heading this year, especially with advertising, especially with some of the changes we’ll see with Google Ads. And as I said at the start, I think 2026 is going to be a massive year for search and discovery and for AI. So let’s just, I guess, strap in and see where it’s going to take us. We’ll see you in the next episode of For The Daring Growth Seekers.