ChatGPT ads: media agencies are ‘underwhelmed’
In February, OpenAI introduced advertising in ChatGPT. Ad buyers love this idea: [AdNews] ChatGPT reaches people who have effectively opted out of traditional advertising. Digitally native, ad-blocking, disengaged from social feeds. These are not easy people to reach. The ones who already went to…
In February, OpenAI introduced advertising in ChatGPT. Ad buyers love this idea: [AdNews] ChatGPT reaches people who have effectively opted out of traditional advertising. Digitally native, ad-blocking, disengaged from social feeds. These are not easy people to reach. The ones who already went to technical effort not to hear from you? That’ll work great. Ad bro maybe-later thinking. To the agencies’ great surprise, the chatbot ads end up not performing: [AdNews] ChatGPT Ads is drawing advertiser demand but falling short on click rates, targeting and platform reach, according to media agencies. … Yango general manager – product & operations, Robert Nagy, told AdNews that Chat GPT Ads runs more like an upper-funnel native ad than a high-intent search channel. That is, the ads work about as well as just chucking the ad on a random web page would. The buyers aren’t happy with the audiences they’re reaching. Sam Boardman of Vonnimedia said: when we followed up with those who enquired, all were ultimately disqualified as potential customers. They weren’t spam or low-quality leads in the traditional sense, they simply weren’t our target audience. The ad buyers don’t trust OpenAI’s metrics. Ervin Poernama of Sparro told AdNews: We’ve also seen examples where the click numbers being reported in-platform don’t always line up neatly with what advertisers can see in their own analytics. So the Internet Advertising Bureau Australia is calling for independent, audited metrics for ChatGPT and Gemini ads — after their Future of Measurement survey found those numbers were what ad buyers wanted most. [Mumbrella, archive] OpenAI swears the ads are going great. They’re claiming $1 billion of ad revenue! [AdNews] Well, $1 billion of “annualised revenue run rate.” Which is a made-up number that could be anything. It could be one month times twelve. One week times 52. One really good day stretched to a year. We don’t know, there’s no standard accounting definition of “annualised revenue run rate,” and OpenAI’s press release is not telling us. But OpenAI’s not standing still! Today, they’ve announced: [OpenAI] We’re testing Sponsored Agents, which let people start a conversation with a business-sponsored agent after clicking an ad in ChatGPT. Click on an ad and ChatGPT takes you to crime scene two. We’ve put a chatbot in your chatbot. The market for this is the ad buyers — or at least, OpenAI hopes it is. If these sponsored chatbots convert to actual sales to ChatGPT users, I’m sure the buyers will be delighted. But it’s a bit of a made-up “use case,” because OpenAI are getting desperate. Video — PodcastSource: Pivot to AI — Published — Category: Business