ChatGPT ad targeting is garbage
A software developer reports poor conversion rates and ineffective targeting when using ChatGPT's advertising platform for their niche business. Despite using analytics tools to rule out bot traffic, the author concludes that the platform's audience targeting is currently insufficient for their needs.
Why it matters
As AI companies expand into advertising, businesses are testing the efficacy of these new platforms compared to established giants like Google.
I have been experimenting with buying ChatGPT ads for my event seating assignment software . Here are the overall results from 05-Aug-2026 to 28-Aug-2026:
ChatGPT recommends bidding somewhere around by £2 per click, but I bid between £0.15 and £0.07 and was still able to get traffic. However 0.46% is a shockingly low conversion rate. Given what I know about the lifetime customer value and install to purchase rates for PerfectTablePlan, I’m not close to making any money on these ads.
Comparing engagement with other sources in the same period:
So the problem is clearly the ChatGPT ad traffic, rather than my website/product. It seems one of several things might be happening:
The clicks reported by OpenAI are close to what Google Analytics reports, so we can rule 1 out.
My context hint seems uncontroversial, so that rules out 2.
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