New channels. Different opportunities. One bigger picture.
ChatGPT Advertising: Where OpenAI Ads Fit Into Your Paid Media Strategy
Every PPC team is fielding the same question right now: should we be running ChatGPT advertising?
It’s a reasonable question. ChatGPT has a huge and growing audience. OpenAI advertising is becoming a real channel for marketers, and nobody wants to ignore a platform that could eventually become an important part of how people discover businesses.
But there’s a big difference between testing ChatGPT advertising and taking money away from a campaign that is already producing results to pay for that test.
The answer doesn’t have to be one or the other. Paid search and ChatGPT advertising reach people at different points in the decision-making process, and each can have a different job within your paid media strategy.
The key is figuring out what that job should be before you start moving money around.
What Paid Search Still Does Very Well
Before looking at what OpenAI ads can add, it’s worth remembering why paid search continues to take up a significant share of many advertising budgets.
Google Ads gives marketers something that takes years to build: performance data.
You can see which search terms are driving clicks, which ones are producing leads or sales, what those conversions are costing and which parts of the account aren't pulling their weight. You can adjust bids, refine keywords, add negative keywords and make changes based on actual campaign performance.
That history matters.
If you've been running a paid search campaign for years, you have a pretty good idea of what a click is worth and what you're likely to get back from your investment.
That doesn't mean paid search will always be the right answer. It means you shouldn't take a campaign that's working and cut its budget simply because a new advertising channel has appeared.
A new channel needs to earn its share of the budget.
What ChatGPT Advertising Can Add to the Mix
ChatGPT advertising brings something different to the table.
People don't necessarily use ChatGPT the way they use a search engine. Instead of typing a few keywords and scanning a page of results, they can describe a problem, ask questions, compare options and refine what they're looking for through a conversation.
That creates opportunities for advertisers to reach people while they're still working through a decision.
Depending on the campaign and the business, that could mean:
Introducing your brand to someone who hasn't searched for it by name
Reaching potential customers while they're researching a product or service
Being part of a comparison between different options
Supporting demand generation before someone is ready to make a purchase
Reaching people in a context that doesn't necessarily look like a traditional search query
That's different from bidding on a keyword from someone who has already decided what they want.
And that's exactly why it can make sense to look at ChatGPT advertising as an addition to your media mix rather than a replacement for paid search.
Don't Make Channels Compete on the Same Scoreboard
Here's where advertisers can get into trouble.
If you launch a ChatGPT campaign and immediately expect it to deliver the same cost per lead as a mature Google Ads campaign, you're setting up a comparison that may not tell you much.
Different channels can play different roles.
If the goal is direct lead generation, you may care primarily about cost per qualified lead and eventual revenue. If the goal is reaching potential customers earlier in the buying process, you may need to look at a wider range of signals, including assisted conversions, branded search activity or what happens further down the sales funnel.
The important thing is to decide what success looks like before the campaign starts.
Otherwise, it's very easy to look at the numbers a few weeks later, pick the metric that makes the campaign look good, or bad, and declare a winner.
That's not really a strategy. It's just looking at a dashboard and hoping it tells you what to do.
Where Should the Budget Come From?
If you're considering testing ChatGPT advertising, this may be the most important question to ask.
It probably shouldn't come from the campaign that's consistently delivering your best customers.
Instead, look at the entire account.
Is there a campaign that has become less efficient? Are there keywords that are consuming budget without producing much? Is there a segment that has never performed particularly well? Is there an opportunity to test a new channel with a relatively small portion of the existing budget?
The answer will be different for every business.
The point is that adding a new channel shouldn't automatically mean taking money away from a proven one.
A good paid media strategy leaves room for testing while protecting the campaigns that are already doing their job.
Start With a Test, Not a Major Budget Shift
There is also no reason to make ChatGPT advertising an all-or-nothing decision. Start with a defined test.
Decide:
What are you trying to accomplish? Awareness, consideration, leads, sales or something else?
Who are you trying to reach? Your existing audience, new prospects or people researching a particular problem?
How much are you prepared to spend to learn something useful?
How long will you run the test?
Which metrics will determine whether you continue, change or stop?
And don't forget about what's happening outside the paid campaign.
If people are already finding your business through AI-generated answers and other organic search activity, that is part of the picture too. Paid advertising shouldn't be considered in isolation from your SEO, content and overall AI search visibility.
The more ways people discover your business, the more important it becomes to understand how those channels work together.
ChatGPT Advertising is Another Tool in the Toolbox
There will always be a new advertising platform.
The temptation is to assume that because a channel is new, it deserves a new budget - or that because something is changing, everything that came before it is suddenly obsolete.
That's rarely how good marketing works.
Paid search still has an important role because it captures existing demand and gives advertisers a wealth of performance data. ChatGPT advertising offers another way to reach people as they research, explore and make decisions.
For some businesses, that may justify a test. For others, the budget may be better spent elsewhere.
The answer comes down to the audience, the objective, the economics and the data. Not simply the fact that everyone is talking about a new platform.
Where RSO Comes In
At RSO Consulting, we've spent years helping businesses make those kinds of decisions across paid search, SEO, analytics and digital marketing.
The technology changes. The platforms change. The strategy still starts with the same questions: Who are you trying to reach? What are you trying to accomplish? What is working now? And where can your marketing budget produce the greatest opportunity?
If you're considering ChatGPT advertising and aren't sure how it fits into your existing media mix, let's talk through what a sensible test could look like before you start moving the budget around.
