ChatGPT ads convert at 0.46% — 10x worse than Google Ads
ChatGPT ad targeting is garbage
Andy Brice, creator of PerfectTablePlan, ran a paid ChatGPT ad campaign for 24 days, spending £289.52 for 2,988 clicks. The results were dismal: a 0.46% click-to-install conversion rate, 69% bounce rate, and 7-second average time on page. Comparing with Google Ads (5.3% conversion) and free ChatGPT referrals (4.2%), he rules out bots and ad quality, concluding the traffic is poorly targeted. Dr. Augustine Fou's analytics confirm most clicks are human but low-value, raising questions about OpenAI's ad targeting quality.
Maybe they are so desperate to fill the yawning void in their finances that they are generating as many paid clicks as they can, without caring too much about the quality?
- Anon1096
HN isn't really a good place to have an informed discussion on ads efficacy unfortunately. In this thread we have many many people talking about how online ads in general are completely worthless. All of the top comments I see are harping on things like Google Ads having bad targeting for reasons like you are getting recommendations on products you just bought (having experience in the ads industry, yes this is actually a good signal that you might buy another one, even if you don't want to believe it).
Meanwhile, the article is actually discussing ChatGPT ads specifically compared to Google Ads, which they do have success with.
Anyway, my guess is that it's a combination of 1. OpenAI being new and not having the massive work needed yet to set up a fully successful ads network, but they're recruiting a lot of talent from the area + recsys so it's probably not too far off. And 2. we don't really know in general yet how best to do in context ad recommendations. I think this will also improve pretty rapidly with how much talent is working in the space. The best ads will probably look a lot more like Google Search per-request targeted ads rather than Instagram style per-user targeted ads, but I believe we'll see lots of gains fast.
- ryanmcbride
Everything with ads is garbage. All the time. It poses no benefit to humanity even a little bit.
- jandhdhshhh
Speaking as a consumer, I’ve always found ad targeting to be way off for Google, YouTube or even facebook. The few times I got ads I ChatGPT it was also off. It’s kinda ironic that with all that AI, they choose not to use any of that intelligence to target ads better. It makes you wonder what all those engineers are working on if not the main revenue driver.
- ok123456
This will end in another 'adpocalypse' episode. Something like: ChatGPT generates recipes from the Anarchist Cookbook and adds Home Depot ads at the end, or inserts Amazon affiliate links for the Turner Diaries.
- cmiles8
Yes, ChatGPT ads are a heaping pile of garbage. I feel sorry for anyone that’s wasted perfectly good marketing spend on such nonsense.
Outside a captive platform like Amazon, most ads are garbage and a total waste of money.
If I’m on Amazon trying to buy X and my search for X “promotes” an option to the top of the list yeah that probably influences me buying that.
But the broader online ad ecosystem is a total waste of money. Yes, I once searched a question about golf balls… no I don’t want to see “targeted ads” about golf balls following me all over the internet for the next three weeks.