Study: a ChatGPT ad visit earns $0.89, against $2.45 from Google search.
Online shops earned $0.89 per US visit from a ChatGPT ad and $2.45 per visit from a Google search ad, a new working paper finds. On that basis the authors value a ChatGPT ad click at about $0.26.
The paper, "Can Advertising Fund Free AI? Evidence from ChatGPT's International Advertising Rollout", is by Maximilian Kaiser of WU Vienna and Christian Schulze of the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management. It is dated October 2026 and is under review. Both PPC Land and Search Engine Journal, which read it on 2 November, report the same core figures. The data came free from Grips Intelligence, an e-commerce data company where Kaiser previously worked and is a scientific adviser; the paper says Grips had no role in the research. It covers 60 weeks to 22 August 2026, using the EU, where ads had not yet launched, as a comparison group.
The paid sample covers 102 sites with full sales tracking. In their US traffic, ChatGPT ad visits converted at 0.37%, against 1.17% for paid search. Of 87 advertisers that bought both, 84 earned less per ChatGPT visit, and 73 recorded no sales at all from their ChatGPT ads. One advertiser accounted for 66% of all ChatGPT ad purchases. The largest publicly known account paid $1.72 a click, more than six times the authors' parity price. The authors estimate organic referrals from ChatGPT fell by 6% to 8% after ads arrived, though the unadjusted estimate of 5.9% was not statistically clear.
The caveats matter. The data stops before ChatGPT ads reached most markets. Advertisers opted in, so the gap shows how buyers fared, not that the ads caused it. The paper tracks only the last click, not later purchases, and OpenAI says it has no performance benchmarks yet.
ChatGPT ads now run in many more countries, so Gulf advertisers testing them can work out their own break-even bid: take the ratio of revenue per ChatGPT ad visit to revenue per search visit and apply it to their search cost per click. That assumes equal margins and ignores later purchases.
Why it matters
It is independent sales data on ChatGPT ads, and it suggests clicks are overpriced for now. Advertisers should set bids from their own revenue per visit.
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