ChatGPT's paid traffic is worth far less than Google's
Paid ChatGPT traffic earns advertisers far less than paid Google Search, according to a working paper from researchers at the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management and the Vienna University of Economics and Business. Paid ChatGPT visits brought in an average of 89 cents per session against $2.45 from Google Search, with conversion rates of 0.37% and 1.17% respectively.
The study covered 1,898 ecommerce sites with $16 billion in annual sales and nearly 10 billion visits over 60 weeks to August 2026. Among the 102 advertisers examined, 82% recorded no purchases at all from their ChatGPT ads. The researchers put Google's revenue per advertising dollar at more than six times ChatGPT's at publicly reported prices, and estimated a ChatGPT click would need to cost about 26 cents to match paid search returns. The largest publicly known account in the data paid $1.72 per click.
The gap runs inside ChatGPT too. Unpaid ChatGPT referrals converted at 2.21% before the advertising rollout, and paid ChatGPT visitors performed worse than those arriving from Google ads, Google search, direct traffic and ChatGPT's own unpaid recommendations. Adobe Analytics found the opposite pattern for AI referrals generally, with AI-referred traffic to US retail sites generating 83% more revenue per visit than non-AI traffic in September.
For brands weighing where to spend, the split matters more than the channel label: paid placements inside AI assistants are not behaving like organic AI citations, and the paper's authors treat the findings as early evidence while the work remains under review. OpenAI says ChatGPT Ads reached a $1 billion annualised revenue run rate within 200 days of launch, a figure it has not backed with evidence and which cannot be checked against public filings.
Reported by MarTech ↗
Topics: ChatGPT, AI advertising, Measurement