U.S. traffic from ChatGPT ads brought in $0.89 in revenue per visit, compared to $2.45 for a paid Google search ad visit, according to Search Engine Journal and a working paper by Maximilian Kaiser and Christian Schulze. The research tracks site traffic and sales following OpenAI’s country-by-country ad launch.
Key takeaways
- A visit from a ChatGPT ad brought in $0.89 in U.S. traffic, while a paid Google search ad brought in $2.45.
- ChatGPT ad visits converted at 0.37 percent compared to 1.17 percent for paid search.
- Researchers estimate the parity price for a ChatGPT click at about $0.26 based on paid search rates.
- Organic ChatGPT referrals over the first 13 weeks post-launch showed a moderate decrease.
How do ChatGPT ads compare to search ads?
Search Engine Journal reports that the working paper, dated October 2026, looked at data from 102 advertiser sites with full sales tracking. ChatGPT ad visits converted at 0.37 percent in U.S. traffic. Meanwhile, paid search converted at 1.17 percent. When authors Maximilian Kaiser and Christian Schulze compared both channels within the same websites, the conversion and revenue gaps remained even after controlling for device type and week.
Out of 87 advertisers who bought both ad types, 84 had lower earnings per ChatGPT ad visit than with paid search. A total of 73 generated zero sales from their ChatGPT ads across 18,726 visits, while 14 generated all 570 purchases. One single advertiser accounted for 66 percent of all purchases made via paid ChatGPT across the 102 sites.
Understanding ad revenue per visit and parity price
To calculate a fair cost per click, the authors established a parity price using paid search as a benchmark. For accounts with at least 80 percent of search traffic coming from the United States, the median paid search click cost was $0.72. Scaled to reflect the difference in revenue per visit, the authors estimated a parity price of approximately $0.26 per ChatGPT click. Opascope reported that the largest publicly known account paid $1.72 per click, which is more than six times the parity price.
Kaiser and Schulze also measured unpaid visits from ChatGPT responses across 1,898 sites to see if ads diminished product utility. Organic ChatGPT referrals over the first 13 weeks post-launch dropped by an estimated 5.9 percent relative to organic search referrals, shifting to an estimated 6 to 8 percent decrease when adjusting for faster regional adoption in North America compared to Europe.
What it means for advertisers
Marketers can figure out their own parity price by dividing the revenue per visit from ChatGPT ads by the revenue per visit from paid search, then multiplying by their search cost per click. While OpenAI notes that ChatGPT ads do not yet have performance benchmarks across industries, advertisers must watch out for ad review crawler visits using tracking parameters that third-party analytics tools might flag as paid traffic.
Frequently asked questions
A visit from a ChatGPT ad brought in $0.89 in revenue for U.S. traffic, according to a working paper by Maximilian Kaiser and Christian Schulze cited by Search Engine Journal.
Paid Google search ads brought in $2.45 per visit in U.S. traffic, out-earning the $0.89 generated by ChatGPT ads.
ChatGPT ad visits converted at 0.37 percent in U.S. traffic, while paid search ads converted at 1.17 percent.
The authors estimated the parity price for a ChatGPT click to be approximately $0.26, scaled from a median paid search click cost of $0.72.
Organic ChatGPT referrals over the first 13 weeks post-launch experienced a moderate decrease of approximately 6 to 8 percent relative to organic search referrals.
Based on reporting by Search Engine Journal. Read the original article
