Just as marketers were beginning to sketch out playbooks for turning chatbots into brand building machines, OpenAI made it clear the honeymoon was over. The company confirmed that advertising will start rolling out in ChatGPT in the U.S. over the coming weeks.
That doesn’t mean marketers need to toss out everything they’ve learned about showing up organically in conversations. Those early experiments are likely to become the scaffolding for what comes next. The shift is more practical than existential: the next phase arrives with rate cards and media plans attached.
Chris Pearce, managing director of search and social agency Greenpark, said:
“It’s a mindset issue for me. ChatGPT Ads will reward brands that already have strong AI trust, category authority, and AI-ready narratives. Just like SEO and PPC work well together when considered holistically, the duality of organic LLM visibility and paid ads will have to be planned and executed as one harmonious approach. One must enhance the other or your brand simply won’t exist as far as ChatGPT is concerned.”
Which is why so much of the current scramble inside agencies is about preparing marketers for questions they have never had to consider. Once ads arrive in ChatGPT, will brands be bidding to participate in AI conversions, competing for their own agents to answer questions and jockeying to fulfill services directly inside the interface. That is a very different game for banners, search ads and social posts, and it will require a new set of instincts to match.
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