<\/p>
Not a week goes by without me reading about ChatGPT ads in my LinkedIn feed. I\u2019m guilty of it, too.\u00a0<\/p>
There\u2019s so much happening so quickly. The product feed integrations, the Ads Manager beta, and the inevitable comparisons to Google\u2019s dominance in search advertising.\u00a0<\/p>
While it\u2019s a compelling narrative for agencies looking to drive new business, it\u2019s also short-sighted. The real shift isn\u2019t advertising on LLMs like ChatGPT. It\u2019s happening in checkout flows, voice assistants, and agentic commerce infrastructure, where the transaction itself becomes the ad unit.\u00a0<\/p>
The brands quietly winning this next cycle are refining their product data to ensure they factor into AI-powered purchase decisions.<\/p>
Referral traffic from ChatGPT to the rest of the web grew 206% in 2025, according to Semrush\u2019s analysis of 17 months of U.S. clickstream data. That\u2019s the headline most people stopped at.<\/p>
What they didn\u2019t read was the footnote: that growth is driven by deeper engagement from existing users, not by audience expansion. ChatGPT\u2019s U.S. user base has been essentially flat since September 2025. The people who use it are using it more. But the addressable audience isn\u2019t growing.<\/p>
This obviously matters if you\u2019re trying to build an advertising business. Ad revenue scales with reach, and reach requires a growing audience. Without new users coming in, you\u2019re running the standard sequence (build an audience and then monetize at scale) backward.\u00a0<\/p>
OpenAI\u2019s leaked financials show another structural challenge: $13 billion in revenue against $34 billion in total costs and expenses in 2025, translating to an operating loss of nearly $21 billion.\u00a0<\/p>
On the bright side, OpenAI spent $2.37 to generate every $1 in revenue in 2024. By 2025, that ratio had improved to $1.60 per dollar. Progress, but not nearly enough, or fast enough. It\u2019s no surprise OpenAI postponed its IPO until next year.<\/p>
To put those numbers in perspective, Amazon lost $30 million the year it went public. Google and Meta were already profitable before their IPOs. OpenAI isn\u2019t playing in the same league.\u00a0<\/p>
The scale of the bet is unlike anything the tech industry has attempted before. How long before investors pull back? Your guess is as good as mine.<\/p>
See exactly how your competitors win<\/span>. <\/p> Uncover the keywords, ads, landing pages, and strategies driving your competitors\u2019 paid search success\u2014and find your next opportunity to outperform them. <\/p> <\/p><\/div> Analyze your competitors<\/span> <\/p> <\/p><\/div> Here\u2019s what the ChatGPT Ads narrative misses: Ads are a defensive move, not a strategic vision. Sam Altman has always been against them.\u00a0<\/p> But OpenAI had to realize that to fund its dollar-hungry master plan, it needed something to help balance the books, at least partially. <\/p> So what\u2019s that master plan? Look elsewhere for a clearer view.<\/p> At Google I\/O 2026, Google introduced Universal Cart, building on Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), infrastructure that lets AI agents complete purchases on your behalf. This isn\u2019t a shopping tab redesign. It\u2019s a transaction layer between intent and purchase, with Gemini deciding what gets recommended and bought. If you\u2019re skeptical, remember you can already onboard UCP. This is happening today, not in some distant future.<\/p> It\u2019s the same story at Amazon. The company combined Rufus, its expert shopping assistant used by more than 300 million customers in 2025, and Alexa+, its personalized AI assistant available across hundreds of millions of devices, into a unified experience called Alexa for Shopping.\u00a0<\/p> The result is a surface that enables customers to automate deal-finding and routine purchases based on personalized insights. Like Gemini, Alexa can complete the transaction, dramatically shortening the distance from ad impression to purchase.<\/p> It\u2019s the same story at OpenAI. The company already has integrated product feeds in Ads Manager. You\u2019d think it\u2019s a basic feature because Google, Meta, and Amazon all have it. But that soon in a brand-new advertising platform?\u00a0<\/p> OpenAI launching product feed ads in 2026 isn\u2019t an advertising innovation. It\u2019s a platform reaching for familiar revenue streams while the more interesting architecture takes shape beneath the surface.<\/p> Dig deeper: Why product feeds need an organic strategy for AI search<\/em><\/strong><\/p> <\/p> Get the newsletter search marketers rely on.<\/p> <\/p><\/div> <\/p><\/div> <\/div> <\/p> Most of the industry is asking the wrong question. The question isn\u2019t, \u201cShould I test ChatGPT Ads?\u201d (Obviously, you should.) Or even, \u201cShould I diversify beyond Google?\u201d (Again, obviously you should.)<\/p> The right question is: \u201cIs my product data ready for agentic commerce?\u201d<\/p> Because when an AI agent \u2014 whether it\u2019s Alexa, Google\u2019s shopping agent, or whatever OpenAI builds next \u2014 makes a purchase recommendation on behalf of a user, it won\u2019t pull from your campaign creatives. It\u2019ll pull from your product feed. The cleanliness and completeness of that data will determine whether you exist in the recommendation.<\/p> This is the same transition we\u2019ve lived through before, just at a different layer of the stack. <\/p> When Google moved from keywords to audiences to intent signals, the advertisers who won were the ones with cleaner conversion tracking and stronger first-party data foundations. When Meta moved to Advantage+ and black-box optimization, the winners built better creative systems.<\/p> It\u2019s the same pattern here: Data is king. Agentic commerce applies the same dynamic to the transaction layer.<\/p> I know. The checklist isn\u2019t glamorous.\u00a0<\/p> Bottom line: Treat your product data the way you should\u2019ve been treating your conversion tracking for the last decade. It\u2019s a competitive advantage, not a maintenance task.<\/p> Dig deeper: Winning the AI decision layer: From AI discovery to agentic commerce<\/em><\/strong><\/p> ChatGPT Ads will generate some revenue. It\u2019ll attract some advertisers, produce some case studies, and exist as a line item in some media plans. That\u2019s fine.<\/p> But it won\u2019t be the next Google Ads. It won\u2019t scale into a duopoly-level advertising machine. The audience ceiling is real, the cost structure is brutal, and the competitive moat \u2014 the thing that made Google\u2019s search ads irreplaceable for 20 years \u2014 simply isn\u2019t there.<\/p> The tidal wave isn\u2019t in the ad console. It\u2019s in the infrastructure being built around task completion, automated purchasing, and agent-to-agent commerce. Google and Amazon are already constructing it. The brands that show up there won\u2019t do it through better bidding strategies. They\u2019ll do it through better data. Start there.<\/p> <\/div> Contributing authors are invited to create content for Search Engine Land and are chosen for their expertise and contribution to the search community. Our contributors work under the oversight of the editorial staff and contributions are checked for quality and relevance to our readers. Search Engine Land is owned by Semrush. Contributor was not asked to make any direct or indirect mentions of Semrush. The opinions they express are their own.<\/em> <\/p> Opinion#agentic #commerce #matter #ChatGPT #ads1784043658<\/p> ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Not a week goes by without me reading about ChatGPT ads in my LinkedIn feed. I\u2019m guilty of it, too.\u00a0 There\u2019s so much happening so quickly. The product feed integrations, the Ads Manager beta, and the inevitable comparisons to Google\u2019s dominance in search advertising.\u00a0 While it\u2019s a compelling narrative for agencies looking to drive new […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11609,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[152,1661,94,1636,2615,155],"class_list":["post-11608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-careers","tag-ads","tag-agentic","tag-chatgpt","tag-commerce","tag-matter","tag-opinion"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11608\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}OpenAI\u2019s master plan is agentic<\/h2>
The real battle isn\u2019t in the ad console<\/h2>