What B2B Campaign Data Teaches Us About ChatGPT Ads

Most discussions about AI in business-to-business (B2B) marketing focus on how generative AI can write text or create images. But a much bigger change is happening in how people find information and how brands can advertise in search tools that let people have conversations.

As search engine results pages (SERPs) become more conversational and tailored to each person, advertising platforms are changing too. To find out if conversational ads are as useful as people claim, we recently launched and studied early ChatGPT ad campaigns in several different B2B industries. These included a major applicant tracking software (ATS) and recruitment platform, as well as a specialised provider of electronic health record (EHR) solutions for behavioural health.

The early results are more mixed than the excitement around these ads might suggest. ChatGPT ads still offer a cost advantage for brands that join early, but they need a very different approach from other ads. They are not yet ready to work as a standalone tool for getting people to convert, such as signing up or becoming customers.

The Cost Advantage: Competitive CPMs and CPCs

For B2B marketers who are used to paying high prices on established platforms like LinkedIn, the starting costs of ChatGPT ads are very attractive.

Our tests across several B2B accounts showed very competitive costs:

• CPC: around $3 per click. This is similar to the cost of social media campaigns on Meta and much cheaper than premium LinkedIn campaigns aimed at finding potential customers.

• CPM: about $13 per 1,000 ad views during our first tests.

• CTR: around 1.5%. This is two to three times the rate we usually see in highly targeted LinkedIn campaigns.

These early figures suggest that conversational search is still a space with relatively little competition, where brands can reach people without spending too much.

The Attention Metric: Exceptional Website Engagement

The low costs were a welcome surprise, but the most impressive finding in our campaign data was how people behaved after reaching a website.

Conversational ads reach people while they are researching a topic in detail. People who visited websites through ChatGPT ads spent 25–35% more time on those sites than people who came from traditional paid search ads. This suggests that people using conversational AI may be more willing to read detailed content, such as expert articles, case studies and other in-depth material.

Some people have suggested that B2B audiences may not use ChatGPT's free or 'Go' plans. But our data suggests that this is not always true. Our audiences are responding to our ads and showing signs that they are spending more time considering the information.

The Strategic Shift: Questions vs. Scenarios

ChatGPT has changed a lot and now supports conversion optimisation, which helps advertisers improve results such as sign-ups. However, it still lacks some of the performance data available on traditional search advertising platforms. The biggest gap is that it does not provide a report showing the prompts or search terms people used. This means we cannot tell whether our prompts are reaching people who are ready to buy.

To address this problem, we ran organised tests comparing different prompt strategies side by side. We wanted to see which ways of starting a conversation led to more ad interactions and better website engagement. We compared question-based prompts, such as "What is the best x…?", with scenario-based prompts, such as "I'm looking to do x…".

The results were clear. Ads using question-based prompts had more than four times the click-through rate (CTR) and three times the website engagement of ads using scenario-based prompts.

This is not very surprising because people asking questions are often spending time looking for answers. However, it does raise an important question about where ChatGPT ads fit into the process of turning interested people into customers.

The Verdict for B2B Marketers

ChatGPT ads are a powerful, cost-effective new way to build early awareness, share expert knowledge and help people discover a brand when they have a clear interest in a topic. But even though conversion optimisation is now available, these ads should not be treated as a direct way to generate leads, such as potential customers who submit their contact details.

The most effective strategy today has three parts:

• Join the channel early to benefit from the advantage of being among the first advertisers while that opportunity still exists.

• Use highly specific prompts written as questions.

• Track what people do after clicking the ads by using the OpenAI Pixel and detailed UTM parameters, which help identify where website visits come from.

If B2B brands use these conversational ads as a way to help people discover their products and engage with their content, they can reach valuable audiences while those people are still considering their options, before competing brands even come to mind.