ChatGPT ads: can any business pay for them?

ChatGPT ads. A property rental owner I was giving an AI workshop to the other week said her search rankings had stopped pulling the bookings they used to because people were asking ChatGPT instead of the usual 'search and click'.

Then she asked: 'Can I pay to show up there?'

Actually, she can. OpenAI just cut the minimum spend on ChatGPT ads from around $250,000 to nothing for some businesses and travel is one of the categories allowed to buy in.

But most businesses aren't.

OpenAI's ad policies page lists the early eligible ad categories as: -household and consumer goods -local services -travel and entertainment -digital products and education

(They note that the list of eligible categories may expand over time).

If you sell services to other businesses, this option doesn't exist for you yet.

OpenAI states its ad policies are designed so that ads do not influence ChatGPT's answers. So even if you pay, it buys adjacency, not the answer itself.

The real game is making sure AI tools like ChatGPT know about your business, who you serve, where and why, so it can legitimately answer a users questions with your business name.

To do that, AI has to trust that you really are a good answer to the question.

What would ChatGPT and its ilk need to find about your business before it named you, unprompted? What to find out how? Visit Ghostart and find out.

++ I'm Nigel, I help SMEs optimise their businesses in the age of AI. I created Ghostart, an AI Visibility/GEO platform and The Foundry, helping SMEs implement AI to make their business easier to run.