ChatGPT began serving sponsored results within its AI responses in 2025. With over 900 million weekly active users, the platform now represents a meaningful advertising channel for brands whose customers use AI for purchase research — particularly in financial services, travel, software and professional services. It’s one of the clearest signals that AI-powered search advertising is emerging as its own channel in UK media planning for 2026.
Artificial intelligence has rapidly become a mainstream consumer behaviour, with ChatGPT alone reaching over 900 million weekly active users globally — representing roughly 10% of the world’s population. More than 2 billion prompts are processed every day as consumers increasingly turn to AI platforms to research products, compare options, seek recommendations, and inform purchase decisions.
Programmatic advertising remains essential for driving brand awareness, reach, and consideration — but consumers are increasingly turning to ChatGPT to inform those purchase decisions. Brands will need strategies that connect programmatic demand generation with AI-driven discovery and evaluation.
Why Advertise in AI Conversations?
Context matters. Creative should align closely with the conversation context, delivering clear, value-driven messaging that directly addresses the user’s intent and needs. ChatGPT ads appear as a sponsored placement below the AI response, clearly labelled, with the following format:
- 256 × 256 image
- 30-character headline
- 60-character description
- Sponsored placement below the AI response
- Static UTM support for measurement
- Clearly labelled as Sponsored
This sits alongside the programmatic buying you’re likely already running — see how programmatic, native and display advertising fit together for the full picture.
Pricing & Buying Model
ChatGPT ads can be purchased on either a CPC (Cost Per Click) or CPM (Cost Per Mille) basis. On CPC, advertisers set a maximum bid with recommended starting bids of £2–£4 per click. On CPM, pricing is determined through a contextual auction, where costs vary based on the number of advertisers competing for a given prompt or topic.
More targeted and contextually relevant campaigns often face less competition, which can result in more efficient CPMs and stronger overall performance.
VCM can build a tailored ChatGPT advertising strategy to help your brand reach consumers at the exact moment they are researching, comparing and deciding. Get in touch to find out more.