OpenAI is testing a dashboard that tells a business how often it appears in ChatGPT’s answers and how many clicks those appearances send to its website. For auction houses, promoters and specialist firms who have never been able to see this, it changes what a test on ChatGPT can actually prove.
What’s happened
OpenAI is trialling an analytics dashboard that counts how often a business turns up in ChatGPT’s answers and how many clicks those appearances send to its site. It sits inside a wider “Business Hub” that has not launched yet, and it came to light when Juozas Kaziukėnas of Marketplace Pulse posted a screenshot of a “Claim your business in ChatGPT” banner on LinkedIn on 6 November, as reported by Digiday. Once a business is claimed, which needs proof that you are entitled to represent it, the owner can see daily impressions and clicks on a chart, keep product and company details current, and switch on a “business agent” that answers customer questions from information the business supplies. It does not show the prompts people typed, any user data or how you rank against competitors, and OpenAI declined to comment on the story.
Why it matters to auction houses, promoters and specialist firms
Until now, if you wanted to know whether ChatGPT recommends your saleroom for a probate valuation, your fight night for a Saturday out, or your firm for a care-home negligence claim, you had two options: ask it yourself a few times and hope, or pay a third-party tool to fire thousands of prompts at the model and infer the answer. OpenAI counting it for you, from its own data, is a different proposition. It is the first time a smaller advertiser will be able to see an AI-answer baseline without buying software to do it.
It also tells you where this is going. Digiday notes that ads in ChatGPT have been in testing in the US since February, that OpenAI claimed a $1bn annualised run rate by September, and that in late October it said more than 100,000 advertisers had run campaigns across 89 countries. Once a business can see a daily mentions number, the obvious way to make that number go up is the sponsored placement OpenAI sells next to the answer. Google did exactly this with Business Profile and Search Console: give people the free organic view, then sell them the paid one. We would expect the same here.
For anyone buying media late and on a tight budget, two things follow. First, the dashboard gives you a free baseline before you spend a penny on paid, and a way to judge paid against organic afterwards. Second, it is a beta, the ads are US-only so far and there is no UK rollout date, so this is not something to rebuild a Q1 plan around. This is the part we handle for clients: we already run ChatGPT Ads trials and AI-search visibility checks, so when the listing opens in the UK we claim it, write the business details the model draws on, run a modest paid test alongside and read the dashboard with the paid results, so you know whether the mentions moved because of the money or in spite of it.
What we’d do
Claim the listing the day it is available here. It costs nothing, and the business details you supply are what ChatGPT’s agent will repeat to your customers. For a saleroom that means sale dates, departments and valuation days; for a promoter, venues, dates and how to buy tickets; for a claims firm, the services you actually take on. We would set this up for you and keep it current alongside your other listings.
Record a baseline before any paid test. Four weeks of daily impressions and clicks, untouched, then a small sponsored trial and a straight comparison. We would run the trial, keep the spend proportionate and report it next to your other digital activity so it is judged on the same terms.
Keep third-party monitoring for the gaps, not the headline. OpenAI’s dashboard will not show prompts or competitors, which is exactly what the specialist tools sell. We would tell you which of those gaps matters for your sector and which you can live without, rather than paying for both on principle.
How VCM can help
We turn new platforms like this into a small, measured test rather than a leap of faith, buying only what the baseline tells us is worth buying. Read more about how we plan and buy digital advertising, or get in touch on 0333 577 1848 or at James@vcmweb.co.uk. Send us your current digital plan and we will tell you where a ChatGPT test fits and what it should cost, no obligation.
