ChatGPT Ads Statistics: CTR, Reach and Advertisers (2026)

What this graphic shows

OpenAI began testing ads in ChatGPT in the US in February 2026. By Aug 31, 2026, the company said ChatGPT Ads had reached a $1 billion annualized revenue run rate, less than 200 days after launch, and was used by tens of thousands of advertisers. This graphic collects some of the first independent, market-wide ChatGPT ads statistics: reach, click-through rate (CTR), where ads appear in a conversation, who buys them and how their ads differ from Google and Meta ads.

Figure 1, the Reach–Click Divide, plots each of the nine live ad markets by how many eligible users saw an ad and how often ads were clicked. The five English-speaking markets sit together at about 41% to 46% reach and 0.6% to 0.75% CTR. Brazil, Mexico, Japan and South Korea reach fewer users but get two to three times the clicks.

How many people see ChatGPT ads?

43.4% of ad-eligible US ChatGPT users saw at least one ad in September 2026, according to Similarweb's panel. The UK was slightly higher at 45.7%, followed by Australia (43.3%) and Canada (42.9%). Reach was lowest in Mexico (27.8%) and South Korea (32.9%). The report does not define "ad-eligible," so these shares should not be read as shares of all ChatGPT users.

What is the average CTR of ChatGPT ads?

All-time ChatGPT ad CTR ranged from 0.6% in New Zealand to 1.91% in Brazil between Mar 30 and Sep 16, 2026, with the US at 0.73%. Brazil's rate is about 2.6 times the US rate. Worldwide weekly CTR rose 112% from the week of Mar 30 to the week of Sep 14; Graphite describes this as CTR having doubled since launch.

For context, LocaliQ puts the 2026 average CTR for search ads across industries at 6.64%. The two numbers are not like-for-like: LocaliQ's comes from its customers' Google and Microsoft Ads campaigns, while ChatGPT's comes from a user panel. Still, a typical ChatGPT ad is clicked far less often than a typical search ad.

Where do ads appear in a ChatGPT conversation?

51% of ChatGPT ad impressions land in the first three turns of a conversation: 28% in the opening exchange and 23% in turns two and three. These early ads also perform better. Ads in turns one to four have a 48% higher CTR than ads later in the conversation. Ads are also more likely when a prompt names a brand: 61% of exchanges that carried an ad named a brand, compared with 36% of exchanges without one. That means a prompt about one brand can show an ad from a competitor.

Who advertises on ChatGPT?

B2B SaaS companies buy 19.9% of US ChatGPT ad impressions, about twice the share of the next category, retail and consumer brands (10.4%). Business and professional services (8.5%) and career and employment (5.5%) follow. Worldwide, the top advertisers are Monday.com and Jotform (2.23% of impressions each) and Resume.io (2.16%). Graphite notes that all of the top 10 sell something a user can buy online right away, such as a subscription, a template or a hotel room.

The advertiser base is still turning over. Only Jotform and Resume.io held a top 10 slot in all 20 weeks tracked. Others, such as Zapier, the Wall Street Journal and SAP, fall in Graphite's "gone" group: their weekly impressions rose, then fell away.

How do ChatGPT ads compare with Google and Meta ads?

98% of ChatGPT ad headlines are net new: across 10 US advertisers running on both ChatGPT and Google Search, only 1.9% of ChatGPT headlines exactly match a paid search headline. Advertisers also test heavily. The top 50 advertisers run a median of 191 distinct ChatGPT ads, compared with 10 for advertisers ranked 401 to 496.

By ad count, ChatGPT already rivals Meta for some brands. Five of the 10 advertisers active on all three platforms ran more ads on ChatGPT than on Meta, led by Jotform (933 vs. 31). Google Search still carries more ads than ChatGPT for nine of the 10, so the channel is an addition to search budgets, not yet a replacement.

Methodology & caveats

Most figures come from "The State of ChatGPT Ads," a 32-slide report published by Graphite and Similarweb on Sep 28, 2026. Similarweb's ChatGPT Ads panel supplies reach, impression share, CTR and turn position, current as of September 2026 unless a slide says otherwise. Similarweb discloses percentages and shares only, not panel sizes, so sample sizes behind each market's CTR are unknown. Graphite supplies the ad, headline and landing page analysis: 95k+ US ChatGPT ads from 500+ advertisers (Apr 1–Aug 16, 2026) and 8k+ landing pages, classified with 84.7% accuracy against blind human labels. The report's summary cites 98,000+ ads; its methodology slide says 95k+. We used each value exactly as printed on the slide named in each card's note and did not read any values off unlabeled bars.

Several cards compare different windows. Reach is for September 2026; all-time CTR runs Mar 30 to Sep 16, 2026; the category shares run Mar 30 to Aug 4, 2026; and the top-advertiser chart's footnote names a different measure than the chart shows. The 112% CTR rise is the deck's own figure; its first and last bars imply a larger rise, so it likely comes from a trend line, and the method is not published. Markets that launched later have shorter histories, which can lift their CTR. Graphite's summary says ads launched in March 2026, while OpenAI's US pilot began in February. The $1 billion run rate is OpenAI's own figure: current monthly ad revenue times 12, not revenue already earned. It is cited via Channel Insider because openai.com could not be fetched. The 51%, 60%, 67.9%, 2.6× and 19× figures are PPC.co sums or ratios of published values.