Buying a ChatGPT ad won't make ChatGPT recommend you

• ChatGPT ads are now live in India, and Bajaj Life Insurance just became one of the first Indian insurance and finance brands to buy in. The catch: the ad sits under the answer, not in it. In a US study of 50,006 buying-intent prompts, the advertiser was cited in the answer's own sources just 3.63% of the time.
• Being inside the answer is a different job. It's called GEO, generative engine optimisation: getting AI tools to name your brand when people ask about your category.

• WHAT JUST LAUNCHED IN INDIA
• On 27 August OpenAI brought ads to ChatGPT's Free and Go users in India. WPP and Omnicom are the launch agency partners, and more than 50 brands were reportedly set to launch campaigns that week. Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Education users see no ads. A self-serve ChatGPT Ads Manager for small businesses, startups and regional brands was set to open on 4 September.

On 28 September afaqs reported that Bajaj Life is one of the first BFSI brands (banking, financial services and insurance) in India to advertise on the platform. Their CMO, Chandramohan Mehra, said customers are "increasingly leaning towards AI-centred research, discovery and planning" for money and protection decisions.

He's right about the behaviour. Now look at what the ad actually buys. OpenAI says ads are clearly labelled, shown separately from ChatGPT's normal answers, and don't influence those answers. So the ad and the answer are two separate things.

• WHAT THE AD GETS YOU: THE NUMBERS
• SE Ranking ran 50,006 commercial (buying-intent) prompts across 20 niches in the US. Ads showed up on 25.94% of them. Each ad appeared below the generated answer: one sponsored offer, no competing ad next to it.

The advertiser was cited in that answer's sources in 3.63% of placements. Even a simple mention of the advertiser's brand showed up in only 4.44% of answers. So most of the time you're paying to sit under an answer that doesn't mention you. You're the footnote.

It gets worse. 14.35% of the ads had minimal connection to the prompt they appeared on. And SE Ranking's own test campaign pulled 97,000+ impressions and 1,263 clicks, a 1.30% CTR (click-through rate: clicks divided by impressions), then, in their words, "very few sign-ups". Clicks are not revenue.

• WHO BUYS THE SLOT, AND WHO DOESN'T
• OtterlyAI tracked shopping questions across 16 US industries for two weeks in July. Their ad count came out higher: an ad on 76.4% of answers, and 85.9% in finance and insurance. Different prompt sets give different numbers. The direction is the same: ads are everywhere.

The more useful finding: in 12 of 14 industries, the market leader ran zero ChatGPT ads. The heaviest buyers were affiliate and comparison sites, the middlemen that earn a commission for sending you to a brand. One of them, BestMoney, showed up in 15 of 16 industries.

Our read: the middlemen rent the slot, and the category leaders are betting they don't need it.

• THE PUNKD TAKE
• ChatGPT ads are not dumb. Buying them instead of earning the answer is.

An ad is rent. Being the answer is ownership. If your only presence in AI search is a sponsored box under someone else's recommendation, you've bought visibility without trust.

Indian brands have one more thing to watch. ASCI, India's advertising self-regulator, released rules on 29 September, taking effect three months later, saying paid or sponsored AI product suggestions must be labelled "Sponsored by [Brand]". Our bet: people learn to skip that label fast, and keep trusting the answer above it.

We're judged on revenue, so yes, we'd test it. Small budget, with a holdout (a slice of your audience that sees no ads, so you can measure what the ads really added). What we won't do is let anyone sell a new ad slot as a GEO strategy. That's bullshit.

• STEAL THIS
• 1. Write down the 20 questions your buyers ask before they buy ("best term insurance for a 30-year-old", "brand X vs brand Y"). Run them in ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity. Screenshot who gets named. That's your real share of the shelf.
• 2. Where you're already named, don't pay to sit under your own answer. Point test budget at the prompts where you're missing.
• 3. Where you're missing, fix what AI answers are built from: your comparison pages, your reviews, third-party "best of" lists and the forum threads where your category gets argued about.
• 4. Run ChatGPT ads like any new channel: small budget, a holdout, judged on extra revenue. Not impressions. Not CTR.
• 5. Write each ad for the question it appears under, not for your brand deck. In the SE Ranking study, 14.35% of ads barely matched their prompt.

• THE SHORT VERSION
• ChatGPT ads arrived in India on 27 August, with more than 50 brands reportedly lined up in the first week.
• The ad sits below the answer: advertisers were cited in the answer's sources only 3.63% of the time in a US study.
• In 12 of 14 US industries tracked, the market leader bought no ChatGPT ads at all.
• Earn the answer first (GEO), then test ads on the prompts you can't win.

Be honest: would you pay to sit under an answer that doesn't even mention you?