Ads with ChatGPT: what the new ad platform means for customer experience planning

Ads with ChatGPT change marketing strategy because the ad unit sits inside the answer itself, not beside it. Early rollouts show sponsored suggestions appearing as a follow-up row after the model has already given its response, meaning the user has received value before they see anything commercial. That sequence (answer first, offer second) is the opposite of a traditional search results page, where the paid listing competes for attention before any question is answered.

For businesses, this shifts the planning unit from "keyword and click" to "conversation and context." A Google Ads campaign is built around intent signalled by a search term. A ChatGPT ad is built around intent inferred from an entire exchange, what the user asked, how they phrased it, what the model decided was relevant enough to attach a sponsored option to. That means ad copy, offer structure and even landing page design need to answer the conversation that led there, not just the final query. A landing page built for a Google Ads click on "emergency plumber Sydney" won't necessarily convert a user who arrived via a multi-turn chat about renovation budgeting.

Practically, this pushes conversion rate optimisation earlier into the funnel. Pages built to catch this kind of traffic need to work with less certainty about what the visitor already knows, since the chat context isn't visible on landing. It also makes answer engine optimisation and AI Overview visibility more important as a precursor, if your business isn't being surfaced or cited inside AI answers in the first place, there's no conversation for an ad to attach to later.

We treat this as part of the same build: acquisition, the website itself, and the integrations connecting them, rather than treating AI ad platforms as a bolt-on channel.

If you want your site and ad strategy prepared for this shift before it's standard, get in touch with Jordan James Media.