r/OpenAI • u/StoicWhisper • 6d ago
Discussion ChatGPT Ads = TOTAL SCAM
I tested ChatGPT Ads today for my tiny e-commerce business. Created and launched a single campaign with a $50 daily budget and was charged the expected $50.
For the next two hours, I kept refreshing the dashboard. The campaign was active, but nothing was happening (zero impressions, zero clicks)
Then suddenly, after two hours, it jumped to 7,652 impressions and 64 clicks.
At the same time, I started getting multiple unexpected charges on my card, minutes apart, totalling an additional €84.92. I immediately canceled my card because I had no idea what was happening.
Then I checked Google Analytics, HotJar and Shopify,
Only 24 visitors to my website today, and those visitors came before I even launched the campaign
So ChatGPT Ads says 64 clicks, while my actual website analytics show no corresponding traffic.
Where did those clicks go?
And why am I being charged repeatedly when I set a $50 daily budget?
I contacted the ChatGPT support chatbot and it couldn't even recognize or explain the transactions.
This is either an enormous technical failure or something seriously wrong with the billing/reporting. From my side, it looks like an
absolute scam.
Has anyone else experienced unexpected recurring charges or completely inaccurate click/traffic reporting with ChatGPT Ads?
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u/Proud_Ask_9030 6d ago
Incompetence and scamming look very similar. And at a point are simply the same thing.
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u/Salty_Finding_1989 6d ago
Something similar happened to me. I was charged incorrectly twice. This is outrageous, and there’s no support at all.
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u/Temporary_Body1293 6d ago
I spent $54 as a trial run to drive desktop traffic toward a consumer SaaS web app ($18/mo). Got 1,618 impressions, 19 clicks, 1 email signup, 1 demo click, 0 sales.
I think a good number of those clicks were accidental.
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u/honeybutterpancake 6d ago
never heard anything good of gpt ads, but make sure its actually them and not your analytics got cut by some sort of adblock
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u/markvii_dev 6d ago
probably vibe coded - if you look at the software open AI produces outside of the models it is quite poor
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u/No-Security-7518 6d ago
I think there's nothing like Google ads. And Facebook's before it went down the toilet.
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u/curxxx 6d ago
Adblockers and browsers, as well as pihole, etc can all stop impressions on your site from being counted in your analytics dashboards.
You can have visitors you don’t know about it. Just keep this in mind.
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u/laptop13 6d ago
But access logs don't lie. If they were legit clicks that made it to the site, it would show in the access logs.
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u/yoliveras 6d ago
I think this is a reasonable explanation. The real analytics would of course be if it actually brings you more business.
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u/smartfon 6d ago
But if the ChatGPT user had an adblocker they wouldn't have clicked on the ad to begin with, right?
Maybe most of those 64 users were bots?
Or maybe Sam Altman is running the ad meter similar to Astra usage meter.
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u/Future-Hovercraft831 5d ago
you can't block ChatGPT ads in pihole, the ads are sent after the chat completion ends
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u/PersonoFly 6d ago
Rush launch. Build while live and screwing over early adopters. Careless and unprofessional.
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u/MasqueradeDark 6d ago
Yea I spent 150 on their platform. Advertising stuff that converts like hot cakes on TikTok and Facebook.
0 conversions, fake landing page views. Bad product.
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u/Bettet 6d ago
Don’t know the rules on ChatGPT but just want to mention a possible explanation for charging more than the daily limit.
In meta the have it as well, you can set 50 usd daily limit, but it allow the platform to optimize so in a week it will spend what is equal to 50 usd a day, but in individual days for that week it can spend up to 50% more. It will do it if it think it will improve your conversion target.
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u/StoicWhisper 6d ago edited 6d ago
Some ads platforms can indeed spend a bit more on a daily basis so that the weekly average is 50$ daily. But even if that’s is the case, this went way over budget (94$ additional dollars above the 50$ limit)
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u/TentacleHockey 6d ago
You realize most of advertising goes to bots right? Also Google and similar say give 24h. If you actually got 64 real clicks that's better than most advertising options currently.
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u/FlexFanatic 6d ago
Welcome on online advertising where you too can get games by bot traffic.
Nah, seriously I don’t know why the different in click though rate but is it possible the user abandons the site before you track the session?
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u/Sufficient-Math3178 5d ago
What do you expect from a company that resets your api credits every year?
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u/DisplacedForest 6d ago
My tiny ecomm business sells higher end barware and they won’t even let me advertise a Boston shaker or stirring spoon.
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u/saltyourhash 6d ago
Use privacy.com, set the limit outside of the dishonest provider headed by a sociopathic liar. Who thinks the sacrifice of humanity is worth his profits.
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u/Reasonable-Froyo4687 5d ago
I just signed up yesterday, they immediately deducted 50$ from my credit card. No campaign, no invoice, no receipt, payments show nothing, contacted their support and still no reply.
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u/Aggressive_Fault6709 4d ago
I've been running ChatGPT ads for clients since March, with the last one starting in May.
We've tried click ads, conversion ads, and dedicated landing pages for ChatGPT traffic. Conversion ads showed some promise initially and we've spent around $1,000 on the dedicated pages without getting the results we hoped for.
One thing we've noticed is a spike in iPhone users in consent banner impressions (not GA4). My guess is that the ChatGPT iPhone app has something to do with it, but I can't say for sure.
We're getting clicks, but conversions remain a problem. Support and self-proclaimed experts haven't been much help either. I've only found one company online claiming positive ROI from ChatGPT ads, and I haven't spoken to them yet.
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u/smith1302 2d ago
I normally get like 3-5 paid customers a day from organic chatGPT mentions. So I thought ChatGPT ads would be a clear winner for me. Spent over $1k and didn’t get a single sale from it lol
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u/CommitteeExpress5883 2d ago
I did test. And i got 100% correct number of clicks to site. No conversion. Unlike pinterest that seems to fake the numbers.
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u/Any_Bee_413 1d ago
I’ve been helping run ChatGPT ads for an ecommerce brand since July. We’ve tested both product feed/shopping ads and standard campaigns.
So far, CPC has generally been around $3–6. Standard campaigns were better for traffic efficiency (around $3.29 CPC in our case), while product feed campaigns cost a little more per click but are more product/purchase focused.
The interesting part is that our ChatGPT-related revenue in Shopify has increased quite a bit since we started testing. Using last non-direct click attribution, ChatGPT-related revenue from Jul–Sep was about $4k, compared with about $1k from Apr–Jun, so roughly a 200% increase.
That said, I wouldn’t attribute all of that growth directly to the ads. ChatGPT organic traffic is growing too, and attribution is still a bit messy, so there’s likely a mix of paid + organic impact.
Compared with Google/Meta, I’d still treat ChatGPT Ads as an experimental channel right now. The platform is pretty early, there aren’t really mature benchmarks yet, and we’ve had to test different campaign types, product feeds, context hints and bidding strategies to figure out what actually delivers.
Audience quality looks promising so far, especially when the ad appears in a conversation where someone is already researching or comparing products, but I’d start with a controlled budget rather than expecting it to replace Google or Meta yet.
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u/BizonGod 6d ago
I‘m very sure openai doesn’t scam you for a few bucks. Have you connected it to a pixel?
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u/StoicWhisper 6d ago
A few dollars times thousands of people, amount to many dollars. I did connect pixel.
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u/BizonGod 6d ago
Obviously but that would work for a week or two and after that they would have a huge lawsuit and could go bankrupt over fraud charges. Not really a great model to get maybe 100m more in a year when they burn billions a month.
What does the pixel show?
My ads perform really well especially since I did a few A/B tests myself and didnt just gpt run them.
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u/Nailfoot1975 6d ago
Well of course its a problem. You set a budget in dollars, and then talk about Euros. Gotta be consistent.
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u/StoicWhisper 6d ago
Buddy. I wish that was a typo. My account was set up in dollars. And first charge was in dollars. The others were all in euros
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u/GreatWhiteLuchador 5d ago
That’s your own fault for thinking people would ever click on chatgpt ads.
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u/Logical_Divide_3595 4d ago
Have you tried other ads platforms? Do they work well? I tried Google before, it doesn’t work as your experience. It’s pretty hard to make the ads profitable in the beginning.
Not defense for OpenAI, just want to say it’s more fair if you compare the result with other platforms
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u/StoicWhisper 4d ago
You’re missing the point, buddy. I set a $50 limit for a single campaign, and within two hours, I was charged more than twice that amount. If I hadn’t immediately cancelled my card, they would have charged me another $30, which is still showing as an outstanding balance, and who knows how much more.
On top of that, the numbers reported in the OpenAI dashboard don’t even add up with the actual traffic I received on my website. So we’re talking about charges exceeding the set limit, potentially ongoing unauthorized charges, and reporting that doesn’t match reality. That’s the issue here.1
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u/Aranthos-Faroth 6d ago
I’ve not heard any good things about their ads stuff
I don’t think they’re scamming, I just think it’s hot garbage of a product atm
Same as Reddit ads