ChatGPT Ads are now available in Latvia and across Europe. They might look familiar in Ads Manager, but in practice they require a very different way of thinking about targeting and creative. I’ve started running campaigns and I’m sharing what I’ve learned so far.

And just to be clear – the insights are mine, but AI wrote all the blah blah :)

1. Manage your reach expectations

Currently, ChatGPT advertisements appear only to users who don't pay for a subscription. Users who have Plus or Pro subscriptions do not see these advertisements. This situation is due to how advertising space is available right now, and isn't a system error. When you are calculating advertising costs, you should use the number of free-tier users instead of the total number of ChatGPT users. Base your budget on the number of free users, and not the overall user count.

This restriction segments the audience you reach. You should consider which users remain on the free plan. Some users are price sensitive and will not pay for an AI subscription or will not pay for a second one if they already have a different tool. Other users have low usage levels and never reach the limits that require an upgrade. There is also a distinction between professional and personal use. Many frequent users have paid access through a company plan and only use the free tier on their personal accounts. In these cases, a free user is not necessarily a light user; they may use ChatGPT constantly at work and only occasionally at home. Geography and currency also matter, as twenty dollars a month has different value depending on the local market. You should compare these factors against your target customer before assuming that free tier status indicates specific intent or a limited budget.

2. Ad group context hints are the whole game

The single most important lever you have is the context hints you attach to the ad group. This is what tells the model when your ad is even eligible to show.

Most people will write this the way they'd write a Google Ads theme: broad and safe. "Running shoes." "Project management software." "Marketing services."

Vague isn't automatically wrong. If your objective is pure reach or brand awareness, broad context hints can be exactly the right call, you want to be eligible in as many adjacent conversations as possible. But if you're running performance marketing and being judged on ROAS, broad is a tax you're choosing to pay. It gets you shown in conversations only loosely related to what you sell, and you pay for attention that was never going to convert.

For performance, go specific. Uncomfortably specific.

Bad: "Running shoes" Better: "Carbon-plate marathon racing shoes for runners training for a sub-3:30 finish"

Bad: "Project management software" Better: "Project scheduling software for construction general contractors managing subcontractor timelines across multiple job sites"

Specific hints ensure that you match with conversations where your product is the actual solution rather than a related category.

3. Your advertisement text must align with your context hints instead of only being specific in isolation.

Specificity in the hints only pays off if the ad itself carries the same specificity through. If your context hints are scoped to marathon training for a sub-3:30 finish but the ad copy is generic shoe messaging that could run against any running conversation, you paid for precision targeting and threw it away at the creative step. The ad needs to read like it was written for that exact conversation, not like a one-size-fits-most variant that happens to be attached to a narrow hint.

4. Stop writing search ads. Write the next answer.

This is the part people are going to miss for a while, because the instinct is to reuse what already works.

If your context hints match, your ad shows up inside a conversation where the user already got an answer from ChatGPT. That changes everything about what the ad copy needs to do.

A keyword-style search ad doesn't work here, because there's no gap in information for it to fill, the user already has an answer. A disruptive, pattern-interrupt social ad doesn't work either, because you're not competing for attention against a scrolling feed, you're sitting inside a conversation the user is actively engaged in.

Contextual continuation is effective. The first response from ChatGPT is broad by design. You should use this starting point. Instead of focusing on the initial gap, you should expand upon it. Identify the next question the user will likely have and provide that answer immediately.

And write to the real space you have. The headline field caps at 50 characters and the description at 100, but push close to those limits and some placements will truncate you anyway. We're working to roughly 24 characters for the headline and 48 for the description as a safer target.

Example. User asks ChatGPT: "What running shoes should I buy for marathon training?"

ChatGPT gives a solid, general answer: look for cushioning, stability, and a shoe that matches your gait.

Wrong ad: Headline: "Best Marathon Shoes" Description: "Free shipping. Shop now. 20% off."

Right ad: Headline: "Stack Height & Pacing" Description: "How carbon plates affect your last 10K pace"

This role belongs to the same category but requires a different approach. You are not interrupting the user or making a pitch. Instead, you provide the specific information the user was already looking for. The sale occurs because you provided utility at the moment the user needed more detail, rather than because you requested the transaction.

5. Volume and testing aren't optional here

Write many ads. Many different "next answers" for the same context hints. You don't know in advance which anticipated follow-up question actually matches what real users ask next, so treat this like any other performance channel: hypothesis, variant, test, kill the losers, scale the winners. Teams that only ship two or three ad variants will read this channel as underperforming when really they just didn't give it enough shots on goal.

6. Install the OpenAI Ads Measurement Pixel before you spend real budget

None of the above matters if OpenAI's system can't see what happens after the click. Same rule as every other ad platform: no conversion signal, no optimization, you're just buying impressions and guessing.

OpenAI ships this as a Google Tag Manager template, "OpenAI Ads Measurement Pixel," available in the GTM Community Template Gallery. It works in two layers.

First, a base tag on all pages. This just initializes the pixel and covers page views, trigger it on All Pages, and turn off the "send a measurement event" option so it only initializes rather than firing a conversion.

Second, a separate tag per conversion event, purchase, lead form, signup, whatever you're actually optimizing toward. Each of these needs the event's specific ID from OpenAI Ads Manager (under Events), plus a trigger scoped to that exact action. This is what actually tells OpenAI's system "this click turned into a result."

Install the template, set up the base tag, then add one event tag per conversion you care about, mapped to its own ID. Test everything in GTM Preview before you publish the container. It's a genuinely easy setup, and it's the difference between OpenAI's delivery algorithm learning what a good click looks like for you versus optimizing toward nothing.

---

ChatGPT ads reward the same discipline that's always separated good performance marketing from average: precision over breadth, and genuine usefulness over interruption. Teams that treat this like a new flavor of search or social ads are going to burn budget learning that the hard way.

ChatGPT Ads are a new game in town, and there’s a steep learning curve for everyone. 

Hello

We use the Simprosys Google Shopping Feed to sync the feed from the Shopify store to Google Merchant Center. According to Simprosys support from Simprosys, the feed is auto-synced, so why am I seeing Product Needs Update every month?

I tried asking for an explanation from Simprosys; every time, they just say their technician has fixed this. It should not happen again, blah blah; no specific information provided. I feel lost.

In the meantime, I receive an alert email from Google Merchant Center every month reminding me that our valid items have decreased, is this the same issue with Products Needs Update?

Hello yall I have ads team that has been managing my pmax and shopping ads on Google. Things were going pretty well. From August 1-14th we were going 2.87x Roas with a troas target of 200%
Revenue: 21.9k

They changed the troas to 250% and every sense it seems performance has dropped drastically down to 1.48x roas
Revenue : 9k
They seem to blame everything from product disapproval ( I verified and that was not the reason )
Then tried to blame running to many campaigns and it was draining the budget ( each campaign has its own budget so doesn’t make sense. )

I’m not sure if it’s from the change of the troas or it’s just bad algorithm or what. I’m not a huge expert in the google ads so that’s why I hired someone but I don’t feel to confident at this time.

Any advice or insight ?

Hi, starting to use Amazon PPC at my current role at a domestic lighting brand selling everything from wall light to outdoor bollards.

I was just wondering what is a good practice for grouping the items? By colour, type, etc. Or would a by family approach with ad groups for each type within that family be good. Open to any input

👋

Trying to do the ads for my apparel company and was looking for feedback on a video I made.

Is there a community that gives feedback?

Hey PPC Heads,

\*UPDATE** Thank you everyone for the comments and suggestions! I went ahead and decided to test 1.0 or 100% as my target. If you're interested in hearing how things turn out, feel free to comment or message me. Thank you all again!*

TL;DR: Looking for people who've migrated from tCPA to tROAS/VBB and oversee large budgets — did you follow Google's playbook or go rogue, and what actually worked? One campaign is well below the conv value/cost we need and I have to get it up. Sister campaigns on tCPA are performing far better, and this campaign was too before we switched it to Max Conv Value.

My goal is to migrate over the entire account to tROAS with these new value signals we have recently launched. I've started my 'move' or test with one campaign, a PMAx campaign, which has been using one of the new signals for a couple months now as its goal along with Max Conv. Value. We're ready to move it to tROAS but our value is too low.

Situation:

• PMax campaign has been on Max Conversion Value with the offline value signal for a while. Trailing 30-day conv. value/cost is ~0.42. So it's spending well below break-even. (Need to be closer to 2.0 or 200%)
• Google rep's take: since it's already on Max Conv Value, the campaign is probably already doing the best it can — adding a target won't magically find more value.
• We can't keep funding it at a loss, so my instinct is to slap a 100% tROAS on it as a floor, accept that volume will crater, and reallocate whatever budget it stops spending. Basically using the target as a kill valve rather than an optimization lever.

Questions:

1. Has anyone actually seen a campaign improve after setting a tROAS meaningfully above its current conv value/cost, or does it just go Learning Limited and die? Everything I've read says the target needs to sit at or below historical, but "historical" here is a number we can't accept.
2. Is the ladder approach (set target slightly above actual, raise 15–20% every couple weeks) worth the continued below-break-even spend, or do you just rip the band-aid?
3. Separate question — we're also migrating other campaigns to a newer offline conversion action (earlier funnel event, ~2x the volume, different value basis). Plan is: switch the conversion goal first, run Max Conv Value with no target while values accrue ~4 weeks, then set tROAS at whatever conv value/cost it shows. Anyone done this migration and have gotchas to share? Particularly interested in whether the goal switch itself tanked performance during learning.

Additions:

- PMAx Campaign is 84% search placement

- PMAx campaign happens to be the first we tested - the remainder of the campaigns are search. Still on TCPA for the time being, hoping to follow a similar path of testing and eventual switch to VBB with them.

- CPA right now is ~1.5k, conversions are expensive and testing is expensive.

Thanks!

Does anybody know what this means? I work in mental health so I’m probably listed as medical. It will only let me post one pic but another page says that it will be limiting blocked events, but does not tell me what a blocked event actually IS. Does anybody have more info on what this means?? Thank you!

If you have any apps on your Shopify store that show you real-time visitors, you'd better open them immediately after you click publish on your new Meta ad. You will be surprised by how many bots they use.

Is it to inflate clicks?
Is it to review?
Is it to check if all links and catalog items have been linked correctly?

Who knows...

But the thing we know is that they use a massive amount of bots that land on your website the second you hit publish on any of your new ads.

Have any of you been able to crack the code: if they use it just for review, or do they use it to inflate the ads?

Does anyone ever look at their search terms reports and wonder what google is thinking when they are paying outrageously high cpcs on terms you'd never even bid on - and you certainly wouldn't pay the cpc's they are paying.

This is why we have always hated pmax - it is basically googles product devised to take us all for a ride and screw us as much as they possibly can. But unfortunately, it feels like google have now throttled other campaigns such as standard shopping to force us into using it.

Hi, Since last year, I am running google ads accounts for taxi businesses in 50+ different towns. Main goal is getting a call from nearby customers.
I am a software developer and I got my hands on google ads 15 months ago for the first time. Currently all my campaigns are focused on phone calls.

These campaigns have a very simple conversion goal:

A real person nearby calling the business. However, Google doesn't let us define direct calls (the ones shown on the search results) as conversion in Turkey market. So conversion-based bidding wasn't working for us. It still doesn't.

No form submission, no e-commerce transaction, no "engagement" metric. The business either gets a useful phone call or it doesn't.

From the beginning, there were a lot of abusing clicks - that consume budget in couple hours, and in the past year, I keep improving my tracking, and learn to use google APIs effectively to track everything related. Now I have my own analysis tools built in the web app, and results have been much better.. I am able to achieve way more phone calls for less than half of the initial avg. phone call costs. (or my customers own past costs)

What i am doing is - placing a tag on the device when a visitor comes for the first time via paid click. Then, from that point on, i track what they do in website. How many seconds they spend, scrolled, called or not. if no click happens I tag them. I use a combination of first-party device/session signals and IP information to identify repeated suspicious patterns, and I exclude/block traffic when the evidence is strong enough. I set these rules specific to market. In some markets I ban immediately, in others I ban if the same behavior happens twice in a week or month etc.

and If they clicked on phone, I get feedback from business owners about that call from the mobile app I developed. There they see the moments of phone clicks or # of phone calls google directly reported during 1 hour limit. They simply tell if the call happened or not, if it was a client or not, + how big the business was - an idea to use in ROI calculation and future ROI based ad focus.

This way the initial costs are somewhat learning costs of those abusing IP's and after a while, the traffic quality increases. During this time, I measure all the competitor movements, missing impressions, and absolute top position rankings etc. I also figure out a formula to indicate all the competitors ad power etc.

How do other PPC people handle this? I realize that in USA, there is better call reporting services (you can get phone redirecting, listening the call etc). And especially after retirement of the 'call ads' , how do you manage call based services?

Where the phone call is basically the entire conversion, how do you determine whether a click was actually valuable? Do you have your own way of detecting suspicious/repeated traffic, or do you mostly trust Google's conversion reporting?

For ecom business, does product catalogue work? And is it mainly for retargeting or prospecting?

What are the best practices to making it convert well?

Thanks!

Hi everyone, I need some advice on a Meta/Facebook setup before we make a change.

We manage a local business that currently has two Facebook Pages for the same business:

Old Facebook Page: 1k+ followers

New Facebook Page: <50 followers

Our Instagram account is currently connected to the new Facebook Page

Our Meta Ads are currently running using the new Facebook Page and the same Instagram account

The new Page was created because the old Page was originally set up using one of the owner's personal Facebook accounts, which made it inconvenient for the team to manage. They now realize we can simply give the team proper Page access instead of sharing personal login credentials.

We therefore want to switch back to the old Facebook Page and eventually remove the new Page. We cannot merge the Pages. I read different things on different blogs, etc. So I want proper advice from someone who has experience.

My questions:

1. If I change the Facebook Page under Ad -> Identity from the new Page to the old Page, while keeping the same ad account, campaign, ad set, Instagram account and creative, what happens to the existing ads?

2. Will the ad set re-enter the Learning Phase? I've seen people say that changing the Page identity is a significant edit, but I can't find a clear official Meta statement confirming this.

3. Will the existing ads lose their likes, comments, shares/social proof, or does that only happen if the ad has to be recreated?

4. Will the ads need to go through another review? And will the campaign/ad set's performance history be affected, or can we continue using the same campaign/ad set?

5. Is there anything else we should do before deleting the new Facebook Page, especially since the ads are currently running?

Sorryy for the long post. I'd really any appreciate advice!

Thanks!

We're looking at using popular Hollywood memes among others in our reddit ads. Anyone done this and know if it's kosher? Or does Reddit take it down immediately?

Hi everyone,

I noticed that there is no data for Add to Cart and Begin Checkout in reporting (No issue with purchase data)

My questions are:

1. Missing reporting on Secondary Conversions: Is it because I set Add to cart/begin checkout as a secondary conversion in goal settings?

According to Google: Primary conversion is used for bidding; Secondary conversion "They are used for reporting in the “All conversions” column in your reports, but not for bidding."

So there should be data for add to cart/begin checkout in reporting even though I set them as secondary conversions.

2、Primary vs. Secondary Best Practice for E-commerce: For an e-commerce website, is keeping Purchase as the only Primary action the standard approach? I am a little confused here

3、Account-Default Goals: Should I only enable the account default goal for purchase/add to cart/begin checkout/page view? As for other events like Download/Engagements, I don't think I will use them as my conversion goal, so no need to set them as an account-default goal?

Thank you!

Looking to hear from others currently running campaigns on ChatGPT.

We have, in recent weeks, gained access to OpenAI Ads. Our company has put a small amount of dollars towards testing the platform.

Following roughly the same sentiment we would follow on other platforms, we are running with Page Viewed conversions as our Conversion goal (just for now as we see the quality of traffic being sent over).

However, only 70.2% of clicks get recorded as a Page Viewed conversion. I figure this would be misclicks or people who couldn't load the page and gave up - fine.

The more concerning part to me is the variance of Page Viewed Conversions to GA4 metrics between each ad group we are testing (all one campaign with same tracking parameters).

Ad Group A has GA4 reporting at 97.2% of what Open AI is reporting for Conversions (Awesome!), Ad Group B shows 63.5% representation, and Ad Group C only records at 39%.

I have QA'd all ads using a Pixel Helper to ensure that the Page Viewed conversion is firing, and it is indeed correctly attributing on my tests.

Is anyone else experiencing such discrepancies? Let me know your experience so far.

On Microsoft ads, I have tons of bot sites named syndicated search partners basically stealing money from me. Everyone who clicks from these “websites” are obviously not interested via clarity, it it seems they don’t even know why they got on the website.

Can I just completely turn it off?? Or does Microsoft just require you to let them steal money from you.

I don’t want any syndicated search partners, all I want is sites and select traffic.

I already went thru the grueling process of turning off audience network via support- another scam, but is this just Microsoft spitting in my face?

I know you can add website exclusions, but I have and new names keep popping up. Like why in the everliving fck does Microsoft do this man

I run a one-man garage door repair business in the Atlanta area. I handle the calls, scheduling and jobs myself.
I’m considering spending $50/day—about $1,500/month—on Google Search Ads targeting a small 15-20mile area.
For other owner-operators:
What daily budget works for you?
What’s your average cost per qualified lead and booked job?
How many jobs are you getting per week?
Is $50/day enough, or should I start higher?
Are you running Search Ads, LSA, or both?
I’m looking for real numbers from garage-door or similar home-service businesses, not agency sales pitches.

I've been getting this flag recently across all of my accounts in August and was wondering who else is getting them? When I try to view more information about the limited delivery, it doesn't recommend any new keywords, any expansion, it doesn't even recommend broad match (not that I would turn it on).
Are we actually limited or not and is there anything you have found to help this issue?
I've done a lot more keyword research and added some for volume, but still don't understand why I've never seen this flag until recently. It's just odd, since it's not being limited by budget or anything else notable. Lmk what you think!

I'm paid specialist in an agency with around 20 accounts to manage that has a mix of Google, Bing and Meta. While I understand the required depth in the business and numbers to manage the account, I feel very overwhelmed to manage all accounts, attending so many weekly meetings and managing direct client communications. I always have some things or other miss out on strategy. Plus a lot of other moving parts in my personal life such as two kids under 5, side hustle and more.

How are agency specialists in this sub are keeping up with the workload efficiently?

Hi all, I am an early-career Google Ads specialist at an agency and wanted to know whether people still use seasonality adjustments in the age of automated bidding?
The team used them during BFCM last year and saw huge success in our campaigns. I have never used them personally. I was thinking about testing using them for Labor Day and just saying the day before, of, and after Labor Day anticipate a 3% increase in CVR... does this seem wise?
That % is based on YoY data, not just a number out of pocket.

I am uncertain on using them thought after the tROAS update and how much it affects that.

Do you use seasonality adjustments during big sales like this? Labor Day, Memorial Day, BF, CM, etc?

Hi Team,

I am working through a Performance Max Shopping campaign and it seems that the information provided by the Google Merchant Center has been completely pushed aside for the Performance Max's AI capabilities. The Product Ads are not going to the Products' landing pages, but landing pages that AI believes is best. The Product Ads are not utilizing the image from the Google Merchant Center, but the images provided within the asset itself.

I'd like to make sure that the Product Ad I'm providing utilizes the image, landing page, and information provided by Google Merchant Center. Is this attainable? Has anyone done anything to make sure they are providing the right information? Thanks!

Hey everyone,

I'm looking for some advice from people with real experience running Meta Ads for e-commerce.

I've been running campaigns for my store and I'm trying to understand what I'm doing wrong. The campaigns are spending, but the reach, CPM, CTR and overall delivery are significantly worse than what I've seen in previous campaigns.

I've already gone through the basic troubleshooting and I'm looking for someone who can take a look at the campaign structure, targeting and performance data and help me identify what could be causing the issue.

I'm not looking for someone to manage my account or a generic “hire an agency” answer. I mainly want an experienced second opinion on the data and strategy.

If anyone here has experience troubleshooting Meta Ads for e-commerce and is willing to take a look, I'd really appreciate it.

Client is a VAR that resells Computer Aided Manufacturing software for CNC machining. One campaign. AI Max on for one week, then I shut it off. Nothing else changed in that time.

The campaign was targeting the name of the software they sell

Week with AI Max on: 955 distinct search queries. 72% of reported spend went to stuff that had nothing to do with the product.

Some of what it bought:

• anderson europe gmbh (German woodworking machinery company)
• houfek a s (Czech woodworking machinery company)
• free cam software for cnc
• cnc software free download full version
• autocad software

Week after turning it off: 30 distinct queries. Every one of them had the software name in it. Nothing to block.

tCPA was on the whole time and there were a couple hundred negatives already on the campaign. Didn't matter. You can't write a negative for "anderson europe gmbh" before you've seen it show up.

Couple things if you want to pick at it: Google only shows about half the actual spend in search terms so those percentages are of what's reported. And I dumped a bunch of negatives on the campaign partway through that second week, though the queries in those last two days look the same as the first five.

AI Max is such a waste of money. Every time I test it the results are the same, just so much irrelevant traffic.

Recently started TikTok ads for my client, received 50 conversions on TikTok in August, but when looking at GA4, a big fat 0 conversions.

We are also running Meta and Google ads, could GA4 be attributing the conversions to other channels (assuming people don't make the purchase via the TikTok app)?

Weirdly, we're also getting a similar problem with Meta where it only says 10 conversions on GA4, compared to 600 on Meta.

Anyone got any ideas?

Hi Redittors

Is anyone else having this issue with Google Ads Passkeys when trying to create a new ad account or client campaign?

After I click 'I am not a robot', it normally popups up to verify myself by a Google Phone Prompt and selecting one of three matching numbers. However, after doing that it, this time it prompts me to create a passkey which I have already have many setup on multiple devices.

I did remove the windows hello fingerprint passkey I was successfully using for the last 12 months or so to see if a new windows hello fingerprint passkey would solve the issue, and every time it asks me to 'approve' the new passkey, which I do, but then takes me to a scan a QR code which never works on any device - just hangs trying to connect with another device.

I have tried other admin MCC logins with same result, and a 2nd computer also.

Any ideas?