Brianna Vetrano, Digital Place Marketing Consultant, Vetrano Digital Marketing

As ChatGPT expands its advertising capabilities, place marketers have another paid media channel to consider. But how does it compare to established platforms like Google, Meta, and LinkedIn? And is it worth setting aside some budget to test it?

Here are some of the questions I've been hearing from place marketers and a few things to consider when evaluating the platform.

How does ChatGPT advertising work?

ChatGPT Ads are now available in more than 60 countries, including the US, UK, and much of Europe.

Ads appear below ChatGPT's responses, typically featuring an image, headline, description, and website link. They're shown to eligible users on the Free and Go plans, not paid subscribers on Plus, Pro, or Business.

Importantly, advertising doesn't influence ChatGPT's answers. Paying for an ad won't make your destination or region more likely to appear in its recommendations.

How do you set up ChatGPT Ads?

Advertisers create and manage campaigns through ChatGPT Ads Manager, a separate self-service platform. Similar to Google Ads or Meta Ads Manager, advertisers can set budgets, select targeting options, upload creative, and monitor campaign performance.

What targeting options are available?

ChatGPT offers geographic targeting by country, region, city, and postal code, as well as targeting by device and platform.

Advertisers can also provide context hints to help ChatGPT identify relevant conversations, though ChatGPT does say these are “recommendations”, versus exact targeting.

The biggest drawback right now is the lack of precise audience targeting. Advertisers can't target specific prompts or use detailed professional criteria like job titles, industries, or seniority levels, as they can on established platforms like Google and LinkedIn. This is especially limiting for organisations trying to reach niche audiences, such as B2B decision-makers or people researching niche topics.

ChatGPT also doesn't report which prompts triggered ads or provide much insight into the audiences actually seeing them. Together, these limitations make it difficult to know exactly who you're reaching and how relevant your ads are to them.

What can advertisers measure?

ChatGPT Ads Manager provides standard metrics, including impressions, clicks, CTR, CPC, CPM, and spend.

Using UTM parameters, advertisers can also track traffic, engagement, and conversions in GA4, allowing for comparisons with other advertising channels. Additionally, conversions can be tracked directly in ChatGPT Ads Manager through the OpenAI Pixel or Conversions API.

Since the channel is still so new, reliable performance benchmarks are limited. For place marketers testing the platform, success should be measured against campaign objectives, whether that's conversions or visibility, with particular attention to how results compare to other channels at a similar cost.

Where are the opportunities for place marketers?

Tourism: Probably the strongest and most obvious fit right now. Destinations can promote seasonal campaigns, hotel partners, itineraries, guides, and niche experiences to travellers in different stages of their travel planning journey.

Talent attraction: Campaigns could promote quality-of-life information, regional job boards, industry information, or resources about living and working in the region to people researching relocation options or comparing the best places to build their careers.

Meetings and conventions: CVBs could promote meeting facilities, event planning resources, and destination guides to people researching conference locations, corporate retreats, or group events, with the goal of generating RFP submissions.

Economic development and FDI: Limited targeting and reporting options make ChatGPT Ads a weaker choice for focused B2B campaigns compared to established advertising platforms. However, for EDOs and IPAs interested in testing the channel, campaigns could promote resources, industry strengths and business ecosystems to people researching topics related to location decisions.

Should place marketers be testing ChatGPT Ads?

If there's some extra budget available to experiment with a new platform, ChatGPT Ads is worth a try, perhaps with a few hundred dollars over a few weeks to start. Campaigns are relatively easy to set up, and GA4 can provide useful insights into how visitors from ChatGPT Ads engage with your website after clicking an ad.

For tourism marketers, there's a strong opportunity to reach people actively planning trips and researching destinations and ChatGPT could be a good way to increase paid visibility on AI platforms.

For economic development, FDI, MICE, and talent attraction, other paid platforms are likely to offer better targeting and more transparent results, so it may not be as strong of a fit right now.

Still, if you’re looking for something new to try, a small test is a great way to gather data for yourself and see what kind of benefit ChatGPT Ads could add to your marketing strategy.