ChatGPT Ads are creating a new acquisition opportunity for brands. For e-commerce businesses in particular, the appeal is clear: reaching potential customers while they are actively researching a problem, comparing solutions or considering a purchase.
But there is an important distinction.
ChatGPT Ads should not be treated like Google Ads with a different interface. The way people use ChatGPT is different — and that changes how campaigns should be structured, tested and measured.
From keywords to customer situations
Search advertising is largely built around what someone types into a search bar.
ChatGPT provides significantly more context around what someone is trying to achieve.
A customer might not simply search for “magnesium supplement”. They may be researching which type of magnesium fits their routine, comparing different products or trying to understand which option is right for them.
For advertisers, this creates a different starting point.
Instead of asking: Which keywords do we want to target?
A better question is: In which customer situations should our product be relevant?
This distinction matters.
For a D2C brand, campaign planning can begin with the problems, questions and decision moments that typically happen before a purchase. For B2B, the same principle applies to the business challenges that lead a potential customer to research a solution.
Performance principle #1: Build around intent, not product categories
Broad categories such as beauty, supplements or fashion provide little information about why someone may buy.
A stronger campaign structure reflects different needs and purchase situations.
The more accurately the campaign reflects customer intent, the more relevant the advertising can become.
Make the ad a logical next step
A conversational environment also changes creative strategy.
Generic advertising can feel particularly disconnected when it appears next to a highly specific conversation.
Instead of simply communicating the product, the ad should provide a useful next step.
That might be a product recommendation, a relevant collection, educational content, a comparison or a strong reason to consider the brand.
This also changes how creative testing should work.
Performance principle #2: Test hypotheses, not wording
Changing “Shop now” to “Discover now” tells us very little.
More useful tests compare genuinely different motivations:
- an educational angle
- a specific customer problem
- a product benefit
- social proof or reassurance
Each version tests a different reason to click. The result is not only better creative testing, but better customer insight.
The landing page becomes part of the campaign
The journey should not stop making sense after the click.
If someone comes from a specific conversation and lands on a generic homepage, much of the context is immediately lost.
A stronger approach is to maintain conversation-to-page continuity.
The landing page should continue the topic that created the click in the first place.
For Shopify brands, that may mean directing traffic to a relevant product page, collection or dedicated landing page rather than automatically sending every campaign to the homepage.
Performance principle #3: Match the page to the intent
Before launching, ask one question: Does the landing page answer the reason this person clicked?
If not, optimising the destination may have a greater impact than changing the ad itself.
Measure business performance, not platform performance
As with every new channel, early metrics can be misleading.
A strong CTR or low CPC is useful — but neither tells us whether the campaign is commercially successful.
For e-commerce, the important journey continues:
Click → Product View → Add to Cart → Checkout → Purchase
From there, the questions become more meaningful:
Which customer situations generate purchases?
Which products perform best? What is the acquisition cost? How many customers are genuinely new?
For B2B, lead quality matters more than lead volume.
The principle is the same:
Optimise toward business value, not simply the cheapest platform metric.
Start focused. Learn. Then scale.
New advertising platforms often create the temptation to test too much at once.
We would recommend the opposite.
Start with a limited number of clear customer-intent hypotheses, distinct creative angles, relevant landing pages and reliable conversion tracking.
Then analyse the complete journey.
The objective is not simply to discover which ad receives the cheapest click. It is to understand which intent, message and landing-page combination creates the most valuable customer action.
That is where a new advertising channel becomes a performance channel.
The opportunity for brands
ChatGPT Ads introduce another potential layer to the acquisition mix.
What makes the channel particularly interesting is the moment in which brands can become relevant: while a potential customer is actively researching, comparing and making a decision.
But being early alone is not an advantage.
At merconic, our approach remains the same across every channel:
Understand the customer. Track correctly. Test systematically. Improve the journey. Scale what works.
Because the objective is not simply to run ChatGPT Ads.
The objective is to make them perform.
Considering ChatGPT Ads for your brand?
We help brands assess the opportunity, build the right campaign and tracking structure, optimise the customer journey and turn performance data into scalable growth.
Let’s talk.