Six months after ads launched, 43 percent of ad-eligible ChatGPT users in the US see them, according to Graphite’s “The State of ChatGPT Ads,” a report dated September 28, 2026. The report does not define eligibility beyond that headline. For search and paid teams weighing a test budget, the report offers market benchmarks worth reading, but it comes with real measurement limits.
Graphite built the report with Similarweb, using Similarweb’s user panel for reach, click-through rate (CTR), and ad placement across what the report calls all nine live markets. Graphite added its own collection of more than 95,000 US ChatGPT ads from over 500 advertisers, gathered between April 1 and August 16, 2026. Similarweb shares ratios, not raw counts, so the size of the panel behind each figure stays hidden.
Graphite also makes business claims: ChatGPT Ads reached a $1 billion annualized revenue run rate within roughly 200 days of its March 2026 launch and has tens of thousands of advertisers. These are Graphite’s statements. OpenAI is not the source of them.
Search Engine Journal, which covered the report on September 29, read the market tables and found CTR differences. For Free and Go users, rates in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand fell between 0.6 percent and 0.75 percent, with the US at 0.73 percent. In Brazil, Mexico, Japan, and South Korea, they ranged from 1.21 percent to 1.91 percent, led by Brazil. Each is a cumulative rate, running from that market’s earliest tracked week up to September 16.
The unit matters. According to Search Engine Journal’s reading, CTR here is the click count over the number of ChatGPT replies carrying an ad, with all advertisers in a market combined. One user message plus ChatGPT’s answer counts as one exchange. That differs from the per-impression CTR a search team sees in a Google Ads account, so a direct comparison with existing search campaigns is unreliable. No conversion or cost data appears in the sources.
Market comparisons carry a second caveat. The report gives markets anywhere from five to 25 weeks of history, so the rates cover unequal periods. Graphite says CTR has doubled since launch. If click rates climb over time, a cumulative average understates today’s performance most in the markets with the longest history, and the gap between markets may partly reflect timing.
The creative findings are the most usable part. Graphite says top advertisers write 98 percent new copy for the channel, and that the top 10 advertisers all sell something a user can buy in one sitting. Five of the top 10 advertisers run more ads on ChatGPT than on Meta, according to Graphite’s cross-channel check of 10 advertisers. The agency also notes that Google Search ad volume remains well above both ChatGPT and Meta.
That points to a practical split. Paid teams should not paste keyword-driven search ads into a conversational placement. Graphite’s playbook adds that early turns in a conversation earn the top click rate and share of impressions, which favors copy that answers a use case rather than matches a query string.
Stability is weak. Search Engine Journal notes that just Jotform and Resume.io held a worldwide top-10 impression-share rank across every one of the 20 weeks between May 4 and September 14. Graphite’s own advice is to keep spend experimental and plan to re-test, and its playbook is written by an agency that sells paid and organic search services, while Similarweb sells the ad-tracking tool behind the panel.
Teams that want a test should fund it as an addition to search budgets, pick one market where the panel shows higher CTR, write native copy for a purchase-ready offer, and judge results on their own conversion data, not on these pooled panel rates.
Graphite’s “The State of ChatGPT Ads” report (dated September 28, 2026), with per-market CTR figures drawn from Search Engine Journal’s September 29, 2026 coverage.
