ChatGPT ad visits earned $0.89 each, against $2.45 for Google Search ads, in a 1,898-shop study
Paid ChatGPT visits converted at 0.37%, against 1.17% for paid search, and the authors say a click would need to cost about $0.26 to break even with search.
In brief
ChatGPT ads earn $0.89 a visit, Google $2.45
A study of 1,898 shops compared paid visits. ChatGPT converted at 0.37%, Google Search at 1.17%. The authors say actual prices are over six times the break-even price of about $0.26.
A working paper dated October 2026 compares what advertisers earn from paid ChatGPT visits and paid Google Search visits. Maximilian Kaiser (WU Vienna) and Christian Schulze (Frankfurt School) wrote it. It is titled 'Can Advertising Fund Free AI?'. It tracks 1,898 online shops from June 2025 to August 2026.
The numbers
In US traffic, a ChatGPT ad visit generated $0.89 in revenue. A visit from a paid Google Search ad generated $2.45.
Conversion, meaning the share of visits that end in a purchase, was 0.37% for ChatGPT ads and 1.17% for paid search.
The authors also work out a 'parity price', the click cost at which a ChatGPT ad would return as much per dollar as a search ad. They put it at about $0.26 per click.
Price versus value
The authors' own site says actual prices are more than six times that parity price. That is the basis for the claim that ChatGPT ads give far worse value for money. The actual-price comparison leans on one account, reported by Opascope, that paid $1.72 per click over 15 days. OpenAI's ads basics page suggests starting bids of $3 to $5 per click.
Where the reports differ
The sources do not agree on the size of the sample. PPC Land says the paid comparison rests on 102 advertiser sites with full financial tracking, and only 31 with linked Google Ads cost data. Search Engine Land says 97% of 87 advertisers using both channels earned less per ChatGPT visit. One source reports this as 84 of those 87.
One advertiser drove 66% of all purchases through paid ChatGPT across the 102 sites. Remove it, and the gaps widen. Because of this, resampling advertisers puts the parity price anywhere from $0.05 to $0.57.
Organic traffic
The authors' site says free ChatGPT referrals fell about 6 to 8% after ads arrived, and that visitors who still came converted as before. Search Engine Journal reports an estimated 5.9% drop over 13 weeks.
For a shop owner, the practical point is simple: a click is only cheap if it turns into sales. Would you pay search prices for a channel that sells a third as often?
Limits
The paper is a working paper under review. It is observational, since advertisers chose whether to buy ads. The data ends on August 22, 2026, before ads reached the EU. Kaiser is a scientific adviser to Grips Intelligence, which supplied the data. The parity price assumes similar profit margins in both channels and counts only the one tracked visit. OpenAI says its ads product does not yet have performance benchmarks.