ChatGPT Ads now has enough early market data for a first real benchmark conversation. According to Graphite’s State of ChatGPT Ads report, published Sept. 29 and based on Similarweb panel data, click-through rates are not uniform.
The market spread in one view
Graphite’s report covers Free and Go users through mid-September. The five English-language markets cluster at the lower end, while four other markets clear 1%.
- Brazil: 1.91%
- Mexico: 1.55%
- Japan: 1.53%
- South Korea: 1.21%
- Canada: 0.75%
- UK: 0.74%
- US: 0.73%
- Australia: 0.67%
- New Zealand: 0.6%
The report describes advertisers as being in “experimentation mode.” That fits a channel with no official benchmarks from OpenAI and a still-shifting advertiser base.
Why these aren’t normal CTRs
The metric here is pooled. Graphite calculates CTR as clicks divided by ChatGPT replies that contained an ad, across all advertisers in each market. It does not show raw counts, and each market has between five and 25 weeks of data. That makes a direct comparison with your Google Ads or Meta Ads dashboard unsound.
OpenAI’s help center explicitly states that ChatGPT Ads lacks performance benchmarks across advertisers, industries or campaign types. Media buyers should use these figures to gauge channel maturity rather than as a KPI to hit.
Who is actually advertising
Among the top 10 advertisers by worldwide impression share, only Jotform and Resume.io appeared in every one of the 20 weeks from May 4 to Sept. 14, according to the report. Cursor and Monday.com made the list in 15 weeks, Booking.com in 10 and Design.com in eight.
There is churn at the top. Zapier, SAP, Aikido Security and The Wall Street Journal saw U.S. impressions rise and then fall away before Aug. 17. In U.S. category data through Aug. 4, B2B SaaS led with 19.9% of impressions across 1,210 advertisers, with Monday.com at the front. Retail and consumer brands ranked second at 10.4% across 1,510 advertisers, led by Home Depot.
Graphite says retail and ecommerce advertisers have been largely absent because product feeds did not fit ChatGPT’s chat format. That could change quickly: Amazon Ads began a U.S. pilot on Sept. 10 to expand Amazon campaigns into ChatGPT, and OpenAI named Shopify its first ecommerce partner on Sept. 16.
What to do with this data
Treat this as a market segmentation exercise, not a single benchmark. If you are advertising in Brazil or Mexico, you are seeing a different supply mix and user behavior than in the US or Canada. Pooling global numbers would hide that spread.
Practical next step: track your own reply-level CTR and, more importantly, downstream conversions. Use the market tables as a sanity check, then build your own small test across two markets before scaling. The most useful benchmark will be the one you create inside your own ad account.
OpenAI is still expanding: ads are now available in more than 60 countries after a Sept. 23 rollout across Southeast Asia and Taiwan. That adds more inventory and more noise, not more precision.
Source: Search Engine Journal
