We’ve been using AI for years as part of creating or planning ads on Google, LinkedIn and paid social media. But placing ads in an AI system that people trust to help them think, decide and act is fundamentally different. This is not just a channel that you can connect to an existing media plan.
The biggest question is not targeting. It’s psychology. If advertisers replicate what works in search results or on social media, performance will be disappointing and trust will decline.
Dig Deeper: Are ChatGPT Ads Worth Money at the NFL Level?
To succeed, brands must understand how and why people use ChatGPTand what that means for attention, relevance and the customer journey.
ChatGPT is a task environment, not a feed
People open ChatGPT to do something. That could be:
- Solve a specific problem.
- Refine a shortlist.
- Planning a trip.
- Write something.
- Making sense of a complex decision.
This is very different from feed-based platforms, where people expect to scroll, be interrupted and passively discover content.
In task-based environments such as ChatGPT, behavior changes:
- Target shielding: Attention is limited to completing the task and filters out anything that does not promote progress.
- Aversion to interruptions: Unexpected distractions are more annoying when a person is focused.
- Tunnel focus: Users prioritize clarity, speed, and momentum over exploration.
This is why earning clicks is likely more difficult than many advertisers expect. If an ad doesn’t move the user forward with what he or she is trying to achieve, the ad will feel irrelevant, even if it is related to the topic.
Add to this the fact that trust in AI environments is still forming and tolerance for bad or intrusive advertising is becoming even lower.
Dig deeper: Why AI visibility is now a C-suite mandate
Without search volumes, behavior becomes the strategy
For years, search volume has determined how we plan.
Keywords told us what people wanted, how often they liked it and how competitive the demand was. That logic underpinned both the SEO and paid media strategies.
ChatGPT changes that.
People don’t search by keywords. They outsource the thinking. They describe situations, ask layered questions and look for results rather than just information.
There is no query data to optimize on. Instead, success depends on understanding:
- What task is the user trying to perform?
- Which part of the process do they want to outsource to AI?
- What help do they need at that moment?
This is where behavioral insight replaces keyword demand as a strategic foundation.
From keyword intent to behavioral mode targeting
Instead of planning around searches, advertisers should plan around behavioral modes, the mindset a user is in when turning to ChatGPT.
A useful way to think about this is:
- Explore mode: The user forms a perspective or seeks inspiration.
- Ads that work here help people get started, by offering ideas and options or reframing the problem.
- Reduce mode: The user simplifies and limits the choices. Effective ads reduce effort by clarifying differences and highlighting relevant trade-offs.
- Confirm mode: The user is looking for reassurance. This is where trust matters most: evidence, reviews, guarantees and credible signals.
- Operation mode: The user wants to complete the task. Ads that remove friction perform best and clearly state price, availability, delivery, and next steps.
These modes closely reflect the human motivations that we already recognize in search behavior: building perspective, informing, reassuring and simplifying.
The difference is that ChatGPT compresses these moments into a single interface.
In ChatGPT, relevance is functional, not topical
An important shift that advertisers need to internalize is that relevance in ChatGPT is not about being related. It’s about being useful.
An ad can be perfectly tailored to a category and still fail if it doesn’t help the user complete their task.
In a task environment, anything that creates extra work or distracts from the goal feels like friction. This means that the creative rules change.
High-performing ads are likely to behave less like traditional ads and more like:
- Tools.
- Templates.
- Guides.
- Checklists.
- Shortcuts.
- Decision aids.
They fit into the flow of the user’s activity.
Generic brand ads, pure awareness messages, and content that feels like a detour are likely to underperform.
Dig deeper: How CMOs should think about discovery in an AI-first world
Useful content becomes the bridge between channels
The same tools that make a strong ChatGPT ad – how-to guides, frameworks, calculators, explainers and reassuring content – also do much more than just support paid performance.
They build authority for SEO and generative optimization, earn coverage and credibility through digital PR, and strengthen brand trust through social and owned channels.
This is where silos start to undermine performance.
Paid media teams can’t individually create “helpful ads” when SEO teams work with authority, PR teams build trust signals, and brand teams shape their voice independently. In AI-led discovery, these signals come together.
The most effective ads can borrow from:
- Brand voice for clarity and consistency.
- Trusted voice through reviews, experts or third-party validation.
- Amplified voice through media attention and recognizable authority.
The line between advertising, content and credibility is becoming increasingly blurred.
The measurement needs a reset
If you judge ChatGPT ads based solely on click-through rate, you risk missing their true impact.
In many cases, these ads can influence decisions without being immediately clicked. They can help a brand get shortlisted, feel more secure, or be remembered when the user returns later through another channel.
More meaningful indicators could be:
- Inclusion on the shortlist.
- Brand reminder.
- Supported conversions.
- Improving brand searches.
- Immediate traffic improvement.
- Downstream conversion increase.
This reinforces the need for teams to work more closely together. If performance is distributed across the entire journey, so too should be measurement and accountability.
Dig deeper: Google searches per US user down nearly 20%
The brands that win will understand behavior best
This isn’t just a new ad format. We see a change in behavior.
The brands that have the best chance of success won’t be the ones that move the fastest or spend the most money. They will be the ones who understand:
- What people actually use ChatGPT for.
- Which moments of the journey are outsourced to AI.
- How to support those moments without breaking trust.
A practical starting point is to return to the ‘jobs to be done’ thinking. Map the actions that take place before someone buys, requests, or makes a commitment, and identify where AI reduces effort, uncertainty, or complexity.
From there, the question becomes more powerful than “how do we advertise here?”:
How can we be truly helpful when it matters?
That mindset will determine performance not only in ChatGPT, but in the broader future of AI-led discovery. And in that world, behavioral intent will be much more important than keywords ever have been.
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