ChatGPT Search and Ads
The two ways a business appears inside ChatGPT, run as one programme. The earned half is being the company ChatGPT names when a buyer asks it who to call, which comes down to whether the facts about your business are published somewhere it can read them, stated consistently, and structured so a clean sentence can be lifted straight out. The paid half is ChatGPT's advertising, which OpenAI opened to self-serve advertisers in 2026 and which is live in Canada: sponsored placements shown to free-tier users beneath a relevant answer, matched to the context of the conversation rather than to a keyword somebody typed. The two are not interchangeable. The recommendation is the one people trust and the one you cannot buy; the placement is the one you can turn on this week. Most businesses should be doing both, and should know which of the two produced any given enquiry.
Scoped to you
From $450 a month
Monthly work from $450, fixed-scope projects from $1,499, and builds quoted individually. Tell us what you need and you'll have scope, timeline, and the full number back within 24 hours, before any work begins.
Who it's for
- Businesses whose customers have started asking an assistant before they search
- Companies that rank on Google but never get named when ChatGPT is asked the same question
- Advertisers whose Google costs per lead have climbed to the point where a new channel is worth testing
- Anyone whose competitor is already being cited in the answer they should be in
What's included
- A baseline audit: what ChatGPT says today when asked to recommend a business like yours, and who it names instead
- Content restructured to be extracted and quoted: direct answers, plain facts, no throat-clearing before the point
- Entity and citation work: your name, address, phone, services, and claims stated identically everywhere an assistant can read them
- Structured data and llms.txt, so the machine reading your site does not have to infer what you do
- ChatGPT Ads setup in OpenAI's Ads Manager: account, objectives, budgets, and geographic targeting
- Context-led ad briefs, written for the conversations you want to appear in rather than the keywords you would bid on
- Ad copy and creative to the platform's card format, with landing pages that match the promise made in the answer
- Monthly reporting on citation share, ad spend, cost per enquiry, and which of the two channels produced the lead
Our approach
- 01
Baseline
We run a fixed set of buying-intent prompts for your category and city, and record who ChatGPT names, who it links, and where you do not appear at all.
- 02
Earn the mention
Content, structured data, and citations rebuilt so the facts about your business are readable, consistent, and quotable. That is the work that makes a recommendation possible.
- 03
Buy the placement
Campaigns built in OpenAI's Ads Manager against the conversations your buyers are actually having, with budgets set small enough that a test costs what a test should.
- 04
Read the result
The same prompts re-run on schedule, ad performance beside them, and spend moved toward whichever half is producing enquiries.
What to expect
Your business named, and ideally linked, when a buyer asks ChatGPT for a recommendation in your category
A live presence on an ad surface most of your competitors have not opened an account on
Content and structured data that pay off across every assistant, not only this one
A monthly read on citation share and cost per enquiry, so the channel is judged on enquiries rather than novelty
Fees, spend and ownership, in plain terms
You pay us a management fee. Your ad budget is paid by you, directly to OpenAI, on your own account, and we never mark it up or take a percentage of it.
Management is month to month with 30 days notice. There is no minimum term and no cancellation fee.
The ad account, its history and its conversion data are yours, from the first day and after we stop.
Landing pages we build for the campaigns are yours once paid for, code included.
Every figure we quote is before HST, which is added at 13% on Canadian invoices.
ChatGPT Search & Ads questions we get asked
Can you actually buy ads inside ChatGPT?
Yes. OpenAI opened a self-serve Ads Manager to advertisers in 2026 and Canada is one of the supported markets, so a local business can run placements without a large minimum commitment. Ads are labelled, sit beneath the answer rather than inside it, and are shown to free-tier users. Paying ChatGPT subscribers do not see them. The platform is still young and its formats and controls are changing month to month, which is a reason to test it deliberately rather than a reason to avoid it.
How is this different from the AI SEO service?
AI SEO covers earned visibility across every assistant (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Copilot, and Google's AI Overviews) as one programme alongside ranking on Google. This service goes deep on the one platform that now has both the largest audience and an ad product, so it adds the paid half: campaigns, creative, budgets, and attribution. If you only want to be found without paying for it, take AI SEO. If ChatGPT is where your buyers already are and you want both halves of that surface, take this.
Does buying ChatGPT ads make ChatGPT recommend me?
No, and anyone telling you otherwise is guessing. The sponsored placement and the recommendation inside the answer are separate systems, and paying for one does not buy the other, which is exactly why we run them together rather than selling the ads on their own. The ad buys you attention this month. The content, citation, and structured-data work is what earns the mention that keeps arriving after you stop paying.
How do you target an ad when nobody typed a keyword?
You describe the situation rather than the search. ChatGPT matches ads against the context of the conversation, what the person is trying to do rather than a string they entered, so the brief is written as the moments where your business is the right answer, plus geography and budget. It behaves less like a search auction and more like a very well-targeted contextual buy, and the creative has to earn a click on relevance rather than on being the top result.
Is it too early for a small local business to bother?
For the ads, it is early, and we would rather say so: costs and formats are still moving and the audience is the free tier. For the earned half, it is late. Assistants are already answering "who should I call in Mississauga for this" and naming somebody. The honest sequence for most local businesses is to do the visibility work first, because it compounds and costs nothing per click, then run a small, capped ad test beside it and judge it on enquiries.
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