Adthena is now tracking more than 50,000 ChatGPT ad placements every day across 600+ advertisers. The monitoring covers 300,000 daily prompts, giving the clearest picture yet of how the AI search advertising market is actually forming.
ChatGPT ads launched on February 9 for logged-in users on Free and Go tiers. Limited to the US for now, but the pace of adoption has outrun most predictions. Impressions surged 600% between early and mid-March according to Sensor Tower data.
ChatGPT ad impression growth from early to mid-March 2026
Who is winning the early placements
Retail and grocery brands dominated, accounting for 44% of early placements. That is not surprising. These categories have the highest purchase-intent query volume and the most mature paid search operations to port across.
Adthena also launched AdBridge, a free migration wizard that ports existing Google Ads campaigns into ChatGPT Ads format in minutes. The tool maps keywords, ad copy and bidding logic into ChatGPT's prompt-matching system. For advertisers already running Google search, the barrier to entry just dropped to near zero.
Why it matters
This is not a beta curiosity anymore. At 50,000 placements a day and 600 brands in the system, ChatGPT advertising is forming its own competitive landscape. Share of voice is being established right now while most advertisers are still debating whether to test.
The data also reveals that prompt-based ad matching works differently from keyword matching. Brand queries and high-intent product questions trigger ads most reliably. Broad informational prompts do not. That distinction will shape creative strategy for anyone entering this channel.
What to do about it
The full rollout beyond the US has not been announced, but Australian advertisers should be building the muscle memory now. When the gates open, the brands already running will have months of optimisation data that latecomers cannot buy.
