How Often ChatGPT Ads Are Irrelevant to a Conversation

Key Takeaways

A third of ads served inside ChatGPT (33%) have no connection to the conversation they appear in, while 67% match either the prompt's theme or the wider conversation topic with the chatbot.
Irrelevancy varies by conversation topic, as just 4% of ads in travel planning chats are unrelated, compared with 52% in creative and writing chats.
Over two-thirds of ads (68%) appear in conversations where the user shows no sign of wanting to buy, book, hire, or compare anything.

OpenAI began selling ads inside ChatGPT in February 2026, placing brands inside the conversations where people ask for help.

This graphic shows how often those ads match the conversation, using Searchable's analysis of more than 11,000 ads served in real ChatGPT conversations in the U.S. and UK between July 4 and August 4, 2026.

Each ad is graded as a direct match to the theme of the conversation or unrelated, with plausible themes counted as a match if they relate to at least one of the previous prompts used in a conversation window.

Ads Work Best When a Chat Looks Like a Search

Ad targeting is more accurate when people use ChatGPT like more traditional search querying, with only 4% of ads in travel planning conversations and 13% in shopping research being unrelated.

It struggles across most other uses. About half of ads in creative and writing (52%) and personal and emotional (52%) conversations miss the theme entirely, as do 45% in general knowledge questions.

Buying intent is the strongest predictor of a correct match. When users are shopping, 61% of ads match a conversation's theme directly. When they aren't, 46% are unrelated.

This represents a challenge for advertisers, in that most AI chatbot conversations don't follow conversational buyer conventions.