ChatGPT Ads and Black Friday - Why the Best Opportunity Starts After the Peak
This is the first Black Friday with ads in ChatGPT. They launched in the US early this year and arrived in the UK early in the summer, and UK brands have been able to buy them directly through OpenAI's own Ads Manager since then. Nobody has run them through a Q4 peak yet, so this is new territory for everyone.
If you're already running them and seeing some promising results, keep going. You have a baseline to compare performance against, and you’ll be part of a small band of ads pioneers! If you haven't started yet, it might be tempting to switch them on for the biggest sales week of the year, however, we'd wait. We've been running ChatGPT Ads since the summer, and we think there's a real opportunity here for D2C brands, but the best time to start isn't Black Friday, it's straight after.
WHY BLACK FRIDAY IS A HARD WAY TO START
Any new channel needs a period of learning - what it costs, who it reaches, and what it adds on top of what you already run. BFCM makes all three harder to read.
There's no baseline. Over the peak, sales rise across every channel because of the offers, not just the ads. A new channel launched that week will look busy whatever it's really adding, and with no normal weeks behind it, there's nothing to compare it against.
It's a third platform counting the same sales. Meta and Google can already overlap in what they claim, and with high volume, that overlap has the potential to be even worse over BFCM. Adding a new platform with its own reporting makes your blended numbers harder to untangle in exactly the week you most need them clear.
Your attention is elsewhere. A new channel needs watching and adjusting while it finds its feet. Peak Q4 is unlikely to be the best time for that.
WHY STRAIGHT AFTER THE PEAK IS A STRONG TIME TO START
People keep researching after Black Friday
ChatGPT is where many people go to research the finer details of a purchase - comparing options, narrowing choices, deciding what fits etc. That doesn't stop on Cyber Monday. Christmas gift research goes through December until the last delivery day, the holiday period provides the opportunity for screen time on the sofa, and January brings its own wave of decisions. For many beauty, wellness and fashion brands, "new year, new routine" is exactly the kind of querying people now take to ChatGPT.
You get a clearer view on what it adds
Outside of the peak, you can see what ChatGPT Ads actually do for your brand. What a new customer costs, how that compares with Meta and Google, and whether your overall numbers move. That's the evidence you need before deciding how big a part of next year's plan it should be.
Q4 gives you more to work with
Black Friday and Christmas are likely to bring in more new customers than any other time of year, so your customer list going into January is the biggest and freshest it will be all year. ChatGPT Ads support custom audiences, so those lists become something to build on. You can keep recent buyers out of campaigns meant to find new customers, and bring Q4 customers back for a second order, which can be a tough conversion. Starting just after the peak means that data is ready to go.
It's still early
New ad channels rarely stay quiet for long. Brands that start while there are fewer advertisers learn what works in their category before it gets crowded. It is an experiment, but January is a calmer time to run one, and by later in the year you'll know whether it has earned a place in your strategy.
The early signs point to new customers
The early numbers are still thin. Most come from tracking tools that work in partnership with OpenAI and were published by OpenAI itself, so they're not fully independent, and brands with weaker results are unlikely to have been showcased, so treat them as encouraging rather than proven. But they point the same way, Triple Whale reported that 93% of one leather goods brand's visitors from ChatGPT Ads were new. In an incrementality study by WorkMagic, 67% of a wellness brand's extra purchases came from net-new customers. For brands whose growth depends on finding new customers rather than re-selling to existing ones, that's a good thing to be testing.
You can track it yourself
OpenAI now supports a Conversions API and works with attribution tools that many D2C brands already use, including Triple Whale and Northbeam, but you don't need any of those tools to get clear reporting yourself. Add UTM tags to the links in your ChatGPT ads, and GA4 will show the visits and sales they bring in, alongside every other channel and separate from ChatGPT's own reporting. As with other platforms, ChatGPT also sends free traffic when it mentions brands in its answers, and without tags the paid and free visits blur together. Set it up before your first campaign goes live, so your numbers are clean from the start.
HOW TO PREPARE FOR SUCCESSFUL CAMPAIGNS
Use the run-up to BFCM to get the groundwork in place. Product feed, pixel and Conversions API can take time to set up properly. Doing it in November or December means you can launch in January without starting from scratch.
Give it its own budget and a fair window. Judge it over weeks, not days. A new channel needs time to learn before its numbers become meaningful.
Decide what success looks like before you start. Agree on the cost per new customer target and how you'll judge it alongside Meta and Google.
Judge it on what it adds, not what its dashboard claims. Watch your blended return and new-customer numbers across everything you run. If they improve when ChatGPT Ads are on, that's a positive signal. With your ad links tagged, GA4 lets you check this alongside your other channels, rather than relying solely on ChatGPT's dashboard.
GOT A QUESTION ABOUT CHATGTP ADS?
Are you thinking about these for the new year? If you’ve got a question or a doubt you’d like to run past us, you can drop us a line here. Alternatively, if you’d prefer a call with us both, you can book below.
Interested more articles to support a successful Black Friday?
Beyond Black Friday: What Your Discount Strategy Costs You Next Year
Your AI-Referred Traffic Will Bypass Your Homepage This Black Friday. Is Your Product Page Ready?
What Founders Should Watch in Their Meta and Google Ads Over Black Friday