A paid visit from ChatGPT brought in an average of $0.89 in revenue per session in American traffic, while a paid visit from Google Search brought $2.45. The data comes from a working paper by Maximilian Kaiser (Vienna University of Economics and Business) and Christian Schulze (Frankfurt School of Finance and Management), version 1, dated October 2026.
The researchers used data from 1,898 online stores over 60 weeks that showed traffic and sales. Of them, 387 sites received visits from paid ChatGPT ads, and 102 had complete financial reporting. The conversion rate for paid ChatGPT traffic was 0.37% against 1.17% for Google Search, and the average order was $74 smaller.
The gap holds within the same stores. Of 87 advertisers that bought both channels in the US, 97% got less revenue from a ChatGPT visit than from a search visit, and 98% converted worse.
ChatGPT ads launched in the US on February 9, 2026. They were then switched on in Australia, Canada and New Zealand (April 16), in the United Kingdom (June 4), in Japan and Korea (June 19), and in Brazil and Mexico (August 4 and 6). Ads appeared in EU countries on August 24, after the study's observation window had closed. The revenue figures refer to American traffic, where the impressions in this sample were concentrated, so they cannot be transferred to other markets without caveats.
OpenAI has reported $1 billion in annual ad revenue. Kaiser and Schulze translate that into roughly $1 per free user per year, while an estimate based on OpenAI's figures puts the cost of free access at about $5 per user per year. In their view, current ad results are not enough to cover the cost of free access. For media buyers, this means revenue per click has to grow faster than traffic prices, or the channel stays more expensive than search.
The paper is under peer review, and the final version has not been published yet. The authors themselves note that advertisers chose whether to buy ChatGPT Ads, so the comparison is descriptive and does not prove causation.
