Marketing when customers ask ChatGPT instead of searching

For twenty years, a customer who wanted a good wool coat typed a few words into a search box and chose from a page of links. More and more, they now ask an assistant a full question and read one answer.

The scale is no longer in doubt. OpenAI said in August 2026 that ChatGPT had more than a billion weekly users.¹ A study of how people use it, by OpenAI and Harvard researchers, found that seeking information grew from 14% to 24% of all use in a single year. The authors describe that category, which includes looking up products, as “a very close substitute for web search”.²

Shoppers are part of this. In McKinsey's survey of US consumers in early 2026, 68% had used at least one AI tool in the previous three months, and about one in five had used AI to discover or decide on brands, products or services.³

It is tempting to say that search is dying. The evidence does not support that. In 2024 the research firm Gartner predicted that traditional search volume would fall 25% by 2026.⁴ Yet Google told investors in October 2026 that its growth in queries was the highest in five years, and that its AI Mode had passed a billion monthly users.⁵⁶

Both can be true, because what has changed is what happens after the question. People are still asking. They are getting the answer on the page and going no further.

The Pew Research Center tracked the browsing of 900 American adults and found that when Google showed an AI summary, people clicked on a search result in 8% of visits. When there was no summary, they clicked in 15%.⁷ The SEO software company Ahrefs, looking at 300,000 search terms, found that an AI summary went with a 58% lower click rate for the top-ranked page.⁸

The customer still asks the question. The difference is that the answer no longer sends them to ten websites to find out.

For a brand, this means the first impression is increasingly formed inside the answer, in words the brand did not write.

There is good news in the same data. People who click through from an AI assistant have usually done their research already, and they behave like it.

Adobe, which measures traffic across US retail websites, reported that in September 2026 visits from AI sources were up 71% on the year before. Those visitors converted 90% better than other traffic and produced 83% more revenue per visit. A year earlier, the same kind of traffic had converted 9% worse.⁹

Two cautions. This is still a small share of all visits; Adobe itself described the base of users as modest at the start of the year.¹⁰ And Adobe sells tools in this area. But the direction, from worse-than-average to much better in twelve months, is the notable part.

The public data so far is from retail. The same shift applies to any business whose customers research before they buy, whether that is software, travel, finance or a professional service.

Until 2026, there was no way to pay to appear in ChatGPT. That has changed quickly.

OpenAI began testing ads in the United States in February 2026, for adults on its free and lowest-priced plans.¹¹ The company set out its rules in advance: ads are separate from the answer and clearly labelled, and they “do not influence the answers ChatGPT gives you”. They appear at the bottom of an answer when there is a relevant sponsored product, and are kept away from sensitive subjects such as health and politics.¹²¹¹

By the end of August, OpenAI said the ads were running in more than forty countries, had reached an annual revenue rate of $1 billion in under 200 days, and were being bought by tens of thousands of advertisers. A self-service tool for small and medium-sized businesses opened in May.¹ These are the company's own figures.

Buying inside the chat has been less settled. OpenAI launched a checkout feature in September 2025 that let people buy from some merchants without leaving the conversation.¹³ In March 2026 it was reported to have scaled this back, with purchases moving into merchants' own apps.¹⁴ For now, the assistant is where people decide and your own site is where they buy.

An assistant's description of your product is assembled from what it can read. Much of that is not your website.

An analysis of 30 million sources cited in AI answers, by the tracking company Peec AI, found that the most-cited sites were third parties: Reddit, YouTube, LinkedIn and Wikipedia. For ChatGPT, the top five were Wikipedia, Reddit, Forbes, TechRadar and LinkedIn.¹⁵ These rankings shift from study to study, and the company sells software in this area, but the general point is consistent across the research: assistants lean on what other people say about a brand.

That is closer to public relations than to the search optimisation of the last decade. Reviews, press coverage and honest discussion in communities are what an assistant draws on when someone asks whether what you sell is any good.

1. 01Ask the assistants about yourself. Once a month, ask ChatGPT and Google's AI Mode the questions your customers would ask: the best product in your category, how you compare with a competitor, whether you are worth the price. Note what is wrong or missing.
2. 02Make your own site plain. State what each product or service is, who it is for, what it costs and what proof stands behind it, in ordinary text on the page. An assistant cannot repeat a fact that is only in a photograph.
3. 03Keep the facts the same everywhere. Prices, specifications and claims should match across your site, your listings elsewhere and your press material. Contradictions are how wrong answers start.
4. 04Earn real reviews and coverage. They are what assistants read. Fake reviews are illegal in the UK and the US, and they are also exactly what you do not want quoted back to a customer.
5. 05Test the ads while it is early. A small, measured test in ChatGPT tells you whether your customers are there, before the space is crowded.
6. 06Measure it separately. Track visits and sales from AI sources as their own line, so you can see the trend for your own brand.

Sponsored answers in ChatGPT are one of the three channels Lightvector makes for, alongside paid social and email, from the same record of the brand.