AI search now has a paid layer.
Until now, AI search strategies have focused on two pillars: onsite content you own, and offsite authority built through third-party coverage, communities, and social influence. Together, they help your brand earn visibility inside AI answers.
Paid is now the third pillar.
ChatGPT Ads launched their initial pilot in February 2026, and reached $1 billion in annualized revenue run rate in less than 200 days. AirOps research reflected a similar uptick across key industries we monitored, including seeing ChatGPT ads appearing in 0% of answers to more than 50% in three months, a 113x increase in AI ad load.
The introduction of this new growth channel makes AI discovery more cross-functional than ever. AI ads bring performance marketers into the mix, requiring them to work alongside SEO/AEO teams who shape the website, communications teams building authority across third-party publishers, and social teams working with communities and creators. What may have started as an AEO initiative is now a broader growth strategy that CMOs need every part of the marketing organization to shape together.
The newest growth channel in AI search is still a black box
Performance marketers are eager to test the newest channel, because they are under pressure to improve the performance of their traditional paid channels. In AirOps’ 2026 Marketing Leaders Reality Index, 46.9% of marketing leaders reported rising CAC across paid channels, and another 36.1% reported declining organic traffic. The channels that have carried digital growth are getting harder to scale as AI reshapes how buyers discover brands.
However, performance marketers face an immediate problem experimenting with the newest channel. ChatGPT Ads provide very little context about where an ad ran. The platform reports campaign performance without showing which prompts triggered an ad, which conversations carried it, or which competitors appeared in those same moments.
That leaves performance marketers with a channel they are expected to test, but very little data to optimize. They cannot tell whether their ads are reaching the right conversations, identify gaps in coverage, or refine their context hints based on where campaigns actually appear. And then when they are ready to build the creative, and create and launch the campaigns, they have to use an entirely different set of tools to do that.
With the launch of AI Ads, AirOps closes these gaps. Teams can see where their ads and competitors appear across tracked prompts, get a full view of the other ads that are running in their space, build and execute their own creative and campaigns, and then see how the campaigns are performing. Performance marketers can implement AI ads with the context they expect from established paid channels while keeping paid aligned with their onsite and offsite strategy.
The end-to-end workflow for AI Ads
Starting with ChatGPT Ads, AI Ads in AirOps brings intelligence, action, and measurement into one connected system.
See where AI ads are shaping your market with Insights
Most teams first encounter paid ads through isolated screenshots or by reviewing their own account. That leaves major gaps. They cannot see how often ads appear across priority prompts, which competitors are investing, or how paid might support an organic visibility gap.
AI Ads Insights monitors live ChatGPT answers across the prompts your brand already tracks. When an ad appears, you can see the advertiser, the creative, and the conversation where it showed up.
The Market view turns those observations into intelligence you can use:
- Ad Load % shows the share of tracked ChatGPT answers containing at least one ad.
- Paid Share of Voice shows how often your brand and defined competitors appear across observed ads.
- Topic and competitor views reveal where paid activity is concentrating across your market.
- Answer-level details show the ad copy and structure appearing inside specific conversations.
This gives your team a clearer read on the market. You can see who is moving first and decide where paid can strengthen your broader AI search strategy.
Track the ads shaping your category with Ads Library
One ad does not tell you much. Seeing how placements repeat over time does. AirOps Ads Library collects the unique ads observed across your tracked prompts, so your team can follow its own ads and the competitor creative shaping your category.
Use it to understand:
- Which messages and offers competitors are testing
- Which conversations each ad is targeting
- How frequently an ad appears across AI answers
- Whether a placement is persistent or part of a short-lived test
- Which brands are producing the most creative variants
See the list in a copy-focused view that makes it easy to read the headlines and compare messaging, or in a gallery view that leads with the ad creative, making it easier to spot patterns and figure out where to dig in deeper.
Turn what you learn into ads you can run
Once you can see the market clearly, the next question is what to do about it.
Ads Actions brings that intelligence into the same system where your brand context and execution workflows already live. Teams can use Playbooks to create, edit, and update ads based on the paid market signals they see in AirOps.
Your Brand Kit keeps every ad aligned with your positioning and writing rules. AirOps uses the market context you have gathered to inform what your team creates next.
In practice:
- Identify a high-value conversation where paid activity is growing.
- Review the ads and competitors already appearing there.
- Create or update an ad using your Brand Kit and the relevant market context.
- Update the ad as new market and performance data comes in.
Connect campaign results to real market signals
Connect your ChatGPT ads account to bring spend, impressions, clicks, CTR, CPC, and CPM into AirOps. Compare campaign performance with activity across the market to see which ads are working and how the competitive landscape is changing.
Run AI Ads in AirOps today
AI Ads is available today in the AirOps platform for all customers on the Enterprise plan. Find it in the Ads section of the Insights tab.
If you’re interested in learning more about how our AI ads experts can help set up the channel, choose the first opportunities to pursue, and support campaign execution and measurement, talk to our team today.
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