Tracking ChatGPT Ads
ChatGPT has started showing sponsored placements inside its answers. When someone asks for a recommendation in your category, a paid ad can sit alongside the answer that decides who gets the click.
Zerply now records those ads. Every time one of your tracked prompts runs on ChatGPT, Zerply reads the sponsored blocks in the answer and stores the creative: the advertiser, the headline, the description, the image, and the link the ad points to.
You do not have to turn anything on. If ChatGPT is one of your tracked platforms, ad capture runs with your normal daily prompt runs.
What changes on your dashboard
Section titled “What changes on your dashboard”Open AI Visibility from the sidebar and go to Home. Three places are new.
The Ad placements tile. A tile in the KPI strip at the top of the page shows how many sponsored placements Zerply saw in the selected date range, including when the count is zero. Click it to jump straight to the Ads card.
The Ads card. Scroll past the Latest Answers feed and you will find a card titled Ads. Each ad shows as its own card with the advertiser domain, the headline, a preview of the description, the ChatGPT logo, and a badge telling you who the advertiser is. Under that you get a count of how many times Zerply saw the ad and the date it was last seen.
The same ad usually runs across many prompts and many days. Zerply groups repeats into one card and counts them, so a long list stays readable.
An Ads badge on answers. Rows in the Latest Answers feed now carry a small orange Ads badge when that answer had sponsored placements in it. Open the answer and the ad creatives appear under the response text, each one badged the same way.
Who the advertiser is
Section titled “Who the advertiser is”Every ad carries one of three badges.
You means the advertiser domain matches your team domain. Your own paid placement showed up next to your tracked prompt.
Competitor means the domain matches one of the competitors you track in Zerply.
Other means someone else is bidding on the question. Often a review site, a marketplace, or a brand you have not added to your competitor list yet.
Zerply works this out fresh each time you load the page, against your current team domain and your current competitor list. Add a competitor today and every ad Zerply has already recorded for that domain is relabelled as a competitor ad, including ads from months ago.
Filtering the Ads card
Section titled “Filtering the Ads card”Two controls sit above the ad cards.
The platform row filters by the AI platform the ad appeared on, with a count next to each name. ChatGPT is the only platform serving ads today, so you will usually see All and ChatGPT with the same number.
The advertiser dropdown filters by badge. Pick All advertisers, Competitor, or Other advertiser. Each option carries its own count, which gives you a fast read on how much of the ad activity around your prompts is competitive.
Ads are sorted by how often Zerply saw them, four to a page, with arrows on the right to page through.
The same Ads card appears on an individual prompt’s page, scoped to that one prompt. Use it when you want to know who is advertising on a single question.
Opening a single ad
Section titled “Opening a single ad”Click any ad card to open a side panel with the full picture.
At the top you get the creative as ChatGPT rendered it. Click it to open the advertiser’s landing page in a new tab and see where the money is pointing.
Under Performance you get six numbers.
First seen and Last seen tell you the life of the creative. A first-seen date from three months ago with a recent last-seen date means a committed, running campaign.
Total seen is how many recorded answers carried this ad in the selected range.
Platforms shows which AI platforms served it.
Scope repeats the You, Competitor, or Other advertiser label.
Share of ad placements is this creative’s slice of every ad Zerply recorded for your team in the range. A competitor sitting at 40% is dominating the paid layer around your category.
Below that, Where this ad appeared gives you the count of answers and the number of unique prompts involved. Top prompts that showed this ad lists the questions that triggered it most, and each one links to its prompt page. Click View answers to get the full list of answers that carried the ad, and open any of them to read the answer with the ad in place.
The Ads column in your Prompts list
Section titled “The Ads column in your Prompts list”Go to AI Visibility and click Prompts. The table has a new Ads column showing how many sponsored placements each prompt attracted. Click the column header to sort.
Sort descending and the top of the list is your set of commercially contested questions. Advertisers pay for attention on those prompts because people asking them are close to buying. Those are the prompts where an organic mention is worth the most and where losing ground costs you the most.
How this helps
Section titled “How this helps”Organic mentions tell you half of the story. If a competitor is paying to sit next to the answer, your mention is sharing the screen with a bought placement, and Zerply can now show you that.
Four things become answerable.
Which of your questions are worth money. The Ads column ranks your prompts by commercial pressure, using what advertisers are willing to pay for rather than a keyword tool’s estimate.
Which competitors are buying. Filter the Ads card to Competitor and you see exactly which rivals are running paid placements against your prompts, what they say in the ad, and where they send the traffic.
What the market thinks the offer should be. Ad headlines and descriptions are the tightest copy a company writes. Reading a competitor’s ads next to your tracked prompts gives you their positioning in fifteen words.
Whether a strong mention is enough. A prompt where you hold a good Share of Voice can still leak clicks if two competitors advertise on it. That combination is the case for your own paid placement.
Asking about ads through MCP
Section titled “Asking about ads through MCP”If you have connected ChatGPT, Claude, or Cursor to Zerply through MCP, ad data is available there too. Ask for the ads on your prompts over a date range, or for the detail on one creative, and your client will pull it from Zerply and answer in the chat.
What comes next
Section titled “What comes next”Ads tell you where the commercial pressure sits. Signals takes your full visibility picture and turns it into an evidence-backed brief every two weeks, with the specific actions worth taking next.