Marketing & Growth

Should founders advertise inside AI platforms like ChatGPT?

ChatGPT ads went from a $200K enterprise pilot to open self-serve with no minimum spend in under three months of 2026, and roughly a fifth of ChatGPT queries carry commercial intent, so early CPCs on high-intent conversations look attractive. But attribution is immature, results are unproven at scale, and Perplexity walked away from ads entirely over trust concerns, so treat it as a small experimental line, not a Meta replacement. Watch it closely: being early on a new high-intent channel is historically where small advertisers win.

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19 resources.

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Also in Starting Up

The same ground, over in Grow & market, our Starting Up track.

What growth metrics should I actually track as an early-stage startup? 3 → Should I even be running paid ads at this stage? 2 →
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