Graphite and Similarweb published “The State of ChatGPT Ads” on 28 September, and it breaks out ChatGPT ad CTR by country. According to Search Engine Journal’s reading of the report, click-through rates across the nine live markets run from 1.91% in Brazil down to 0.60% in New Zealand, with the US sitting near the bottom at 0.73%. OpenAI’s own help center FAQ still tells advertisers the platform “does not yet have performance benchmarks across advertisers, industries, or campaign types.”
A User Panel, Not Ad-Server Logs
The CTR figures come from Similarweb’s user panel, which Graphite describes as “one of the few independent sources of market-wide data for ChatGPT ads, covering reach, CTR, and ad placement across all nine live markets.” That is a different source than an advertiser’s own dashboard: a panel observes what a sample of users see and click, not what any single advertiser’s ads earned in impressions or spend. Similarweb’s methodology discloses percentages and shares only; panel volumes are not disclosed, so there is no way to check the sample size behind any of the nine figures.
OpenAI’s FAQ backs up the gap directly, telling advertisers that results “will depend on factors such as campaign objective, creative, landing page experience, relevance to the user, and overall setup” rather than pointing them to a published rate. ChatGPT Ads remains in beta, billed by objective (Views, Clicks, or Conversions), with self-serve access through Ads Manager Beta.
Nine Markets, Nine Different Windows
The report, as summarized by SEJ, gives all-time CTR for Free and Go users, measured from each market’s first week of data through 16 September: Brazil 1.91%, Mexico 1.55%, Japan 1.53%, South Korea 1.21%, Canada 0.75%, the UK 0.74%, the US 0.73%, Australia 0.67%, and New Zealand 0.60%. The catch is that “each has between five and 25 weeks of data” — the nine windows don’t line up, so the rates are not measured over the same stretch of time, and the report does not say how that affects the comparison.
The nine markets are also the report’s entire coverage. OpenAI says ChatGPT Ads now runs in more than 60 countries, including a Southeast Asia and Taiwan rollout on 23 September, and 31 European markets opened in August. None of the European or Southeast Asian markets show up in Graphite’s per-market breakdown.
| Market | All-time CTR |
|---|---|
| Brazil | 1.91% |
| Mexico | 1.55% |
| Japan | 1.53% |
| South Korea | 1.21% |
| Canada | 0.75% |
| United Kingdom | 0.74% |
| United States | 0.73% |
| Australia | 0.67% |
| New Zealand | 0.60% |
Figures as reported by Search Engine Journal’s reading of the Graphite/Similarweb report, 29 September.
What Is ChatGPT Ad CTR by Market?
ChatGPT ad CTR by market is the number of clicks per ad-bearing reply, pooled across every advertiser running in that country and measured through a third-party user panel rather than OpenAI’s own ad logs. The report, as summarized by SEJ, calculates it as clicks per “ad-bearing exchange,” where an exchange is one user message plus ChatGPT’s response. It is a single blended number per country, not a rate tied to any advertiser, creative, or campaign.
Where the Advertisers Are
Category share tells a related story about who is buying. B2B SaaS took 19.9% of US ChatGPT ad impressions between 30 March and 4 August, across 1,210 advertisers led by Monday.com. Retail and Consumer Brands placed second at 10.4%, with 1,510 advertisers led by Home Depot. Graphite, as quoted by SEJ, writes that retail and ecommerce advertisers “have been largely absent from the platform,” and ties that to product feeds that didn’t fit ChatGPT’s chat format. Feeds matter on the organic side too: since ChatGPT’s shopping answers shifted to product feeds, fewer merchants get referenced.
The Panel Number Isn’t Your Benchmark
Because the published rate pools clicks across every advertiser in a market, it cannot show one advertiser whether its own campaign is over- or under-performing. SEJ makes that point directly: a blended, market-wide CTR is not the same measurement as a single campaign’s click rate, and the two aren’t directly comparable. What an advertiser running ChatGPT ads can check is its own traffic. Tagging every ChatGPT ad landing page with a campaign-specific UTM URL turns “how did this perform” from a guess against someone else’s country average into a number pulled from the advertiser’s own analytics.
Until OpenAI publishes benchmarks of its own, that self-measured number is the one worth comparing against.
