Here's a sentence I didn't expect to write this year: OpenAI is now in the advertising business.

Last week, while most of the industry was still digesting everything that came out of Google Marketing Live 2026, OpenAI quietly launched a self-serve ads manager for ChatGPT. Cost-per-click bidding. Conversion tracking. The works.

That's a big deal. And it changes a few things worth understanding.

ChatGPT Is Now Competing With Google For Your Ad Budget

OpenAI's new Ads Manager lets e-commerce businesses buy placements directly inside ChatGPT conversations. The format is CPC — you bid on placements, users click, you track conversions.

This isn't hypothetical future territory. It's live.

The obvious question is: should you be in there? My honest answer right now is: probably not yet, but watch it closely. ChatGPT ads are very early-stage, the targeting data is thin compared to Google, and the conversion volumes aren't there for most e-commerce businesses. But if you sell anything where people are actively asking AI for recommendations — gifts, tech, home goods, specialist products — it's worth keeping on your radar.

The more important shift is this: for the first time, there's a credible alternative to Google for search-intent advertising. That matters for your strategy even if you never spend a penny on ChatGPT ads.

Google Marketing Live 2026: The Headlines That Actually Matter

Google held its annual marketing event last week, and there was plenty of noise. Here's what I think actually matters for e-commerce businesses.

AI creative should make you stand out, not blend in. Google explicitly said this, which is interesting because it's partly an admission that AI-generated ads have been making everything look the same. Their guidance: use AI tools to scale your creative, but make sure the output is distinctively yours. Brand voice, specific products, real language from your customers — that's what differentiates a good AI-assisted ad from a generic one.

If you're running Performance Max and letting Google generate your creative automatically without feeding it good inputs, this is your nudge to take a closer look.

AI Search is getting more links, not fewer. There's been a lot of panic about AI Overviews replacing organic results. The reality is more nuanced. Google's VP of Search Liz Reid said explicitly that "browsy" exploratory searches — the kind where someone's casually looking at options — still favour showing the full traditional results page. AI Mode is best suited to complex, multi-step queries.

For e-commerce, this is actually reassuring. Product discovery searches may continue generating traditional SERP traffic. It's informational content that's most exposed to AI Overviews eating into organic visits.

Why AI Search Might Be Ignoring Your Content

While we're on the subject of AI search: there's a useful diagnostic framework doing the rounds at the moment that's worth knowing about.

If your content isn't appearing in ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google AI Overviews answers, there are two completely different reasons it might be happening — and they require completely different fixes.

Technical retrieval failure: AI search can't find or access your content at all. Crawlability issues, missing structured data, slow page speed. These are fixable with standard technical SEO.

Content quality failure: AI search can find your content but doesn't consider it authoritative or specific enough to cite. This is a harder problem. It requires genuinely useful, specific, expert content — not keyword-stuffed pages designed for a 2019 algorithm.

Most businesses I speak to assume the problem is technical when it's actually the second one.

Lazy Marketing Doesn't Work Anymore

There's a related point here that ties everything together.

AI-driven search rewards brands with consistent cross-channel presence — aligned messaging, topical authority, structured data, relevant content across platforms. It penalises fragmented campaigns where your Shopping ads say one thing, your organic content says another, and your brand voice changes depending on the channel.

That used to be forgivable. It isn't anymore.

This doesn't mean you need to completely reinvent how you operate. But it does mean that if you've been taking shortcuts — thin product descriptions, mismatched messaging, keyword stuffing — AI search is increasingly likely to deprioritise you in favour of brands that are doing the basics properly.

What To Do With All This

A few practical takeaways from the week:

  1. Keep an eye on ChatGPT Ads — especially if you sell products where people ask AI for recommendations. It's not a priority spend today, but it will be worth testing in the next 12 months.

  2. Review your PMax creative inputs — if you're not giving Google specific product details, brand language, and unique selling points, the AI will fill in the gaps generically. That's the definition of blending in.

  3. Don't panic about AI eating your organic traffic — product discovery searches are still landing on traditional SERPs. Protect your informational content, but don't assume everything is at risk.

  4. Fix the basics first — AI search rewards consistency and authority. If your site structure, product descriptions, and content are a mess, that's a bigger problem than any tactical AI search optimisation.

The pace of change right now is genuinely unusual. But most of the underlying principles — clear messaging, relevant content, well-structured campaigns — haven't changed. AI is just making the consequences of ignoring them more immediate.

Peter Empson runs Rok Systems, a Google Ads consultancy for e-commerce businesses. If you want someone who actually reads this stuff so you don't have to, get in touch.