mdg has been running paid placements inside OpenAI as part of an early access beta through StackAdapt. That access has now expanded, and the placement is open to U.K. advertisers as of June 4. Here’s what we learned during the beta so you can hit the ground running.
The ad unit itself is more minimal than most people expect. You get 30 characters for a headline and 60 for a description, which is closer to writing a text message than a display campaign. If your creative team is used to having space to work with, they’ll need to adjust their thinking upfront, because there’s no room for nuance or extended value propositions here.
What the Data Showed
Click-through rates landed between 0.8% and 1%, which is a reasonable number for a new channel, but CTR wasn’t the figure we were watching most closely. What stood out was how many of those visitors were genuinely net new — people who hadn’t arrived through our clients’ existing channels before.
For event marketers trying to grow their audience rather than recirculate the same names every year, that distinction matters quite a lot. Google is effective at reaching people who already know you exist; this reached people who didn’t.
Once they arrived on to the site, those visitors didn’t just browse and leave. Engagement metrics and event completions tracked closely with what we typically see from Google Ads traffic, which suggested these were qualified visitors rather than people clicking out of curiosity.
Things Worth Being Honest About
CPMs are higher than Google — significantly so — and that needs to be part of any honest budget conversation. It’s not a reason to avoid the channel, but it is a reason to be deliberate about how you structure a test, particularly while you’re still building a picture of what good performance looks like.
The removal of the minimum spend threshold does at least mean you can run something meaningful without committing serious budget from the outset.
There’s also a fair question about how much of the strong CTR is being driven by novelty. Fewer advertisers, less saturation, a context that users aren’t used to yet — those things probably play a role, and they won’t last indefinitely. The creative constraint is worth taking seriously too.
A limit of 30 characters is enough for a high-intent intercept when someone is already looking for something specific, but it’s not a format built for storytelling or sustained brand building at scale.
One Thing People Always Ask
Running ads inside OpenAI doesn’t improve how your event shows up in organic LLM responses — there’s no measurable connection between paid spend and how the LLM references your brand. If anyone suggests otherwise, it’s worth pushing back on that assumption directly.
The Bigger Picture
The launch of OpenAI ads is a useful prompt to think more seriously about how your organization shows up inside AI tools in general. Paid placements are one piece of that picture, but the more foundational work involves making sure your events and brand are referenced well when someone asks an AI assistant for a recommendation — which is less about advertising and more about content strategy and authority signals. We’re already working through both sides of that with clients.
Measurement is still catching up with this channel too. Conversion tracking isn’t live yet on the beta, and increasingly the path from an AI interaction to a real-world decision isn’t a clean, trackable click. Getting comfortable with that ambiguity is an adjustment to start making now.
Where This Leaves You
mdg ran these campaigns while access was still restricted to a small group, which means we’re in a position to help clients move with a meaningful head start. The placement is now open, the minimum spend barrier is gone, and if new audience acquisition is a priority for your events this year, a structured test is worth considering.
If you want to talk through what that looks like for your specific campaigns, we’re ready when you are. And for U.K. advertisers, this is now available through StackAdapt from June 4.
