175,100 Ads In Google AI Answers; ChatGPT Nears 380,000 Placements

Adthena counted roughly 175,100 paid ad placements inside Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode panels in the U.S. between June and September, alongside 204,489 ChatGPT ad placements across five holiday shopping categories during the same months. The figures come from the vendor's Holiday AI Paid Search Report, released by a company that sells ad tracking for Google and ChatGPT and closes the report with a free-trial offer for its own ChatGPT Ads product — a commercial interest practitioners should weigh when reading the numbers.

Where did Google's AI-panel ads run?

The Google total combines AI Overviews and AI Mode in the U.S. across five categories. Apparel led with approximately 111,000 placements, roughly three in five of the entire count. Consumer electronics followed at about 55,000, travel at roughly 6,500, beauty at about 2,100, and toys and games at around 685.

There are no separate ad buys for these surfaces. Google's Help Page on Ads in AI-Powered Experiences states all existing Search, Shopping and Performance Max campaigns are automatically eligible to appear in AI answers. Advertisers cannot target only AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor opt out of those placements apart from Search. Negative keyword targeting and brand exclusions remain the main levers.

The report also tracked how often AI Overviews appeared in Google results, comparing August 2025 with August 2026. U.S. appearances rose 89%, from 304 million to 575 million. The UK/EU climbed 160% and Australia jumped 536%. The report does not describe the queries behind those counts or confirm the query set stayed constant across both years.

How many advertisers bought ChatGPT ads?

On OpenAI's side, the report counted 204,489 placements from June through September across apparel, consumer electronics, travel, toys and games, and beauty. Adthena's press release frames it more broadly, saying more than 200,000 placements occurred since OpenAI opened ad space to outside buyers.

Apparel again dominated, with 90,517 placements — about 44% of the ChatGPT total. Consumer electronics took 56,569, travel 48,134, toys and games 4,694 and beauty 4,575.

Advertiser counts grew month over month: 1,082 distinct advertisers in June, 3,741 in July and 6,333 in August, with September projected. Toys and games advertisers grew fastest, up thirteenfold from what the company calls a relatively low base. The report says placements covered all markets but does not identify which ones, or whether the monitored markets and queries stayed fixed across the four months — even as OpenAI expanded its footprint. On August 18, OpenAI announced ChatGPT Ads for 31 European countries, launching a week later, and on September 23 it rolled the format out to seven additional Asian markets.

For scale, OpenAI said on October 21 that more than 100,000 advertisers have run campaigns on ChatGPT Ads since the capability opened just over eight months earlier. That figure spans all categories and the full period, so it is not directly comparable to Adthena's monthly counts.

Which ChatGPT prompts carried the ads?

The report groups ChatGPT ads by query type, describing research and discovery queries as "people comparing or asking what's best rather than naming a product." In beauty, 83% of ads ran on those prompts. Travel and toys and games followed at 69% and 67%. Apparel and consumer electronics came in under half, at 48% and 42%. The press release highlights only the beauty, travel and toys data, and the report does not explain how questions were categorized.

What does this mean for practitioners?

Because Google folds searches that trigger AI Overview and AI Mode ads into its standard Search reports, those placements are intermingled in search terms reports — teams auditing performance cannot cleanly isolate them today. On ChatGPT, best-of and comparison prompts carried most observed ads in beauty, travel and toys, and under half of those in apparel and electronics, suggesting where prompt-driven creative matters most.

The report identifies where ads appeared but tracks no clicks, spend or conversions on either surface, so effectiveness claims remain unsupported. Both surfaces also kept moving after the data window closed. Google announced multi-turn ads in the U.S. on October 28, letting ads follow users across subsequent AI Mode queries, and said AI Mode ads are scaling to ten additional countries including Canada and Australia, with Brazil, Mexico and the UK planned for Q4 2026. OpenAI's October 21 announcement expanded ChatGPT Ads to 89 countries — meaning Adthena's September cutoff misses both these expansions and the Black Friday period entirely.