If you run a clinic, a dental practice, or a trades business, your paid leads almost certainly come from two places: Google and Meta. This week a third place got a lot more real, and I want you to see it before your competitors do.
What OpenAI just announced
OpenAI, the company that makes ChatGPT, has announced a set of new advertising tools built around ChatGPT. Here is the short version.
The headline feature is Sponsored Agents. A person sees an ad in ChatGPT, clicks it, and can choose to start a clearly labeled conversation with an agent sponsored by that business. They can explain what matters to them, ask follow-up questions, and follow a link to the business website when they are ready to take the next step. OpenAI's own example is a shopper asking about a dining table they saw in an ad. Sponsored Agents are currently being tested with select advertisers in the United States.
OpenAI is also making the ads easier to build. Advertisers can now create, update, and analyze campaigns using plain natural-language prompts through an Ads Manager plugin in ChatGPT. Inside Ads Manager itself, the platform suggests ad copy and imagery based on your landing page and your campaign objective, and you review and edit everything before it goes live. There is also an optional feature that adapts your existing headlines to fit the conversation and translates your ad copy into the user's preferred language.
Finally, OpenAI announced its first two integrations: HubSpot, a popular customer relationship management platform, as its first CRM partner, and Shopify, a major ecommerce platform, as its first ecommerce partner. Businesses on HubSpot can connect a ChatGPT Ads account and create ads, track performance, and follow up on leads inside the tool they already use.
My take: this looks a lot like Meta ads
My take here is simple. These ads are very similar in form to Meta ads. There is an ads manager, there is copy, there are images, there are campaigns and performance data. If you have ever run Meta campaigns, or paid someone to run them, the shape of this will feel familiar. That means our expertise transfers well. After more than a decade as a Google and Meta Partner managing multiple millions in ad spend, setting up ChatGPT ads for a service business is squarely inside what we already do every day.
Here is the part that matters for your budget. My bet is that ChatGPT ads are cheap right now for one reason: they are new. In my experience, every major ad platform has an early window where clicks cost a fraction of what they cost later, because most advertisers have not shown up yet. The owners who moved early got the cheap leads, and the ones who waited paid full price. I predict the next six months on ChatGPT ads can be a gold rush, and then prices settle to normal once everyone piles in.
Why Sponsored Agents fit service businesses
The way I see it, a Sponsored Agent maps neatly onto how your customers already buy. Someone with a toothache or a leaking water heater has questions before they book, and the Sponsored Agent format is built exactly for that: the person asks what they need to know, then clicks through when they are ready.
That back and forth is the pre-qualifying your front desk or your office manager does on the phone today. If an ad can handle part of that conversation before the person ever calls you, I expect the leads that do come through will be warmer and easier to close.
Yes, it is still a test. That is the point.
Sponsored Agents are only being tested with select advertisers in the United States right now, so this is early. Early is uncomfortable for owners who want proof first, and I understand that. But waiting until a channel is proven usually means waiting until it is expensive. The businesses that treat the next six months as a paid experiment, with a small controlled budget, are the ones positioned to win when access widens.
You do not need to bet the company on this. You need a test plan, working lead tracking, and someone who has set up thousands of campaigns on platforms that look just like this one.
How to prepare your business
1. Tighten your landing page this week, because OpenAI's tools draft ad copy directly from it and it needs to state your offer clearly.
2. Confirm your lead tracking works end to end, so you can compare a ChatGPT lead against a Google or Meta lead on real numbers.
3. If you run your customers through HubSpot, note that ChatGPT Ads now connects to it directly, which shortens your setup later.
4. Set aside a test budget, something like $500 to $1,500 per month, so you can move the moment access opens for your business.
If you want to be one of the first service businesses running ads inside ChatGPT, book a call with us and we will map out your test plan.
