B2B Marketing Strategy: What Works, What Doesn’t, and How to Build Yours
I’ve sat in a lot of rooms where the question is some version of [...]
For B2B companies, one of the biggest questions in marketing has always been simple:
1. How do we get in front of the right buyer at the right moment?
For years, the answer has largely involved Google, LinkedIn, industry publications, events, outbound sales and increasingly sophisticated account-based marketing.
AI is beginning to add another possibility. People are no longer using the internet only to search for products. They are using AI to understand problems, explore options, compare companies and figure out what they should do next.
That could have significant implications for B2B businesses. It’s also no longer purely hypothetical. ChatGPT Ads went from a small pilot in the US in February 2026 to a channel live in dozens of countries with a $1 billion annualised revenue run rate by the end of August 2026. The question for B2B leaders isn’t whether the platform exists , it does, and it’s growing quickly , but whether it’s the right channel, at the right time, for their business.
How ChatGPT Ads work, and where things stand today
From pilot to global platform, quickly
OpenAI began testing ads inside ChatGPT on 9 February 2026, showing sponsored placements to logged-in adult users on the Free and Go plans in the US. Self-serve buying through an Ads Manager followed in the summer, and by August the platform had expanded into the UK, Mexico, Brazil, Japan and South Korea, then into 31 European markets (all EU member states plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland), India, the Middle East and North Africa. On 31 August 2026, OpenAI said its advertising business had reached a $1 billion annualised revenue run rate in under 200 days, with self-service Ads Manager access now open in more than 50 countries. The platform is still expanding, so it’s worth checking OpenAI’s current market list directly before assuming your business is eligible to buy.
Who actually sees the ads
Ads only appear to users on ChatGPT’s Free and Go tiers. Anyone on a Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise or Edu plan does not see ads, and OpenAI does not show ads to anyone it identifies, or who identifies themselves, as under 18. Given ChatGPT’s reported base of more than 900 million weekly active users, even with paying subscribers and minors excluded, the addressable free-tier audience is still substantial.
What the ad actually looks like
An ad appears as a clearly labelled “Sponsored” block underneath a ChatGPT response, not woven into it. It includes the advertiser’s name and logo, a headline, a short description, an image and a link to a landing page. OpenAI says the ad doesn’t influence what ChatGPT says in its answer, and that the underlying conversation isn’t shared with advertisers.
How targeting works, and why it’s different from search
This is the part that matters most for B2B. ChatGPT Ads aren’t bought against keywords the way a Google search ad is. Instead, advertisers set “context hints” , the topics, conversations or problem areas where their product or service might be relevant. The system then matches ads to a conversation based on its context and intent, the advertiser’s landing page and ad copy. If a user has ads personalisation switched on, the system can also draw on signals from that user’s own chat history and past ad interactions. OpenAI says it doesn’t use cookies or sell conversation data to advertisers.
Pricing and access
Advertisers buy on a CPM (cost per thousand impressions) or CPC (cost per click) basis, through a relevance-weighted, second-price auction. Minimum budgets vary by market , some report daily minimums as low as $25 , and a business generally needs to be legally registered in an eligible country to open a self-serve account, even if its customers are elsewhere.
2. Where the opportunity lies for B2B companies
The interesting part isn’t the ad. It’s the conversation.
Imagine a business owner asking:
“We’re growing quickly, but our finance team can’t keep up. What should we outsource?”
Or a CEO asking:
“We’re expanding into Europe. What are the biggest operational challenges we should prepare for?”
Or a marketing leader asking:
“We’re spending heavily on Google and LinkedIn, but the leads aren’t turning into opportunities. What should we change?”
These aren’t traditional product searches. The person isn’t necessarily looking for an accounting firm, consultancy or marketing agency yet. They’re trying to understand a problem. And that is where ChatGPT could become particularly interesting for B2B.
A potential buyer can spend several minutes explaining their situation, asking follow-up questions and narrowing down what they need. The commercial opportunity is potentially very different from simply appearing when somebody types a keyword into Google.
3. What does this mean for B2B businesses?
For founders and executives, the important question isn’t really:
“How do we run ChatGPT Ads?”
It’s:
“Could our business benefit from being present when someone is trying to solve a problem that we can help with?”
That question applies to a much wider range of companies than SaaS. Consider some examples:
| Business | What the buyer may be trying to solve | Where the company could fit |
| Management consultancy | “How do we make our operations more efficient?” | Operational transformation |
| Accounting firm | “How should we structure our finances as we expand?” | Accounting and financial advisory |
| Recruitment company | “How do we find specialist talent faster?” | Recruitment and executive search |
| Cybersecurity company | “How do we reduce our security risk?” | Security assessment or solutions |
| IT services company | “Should we outsource our IT infrastructure?” | Managed IT services |
| Logistics provider | “How can we reduce shipping and fulfillment costs?” | Logistics and supply chain services |
| Commercial law firm | “What should we consider before entering this market?” | Legal and commercial advice |
| Industrial supplier | “How can we reduce production downtime?” | Equipment or industrial solutions |
| B2B SaaS company | “Which CRM or project management system is right for us?” | Software evaluation and purchase |
The point isn’t that ChatGPT will automatically recommend these companies. It is that B2B demand often starts with a question rather than a product search. That distinction could become increasingly important.
B2B buyers are already researching differently
The traditional B2B buying journey was relatively easy to map. Someone had a problem. They searched Google. They visited several websites. They downloaded reports. They spoke to salespeople. They compared vendors. Eventually, they made a decision.
AI compresses some of that research. A buyer can now ask one system to explain an unfamiliar market, identify potential approaches, compare vendors, summarize differences and help them decide what questions they should be asking.
That doesn’t mean traditional channels disappear. Google isn’t going away. LinkedIn isn’t going away. Sales teams aren’t going away. Industry events aren’t going away. But the research layer between having a problem and contacting a vendor is changing. And that’s where B2B companies should be paying attention.
The biggest opportunity may be understanding the problem, not the product
This is perhaps the most important strategic shift. Many companies describe themselves according to what they sell: “We are an accounting firm.” “We provide cybersecurity software.” “We are a recruitment agency.” “We provide cloud infrastructure.” “We are a management consultancy.”
But customers don’t necessarily think in those categories. They think: “We’re struggling to hire.” “Our costs are getting out of control.” “Our systems don’t talk to each other.” “We’re worried about a security incident.” “We need to expand into a new market.” “Our sales pipeline isn’t growing.”
Those problems are often the starting point. That means B2B companies may need to think differently about how they present themselves to AI-powered discovery. Instead of asking only “How do we get discovered for our category?” they may increasingly need to ask “What problems do we want to be associated with?” That is a much more strategic question.
This is where marketing teams should be thinking
For marketing teams, the arrival of ChatGPT Ads shouldn’t immediately mean another advertising channel to manage. It should first prompt a conversation about positioning.
What are the problems that typically cause someone to become a customer? What questions do prospects ask before they contact us? What concerns stop them from buying? What alternatives do they consider? What language do customers use when they describe their problem? And are we communicating our value in those terms?
For example, a recruitment company may traditionally position itself around “executive search.” But a potential client may be thinking:
“We’ve had a senior role open for four months and can’t find the right person.”
Those are two very different ways of framing the same commercial opportunity. The second one is much closer to the buyer’s actual problem.
Founders should be asking a different question
For founders, there is an even bigger implication. If AI becomes a major place where businesses research problems and evaluate potential solutions, being understood by AI could become part of being discovered. That makes positioning increasingly important.
A company with a very clear value proposition may have an easier time explaining what it does, who it serves and which problems it solves. A company with vague messaging may find that harder.
This isn’t just an advertising issue. It touches the entire customer journey: your website, your case studies, your product descriptions, your thought leadership, your customer reviews, your landing pages, your sales materials. All of these contribute to how clearly a company communicates what it does and why it matters.
Don’t think of ChatGPT as another Google
Google is fundamentally built around search. ChatGPT is built around conversation. That difference matters.
A search query might be:
“best cybersecurity companies for mid-sized businesses”
A conversation might be:
“We’re a 500-person company with a hybrid workforce. We recently had a security incident and our IT team is struggling to manage our current tools. What should we be looking at?”
The second interaction contains far more information about the buyer. It tells you something about the company, the situation, the problem and potentially the urgency. That is what makes conversational advertising interesting. The question isn’t simply whether a person searched for your category. It’s whether the conversation suggests that your category has become relevant to their situation.
4. The downside: reporting is still basic
The strategic case for ChatGPT Ads is easy to get excited about. The measurement behind it is much less exciting, and B2B leaders should go in with their eyes open.
As of the current Ads Manager beta, OpenAI’s native reporting gives advertisers seven metrics: impressions, clicks, spend, click-through rate, average CPC, average CPM, and a single rolled-up conversions figure. That’s it. There’s no query or prompt-level reporting , you can’t see which questions triggered your ad , and no demographic or placement-level breakdown either. For a channel built entirely on conversational context, not being able to see the conversations, even in aggregate and anonymised form, is a real limitation.
This creates a practical problem: standard web analytics tools often can’t tell where the traffic came from. Clicks from ChatGPT ads frequently show up in Google Analytics as “Direct” traffic rather than being correctly attributed, unless a business has manually added UTM parameters to every landing page URL. Some agencies have also reported clicks in the Ads Manager dashboard that they couldn’t reconcile against their own analytics , a reminder that the native numbers should be treated as directional rather than definitive at this stage.
None of this means the channel is unmeasurable. It means the measurement has to be built by the advertiser rather than handed to them: UTM tagging on every destination URL, a CRM that tracks leads back to source, and conversion tracking set up before the first campaign runs, not after.
It’s also worth noting this is a young platform, and the reporting has already improved once , earlier in 2026 it offered only impressions and clicks, and has since added spend, CTR, CPC, CPM and a conversions metric. There’s a reasonable case that query-level insight, better attribution and richer segmentation will follow as the advertiser base matures and OpenAI competes more directly with Google and Meta for ad budgets. But “will probably improve” isn’t the same as “works well today,” and B2B leaders should budget accordingly: modest tests, real measurement infrastructure on your own side, and patience with the native dashboard.
5. What we propose to B2B leaders
Should B2B companies start advertising on ChatGPT?
Probably not by shifting a large share of budget in right away. The platform is genuinely young, the reporting is thin, and there isn’t yet a mature set of B2B benchmarks to plan against. But that’s an argument for starting to learn, not for ignoring it.
For most B2B businesses, the sensible starting point looks like this: look at the questions your customers already ask before they become leads. Think about the problems that lead to a sale, not just the category you sell into. Consider how your company would come across in a conversation about those problems, and test that with a small budget in a market where your business is actually eligible to buy. Build your own measurement , UTM parameters, CRM attribution, a defined conversion event , before spending a meaningful amount, because the platform won’t build it for you.
The objective at this stage doesn’t need to be scale. It can be learning: which problems attract attention, which messages resonate, which conversations produce qualified prospects, and , perhaps most importantly , what your potential customers are asking AI before they ever talk to you.
For founders and C-suite leaders, the bigger takeaway is this: don’t treat ChatGPT Ads as just another place to buy media, and don’t dismiss it because the reporting isn’t there yet either. Think about what happens when your customers stop searching for answers and start having conversations about their problems , and treat the platform’s current limitations as a reason to start small and build your own visibility into results, not a reason to wait until everyone else has already worked it out.
