Microsoft puts your search ads into Copilot for you. ChatGPT sells its ads separately. Here is what you get from each and what you can see.
If you run Microsoft Advertising search or shopping campaigns, your ads can already show inside Copilot, built from the assets you have. You cannot opt out and you cannot see Copilot results on their own. ChatGPT ads come with their own account, their own ads and their own reports, and a bigger audience: 1.2 billion people use ChatGPT every week.
Microsoft builds Copilot ads from your existing campaigns. Every eligible campaign is opted in, and advertisers cannot opt out. Eligible ads include multimedia ads, product ads from Shopping and Performance Max, and search ads that carry a logo. A search ad without a logo cannot show in Copilot. Microsoft names Performance Max as the best way to show up there more often.
Copilot picks ads from the whole conversation, not only the last message, and your negative keywords still apply. If an ad is allowed on Bing, it is allowed in Copilot. Microsoft does not report Copilot results separately.
Microsoft reports that ads in Copilot got a 73% higher click-through rate than search ads, a 16% stronger conversion rate and a 33% shorter path to purchase, using its own data from February to May 2025. A later Microsoft figure gives 101% higher engagement than search ads, for June to August 2025. Microsoft gave no sample sizes, and no outside study has checked these numbers.
Microsoft is also adding ways to buy inside Copilot. Copilot Checkout lets shoppers in the US pay inside the conversation, through PayPal, Shopify and Stripe. Brand Agents, a chat assistant for a brand's own site, averaged twice the conversions of unassisted visits in Microsoft's March 2026 analysis.
For scale, Microsoft said in October 2025 that all of its Copilots together had passed 150 million monthly users, a figure that includes the work, coding and security versions. OpenAI said in October 2026 that 1.2 billion people use ChatGPT each week.
| Ads in Copilot | ChatGPT ads | |
|---|---|---|
| How you buy it | Inside your Microsoft search, shopping and Performance Max campaigns | In its own Ads Manager, with its own budget |
| Can you opt out | No | Yes, it is a separate channel you choose to run |
| Separate reporting | No | Yes |
| How you target | Keywords, plus bid changes by LinkedIn company, industry and job function | Context hints, countries, regions, devices and customer lists |
| Who writes the ad | Built from your existing assets | You write the title and description. From October 29, 2026 OpenAI can rewrite them unless you switch it off |
| Minimum budget | No separate Copilot budget | $25 a day |
Microsoft usually keeps a day's spend under 100% above your daily budget, and caps the month at your daily budget times the days in the month. Its automatic bid strategies, Target CPA, Target ROAS and Maximize Conversions, stop optimizing if a campaign falls below 30 conversions in any 30 days. Most ads are reviewed within 48 hours.
Microsoft also lets you use LinkedIn profile data. You can raise or lower bids by company, industry and job function, for up to 1,000 companies. It changes your bids only, and it never narrows who can see the ad.
Prices moved up early in 2026. Tinuiti's report for the first quarter showed Microsoft search clicks costing 12% more than a year earlier, with 5% fewer clicks.
Google puts search and shopping ads inside its AI Overviews in 12 countries and is testing ads inside AI Mode. Perplexity has been winding its ads down since late 2025, and the Financial Times reported that they end by the end of 2026. That leaves ChatGPT and Copilot as the 2 AI assistants where you can buy ads today. ChatGPT sells them as their own channel, while Copilot ads come inside your Microsoft campaigns.
Based on each platform's own help pages and on the studies named below, as we read them on October 20, 2026. Prices and rules change often, so check the current numbers before you spend.
Sources: Microsoft Advertising Help (About ads in Copilot, budget and bid strategies, editorial review, LinkedIn profile targeting). Microsoft Advertising blog, 73% higher CTRs, August 6, 2025. Microsoft Advertising blog, Copilot Checkout and Brand Agents, January 8, 2026, and April 21, 2026. Microsoft Advertising blog, AI Max, August 27, 2026. Microsoft FY26 Q1 earnings call, October 29, 2025. Tinuiti Digital Ads Benchmark Report Q1 2026, via Karooya, April 22, 2026. Google Ads Help, About ads and AI Overviews. Google blog, Google Marketing Live, May 20, 2026. Financial Times, via TechCentral and B&T, February 2026. OpenAI, Building advertising for the way people use AI, October 5, 2026. OpenAI Help Center, ChatGPT Ads collection.
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