TikTok sells views between videos to people who came to be entertained. ChatGPT shows a short ad under an answer. Here is how the 2 compare.
TikTok is the cheapest place on this list to show an ad, at a median of $4.08 per 1,000 views for online stores, and it is built for video and quick buys. ChatGPT shows a short text ad under an answer to people asking about what you sell. TikTok needs a steady supply of new videos. ChatGPT needs short, specific text and one square image.
| TikTok | ChatGPT | |
|---|---|---|
| Who can see your ad | 37% of US adults use TikTok, including 63% of adults under 30 | 1.2 billion people use ChatGPT every week. Ads reach only adults on the Free and Go plans |
| How you target | Automatic targeting by default, plus interests, behaviors, customer lists of 1,000 or more and lookalikes. Keyword Search Ads too | Context hints that describe your offer, plus countries, regions, devices and customer lists of 25,000 or more |
| What the ad looks like | Vertical video with sound. TikTok asks for 3 to 5 videos in each ad group | A square image, a title of 16 to 24 characters and a description of 32 to 48 |
| Minimum budget | More than $50 a day per campaign and more than $20 per ad group | $25 a day |
| Learning | Results usually settle after about 25 results or 7 days | No published rule |
| Attribution | 1, 7, 14 or 28 days after a click, and off, 1 or 7 days after a view. Fixed once the ad group goes live | 7, 14 or 30 days after a click, and 0 or 1 day after a view. Changing it affects reports only |
| Typical results for online stores | $4.08 per 1,000 views, 0.61% click-through, 1.56% conversion, $17.07 per sale, $50.32 average order | No benchmark from OpenAI. 0.73% click-through in the US |
| Ad review | Most ads within 24 hours | No published time |
On TikTok your ad is a video between other videos. 95% of adult TikTok users told Pew that entertainment is one reason they use it, and TikTok finds the viewers likely to buy from what they watch and do. Triple Whale calls it an impulse-driven format.
TikTok is also used for search. In an Adobe survey of 807 US consumers, 49% said they use TikTok as a search engine. TikTok sells keyword Search Ads, and its Automatic Search Placement, on by default for new campaigns, puts your in-feed ads into search results as well.
On ChatGPT your ad sits under an answer. There is no feed and no video. The person is already asking about a problem, a product or a choice, and your ad shows when OpenAI matches it to that conversation.
Triple Whale studied more than 5,900 online stores from August 2025 to July 2026. TikTok's medians were $4.08 per 1,000 views, 0.61% click-through, 1.56% conversion, $17.07 per sale and 1.51 return on ad spend, with an average order of $50.32. The same study puts Meta's median at $15.06 per 1,000 views.
Results swing by category. Clothing and accessories returned 2.70 times ad spend, and home and garden 2.02. Beauty returned 0.46, health and wellness 0.42, and food and drink 0.33. Triple Whale notes that electronics, where people take longer to decide, is a weaker fit for TikTok.
ChatGPT has no comparable dataset yet. Graphite and Similarweb measured a 0.73% all-time click-through rate in the US. eMarketer reports that the early ChatGPT pilot charged a $60 cost per 1,000 views, and the costs per 1,000 views agencies have published since range from €10 to $120. OpenAI suggests click bids of $3 to $5.
TikTok asks for vertical video with sound, your main point in the first 3 seconds, a hook in the first 6, and 3 to 5 clearly different videos in each ad group. Spark Ads let you run your own posts, or a creator's posts, as ads. TikTok tells you to add new video when results drop.
ChatGPT asks for a square image and 2 short lines of text. The work is in the words. OpenAI wants each title and description to say what you offer, who it is for and when it helps, with many different angles across your ads. From October 29, 2026, OpenAI can rewrite your text and change your landing page automatically, unless you switch creative enhancements off.
TikTok bans political ads, limits weight loss and body image ads, and does not let lead forms ask for financial or medical details. In the US it bans payday loans, credit repair and get-rich-quick schemes, and allows crypto and loans with the right licences.
ChatGPT bans health coaching, supplements sold outside major retail channels, credit repair, debt relief and payday loans, and keeps most health, finance and legal ads to the US.
Keep it running. Test ChatGPT on the products your buyers think about longest or that cost the most, because those are the ones people ask about. If you sell online, connect your product feed so ChatGPT can show product cards with the image, name and price. Judge the test on what each sale cost you over the same weeks.
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: TikTok Ads Help (Smart+ targeting, custom audiences, lookalike audiences, Search Ads campaign, Automatic Search Placement, budgets, learning phase, attribution windows, creative best practices, Spark Ads, ad review, ad policies for North America and financial services). Triple Whale, TikTok Ads Benchmarks by Industry, August 20, 2026. Pew Research Center, 8 facts about Americans and TikTok, March 2, 2026. Adobe Express survey, February 17, 2026. eMarketer US AI Advertising Forecast 2026, via PPC Land, June 9, 2026. PPC ONE, ChatGPT ads results, updated October 14, 2026. Graphite and Similarweb, The State of ChatGPT Ads, September 28, 2026. OpenAI Help Center, ChatGPT Ads collection, and OpenAI ad policies v1.6. OpenAI customer story (Newegg).
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