What ChatGPT means for your search campaigns

Why next-generation AI is essential to a competitive search strategy.

Love it or fear it, ChatGPT has put generative artificial intelligence (AI) squarely at the center of the current technological discourse. In case you need an introduction, ChatGPT is an advanced AI chatbot launched in late 2022 by OpenAI that can converse on virtually any topic in a natural and sophisticated way. It learns from text and images across the web (and human trainers at OpenAI) how to understand and respond to human queries. The potential implications for industry and society are controversial and complex. But for search marketing, the impact of this new era in AI is more immediate. Marketers want to know how it will influence paid search results and how to leverage it. So, we’ve gathered some answers. Fittingly, we got some help from ChatGPT.

First, the basics: the role of AI in search

If you were asked to guess the price of eggs in New York City this week, you would probably be able to get close (at least relative to your local shop) even if you had never been to NYC. That’s because you’ve learned many things about the price of eggs in the current economy and how the cost of goods varies in different cities around the world.

In the context of PPC, machine learning works much the same way. It has been trained to analyze what factors influence costs and clicks, identify the relationships between search terms and brands, and make correlations and predictions based on vast amounts of pre-existing data.

That’s essentially what we do at Adthena. We’ve been using our own algorithms and machine learning technology since our inception to uncover strategic insights for brands, marketers, and agencies about their search strategies, the strategies of their competitors, and their competitive landscape. Using an extensive in-house data set and natural language processing techniques, we’ve also constructed a machine-learning model to accurately categorize search terms. For example, we seek out millions of search terms each day, analyze the Google Ads auction landscape to which they belong and estimate click-through rate (CTR) and cost per click (CPC) for each competitor bidding on each term.

To deliver this information, our AI models use observations from the search engine results page (SERP), such as the number of ads competing for a term, the position of each ad and elements on competing pages, and characteristics derived through natural language processing.

Adthena uses our AI to generate our signature Whole Market View for each enterprise customer, provide recommendations for ad creative and assess the probability of a click. AI drives our most potent platform capabilities, including our proprietary categorization model. Because we have significant pools of data on thousands of brands collected over many years, we have a robust baseline for using machine learning to estimate the CTR and CPC for any given search term, advertiser and rank.

From Adthena’s vantage point, ChatGPT provides another powerful tool for us to help our clients better understand customer preferences, provide even more relevant results in their ads and identify ways to improve ad campaigns and performance. But what does the bot have to say about the topic?

We asked the bot: “How will ChatGPT impact search?”

To understand the big picture of how ChatGPT will affect the search landscape, we went to the source. Here’s verbatim what ChatGPT generated in response to our query.

“As a language model, ChatGPT can have a significant impact on search in a few ways:

1. Natural language processing: ChatGPT’s ability to process and understand natural language can help improve search queries and results. By understanding the context and intent behind a search query, ChatGPT can provide more relevant and accurate search results.

2. Answer generation: ChatGPT can generate answers to questions that users may have when performing a search. This can provide more direct and helpful information to users, leading to a better search experience.

3. Personalization: ChatGPT can learn from user behavior and preferences, which can help personalize search results. By tailoring search results to individual users, ChatGPT can provide more relevant and useful results.

Overall, ChatGPT has the potential to improve the search experience by providing more relevant and personalized results, as well as generating answers to questions that users may have. However, its impact on search will depend on how it is implemented and integrated into search engines and other search tools.”

The ChatGPT bot also told us about how Google uses a variant of the generative pre-trained transformer (GPT) architecture in its search engine to answer questions and summarize (e.g., to create good snippets) and translate content.

Bing, too, uses GPT-based models to improve its natural language understanding capabilities, making it easier for users to search using natural language queries. Bing uses ChatGPT and other GPT-based models to improve the accuracy and relevance of its search results and provide personalized recommendations and suggestions.

3 ways ChatGPT could empower search marketers

1. Keyword research. It can be used alongside free tools like Google keyword planner or auction insights and with enterprise-level tools like Adthena.
2. Ad copy research and optimization. ChatGPT could be used for testing new headlines, product descriptions, and ad copy.
3. Improve your understanding of search intent. Use ChatGPT to gain insight into consumer behavior.

How does Adthena use ChatGPT?

This new generation of natural language processing technology enhances our ability to analyze large amounts of text data and extract insights that can be used to further improve our clients’ campaigns. For example, we’ll have even more power to analyze customer reviews, social media comments and other types of user-generated content to identify key themes and trends.

ChatGPT can identify common issues or complaints that customers have with a product or service, which can inform advertising messaging and help businesses address specific concerns. ChatGPT can also identify emerging trends or topics of interest in customer feedback, which can be used to tailor content and ad creative.

As you can see from the above, we’re also experimenting with using ChatGPT for automated content creation. This will help our clients generate ad copy and other types of content more efficiently.

Yes, this sophisticated technology has limits, and it has the potential for misuse and for creating misinformation. But in our corner of the web universe, ChatGPT enhances our ability to understand what consumers are looking for when they search and what message we can deliver to best engage and convert. That neatly aligns with the goals of search marketing and will help advertisers compete and provide a better experience for shoppers all around.

For a closer look at how Adthena uses AI to deliver unique competitive search intelligence to advertisers, check out this 60-second video explainer, and request a demo to see the platform in action.