People are increasingly describing what they want in detailed conversations, instead of typing a few keywords into a search bar. That shift is changing the answers they get back. Rather than a ranked list of blue links, responses are shaped by the rich context of the conversations themselves.
That context is a powerful tool for understanding consumer behavior and building effective marketing strategies. ChatGPT Ads unlocks this contextual value by helping brands and apps reach people as they explore ideas, evaluate options, and make decisions.
ChatGPT has more than 1 billion weekly active users and more than 50 million consumer subscribers. As ChatGPT becomes a default starting point for more people, Branch is here to help attribute, measure, and optimize this new growth channel.
Branch now supports advertising on ChatGPT Ads through its Conversions API (CAPI) integration, giving marketing teams a way to attribute engagements across app, mobile web, desktop, and offline.
Capture ChatGPT’s full influence
AI-driven discovery and acquisition rarely follows a simple app-to-app path. Someone might start a conversation on desktop, get a contextual product suggestion, and convert in-app hours later after seeing an ad on the same conversation thread on mobile. Most attribution starts at the install, but ChatGPT drives valuable engagement long before one, and long after.
Branch was built to capture the full journey from discovery to down-funnel conversion. It routes and attributes users across platforms and devices while preserving the context that sparked their interest in the first place, whether that interest started on an organic, owned, or paid channel.
Paid and organic, measured together
ChatGPT Ads launched earlier this year, but it has been organically influencing consumer decisions and introducing users to brands and apps for nearly four years now.
Last year, Branch expanded its SEO App Attribution capabilities to include AIO (AI Optimization) App Attribution, giving brands and apps a way to capture and measure that organic engagement. Marketing teams can see what content is already converting and use that data to build stronger paid ads in ChatGPT.
Branch gives teams the tools to build strategies that combine organic growth and paid marketing on ChatGPT:.
- Deep linking carries the context of a ChatGPT conversation into the next step, converting high-value users with more relevant content instead of a generic landing page.
- Persona Graph, Branch’s identity layer built on signals from more than three billion daily devices, delivers cross-platform, cross-device matching and attribution accuracy across both ChatGPT Ads and organic journeys.
- AIO App Attribution measures the organic traffic ChatGPT already drives, so marketers can compare it directly against paid performance and traditional SEO.
- Funnel Analysis shows where each channel — organic, owned, or paid — contributes across the customer journey.
That matters because ChatGPT can influence someone through both paid and organic touchpoints before they ever install. If your attribution model only credits whichever channel triggered the install, you risk missing where the real influence happened. Branch shows you the touch that actually drove the outcome, whether that was an organic conversation or an ad.
Marketing teams have traditionally measured paid and organic channels separately, but to take advantage of this new growth channel, they need measurement that can support the full scope of ChatGPT’s value.
How Branch attribution works for ChatGPT Ads
For customers already using Branch for attribution, setting up measurement starts with adding a Branch Ad Link as the destination URL in the Ads Manager. From there, Branch:
- Attributes the click-to-installs and post-install events across app, mobile web, desktop, and offline.
- Captures OpenAI’s click identifier from the Branch Ad Link and forwards it, along with eligible conversion events, to OpenAI’s Conversions API, supporting OpenAI’s own conversion matching, reporting, and optimization.
- Deep links users to relevant in-app or in-site content surfaced from the ad in the users’ ChatGPT conversation.
- Shares advertiser-selected events with OpenAI for campaign reporting and optimization, with the option to forward all conversion events for the broadest possible optimization signal.
- Surfaces ChatGPT Ads performance into dynamic full-funnel user journey reporting. You can then analyze paid, owned, and organic channels to compare down-funnel KPIs and user engagement, and understand how your channels work together leading up to a conversion.
Branch is also working to integrate with OpenAI’s cost API to bring ChatGPT Ads return on ad spend (ROAS) into one unified view.
Getting started
If you’re already running or planning to test campaigns on ChatGPT Ads, enabling attribution and measurement with Branch takes a few steps:
- Connect your OpenAI Ads Manager Pixel ID and Conversions API key in Branch
- Configure which events to forward
- Place a Branch Ad Link as your campaign’s destination URL
See our help center documentation for full setup instructions.
Already a Branch customer? If you’re using AIO Attribution to measure organic ChatGPT traffic, running paid ads is a natural next step, and you’ll be able to view paid and organic AI-driven discovery side by side.
Not yet a Branch customer, or want a walkthrough of the different ChatGPT solutions Branch supports? Talk to a Branch expert to get started.
