Which software detects ads inside AI-generated answers? What we use and what to ask vendors
Which software detects ads inside AI-generated answers? How we monitor sponsored units in ChatGPT and Google AI answers for clients, and what to ask any vendor.
A year ago nobody asked us about ads inside AI answers. Now it comes up in client reviews: "who is advertising on our prompts, and what are they saying?" The right software for that is narrower than the marketing suggests, and a lot of what is labeled "ChatGPT Ads" is about something else.
Detection versus management
We split the tools into two jobs.
Detection captures the sponsored units that appear in answers to your tracked prompts: who the advertiser is, what the ad says, where it links and which prompt triggered it. That is competitive monitoring.
Management helps you run your own campaign inside an AI product. That is advertising software. It will not show you what rivals are doing on your prompts.
When a vendor page says "ChatGPT Ads", our first question is which of the two it means. A surprising number of pages do not say.
What we use
We run client programs on Promptwatch, mainly because of Ads Radar. It captures sponsored ads inside ChatGPT Search, Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode answers to the client's tracked prompts. For each ad it records the title, description, image or price, the advertiser's name and domain, the target URL and the triggering prompt.
The views are practical. Ads per day shows when activity starts. Top advertisers shows who is spending on the client's territory. The By Ad table is the creative library. The By Prompt table shows ad count, the client's average visibility and the latest ad for each prompt, which is the one we use most. Filters cover model, advertiser domain, prompt type and date range.
We are clear with clients about the limits:
- It does not cover Perplexity.
- It does not report on the client's own OpenAI campaigns. That is what OpenAI Ads Manager is for.
- It records sampled answers. Ads vary by prompt, location and timing, so we see a sample, not every impression.
Plan gating
Ads Radar starts on Business at $579 a month and is on every self-serve agency plan: Kick-off at $199, Growth at $399 and Scale at $799. It is not on Essential or Professional. We mention this early in scoping because older material suggested otherwise. For agency clients, this means the feature is available across the board, while brand clients need the Business plan.
How we use the data
Spot the pattern. If three advertisers show up on the same cluster of prompts, we look at whether those prompts are commercial and whether the client is cited organically.
Read the claims. The ad copy and landing page show how competitors position themselves. We feed that into our messaging work.
Compare with visibility. The By Prompt table puts ad presence next to the client's average visibility. A prompt with heavy ad activity and low client visibility is a priority. A prompt with no ads and high visibility is probably fine as is.
Tie to action. Findings go to the Action Board, where we assign owners. The Discovery agent also suggests up to five evidence-backed actions per weekly run.
Other tools and what we know of them
We have not run client programs on these, so we say only what vendors publish. GEO Monitor, a French-language tracker from €69 a month, lists ChatGPT ads in its dashboard. Trackbase lists ChatGPT Ads management and ChatGPT Shopping tracking. Qwairy lists a sponsored module. Rank Prompt, Cognizo and Evertune list ChatGPT Ads features that read as campaign management. Our advice is to ask each vendor whether it records competitors' ads on your prompts, and ask for a sample export before paying.
Questions to ask any vendor
- Does it detect ads shown to your prompts, or help you run your own?
- Which engines does it cover? Perplexity, for example, is outside Ads Radar.
- What does it store per ad: advertiser, URL, copy, prompt?
- Which plan includes it?
- How often does it sample, and from which locations?
What this cannot tell you
Ad monitoring does not reveal spend or bids. It shows what appeared, not what it cost. We tell clients to use it as a competitive reading, not a budget model. If you want to start with ads detection, Promptwatch is where we do it.