Category-adjacent ads became the norm at 58%

Audience targeting

58%

of observed ChatGPT ads were only category-adjacent to the response in Seer’s updated July 2026 scoring

Reader Note:: Seer’s unpublished ad-to-response alignment rubric groups scores of 2-3 as 'Category-Adjacent.' In the updated July 2026 pull, 58% of observed ads fell into that middle bucket, up from 28% in the first pull. The report does not disclose the total number of scored ads or the detailed scoring instructions.
Evidence:: Observed behaviour
Vendor interest:: Moderate — This comes from a company with a commercial interest in this market, so it is not a neutral source.
Sample:: About two weeks of data from Seer's own AI tracker and client AI tracking workspaces; ads visible in 96 of 97 workspaces; 3,697 unique advertisers counted. Prompt selection and total tracked responses not fully disclosed.

Good for

Comparing yourself against a similar segment, and choosing what to test next.

Saying that one thing caused another, or predicting what you would get.
This is an aggregated or average number that covers very different cases. Real results in a particular segment may differ.
This comes from a company with a commercial interest in this market, so it is not a neutral source.
The source never says how this number was measured.
Nobody counted this directly — it's a calculation. The publisher worked it out itself, or took the ad platform's word for what its ads achieved.
The source says how much it looked at, but not how any of it was chosen.