ChatGPT allows both organic and paid product placement within its ubiquitous chat interface, but actually getting products live can be challenging. Because of the absolute frenzy surrounding AI and its massive global takeoff in usage, almost every ecommerce retailer is interested in listing their inventory in ChatGPT.
To increase your chances of getting listed, VersaFeed recommends 3 basic rules:
- Ensuring your site allows the OpenAI crawl bot
- Maintain high-quality structured data on your landing pages
- Consider filling out OpenAI’s "Merchant Application Form"
Let’s take a deeper look at those recommendations:
ChatGPT surfaces products in its responses in two distinct ways:
- Organic and free: if your products are highly relevant to a conversation, they may appear naturally in ChatGPT answers without any payment.
- Paid placement: ChatGPT allows sponsored listings that appear in a clearly marked area below the AI response. These ads rely on both the current conversation and previous prompt history, though consumers can choose to turn off this history-based personalization in their settings.
Example Paid Placements in ChatGPT
How to submit products to OpenAI so your items appear:
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Using web crawls.
- ChatGPT uses its own crawler, similar to Googlebot, to automatically index your store.
- You must ensure your robots.txt file specifically allows OAI-SearchBot.
- You should also have clean schema.org data (often called structured data) embedded on your product pages, preferably in JSON-LD format. Since Google also requires this, you can use the Google Structured Data testing tool to verify your implementation.
- ChatGPT uses its own crawler, similar to Googlebot, to automatically index your store.
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Using data feeds.
- This is the superior method because it allows you to submit curated inventory data directly to OpenAI.
- This channel is currently gated, and there is no confirmed date for a full public release.
- You can apply to begin the approval process at any time via this link.
- Based on the application requirements page, OpenAI may favor companies that not only submit product feeds, but also implement their ACP protocol. ACP enables users to actually do a “cart checkout” directly within the prompt!
- This is a quickly evolving area.
Other notes and restrictions:
- Most product placement programs are currently limited to the US.
- Public information regarding minimum ad spend, billing methods, or specific bidding levers is not yet available. However, the feed specification does include an "
is_eligible_search" attribute to control the visibility of individual items.
The interest in this channel is massive, but the pace of change makes staying current a challenge. While we recommend that enterprise firms submit their application now, merchants of all sizes should immediately ensure they are allowing the ChatGPT bot and providing clean structured data.
Need a customized plan for getting your ecommerce company live in ChatGPT immediately? Contact us today. We can provide customized plans for your specific needs, fill out application forms, and submit highly optimized product feeds to ChatGPT and many other marketing channels.