What happened
- On September 3, 2026, Comscore announced that its AI Intelligence product now measures paid placements within conversational answers and connects them to subsequent traffic and behavior.
- The figure accompanying the launch: in hotel queries on ChatGPT with identified source links, the presence of sponsored ads went from 6% in March 2026 to 14% in April and 24% in May.
- The same firm reports that ChatGPT captured about 69% of unique visitors among AI assistants in June 2026, according to its CustomIQ product.
- The measurement relies on a panel of users who agree to be observed and records query-answer pairs, cited domains and conversation identifiers.
Why it matters
- Any Chilean brand that has invested this year in appearing organically in AI answers is buying visibility on a surface that’s turning into ad inventory.
- For a tourism, retail or services business in Chile, this brings forward a budget line that didn’t exist: conversational advertising, competing for the same money earmarked for search engines.
- The conversion of an organic channel into a paid one already happened with search results. The difference is the speed: here the change was documented in one quarter.
The number
Four times more ad presence in three months, within a single category and a single platform.
Context
Comscore sells the product that produces those figures and didn’t publish query volume, sampling frame or comparison category. Three data points don’t draw a trend, and the category chosen (hotels) is historically one of the most monetized in paid search. The same caveat applies to the brand visibility measurements in AI engines published the same day by another vendor.
What’s next
- Comscore didn’t announce dates for extending the measurement to other categories or other assistants.
- No timelines announced for publishing the full methodology.
Bottom line
This year’s marketing forecasts anticipated that AI would personalize advertising. What happened is that AI’s answers became the advertising space, and the measurement industry showed up to sell against it.
Sources
- Comscore Expands Its AI Intelligence to Measure Sponsored Chat Advertising — official press release, September 3, 2026
- Comscore tracks sponsored ChatGPT ads as hotel presence hits 24% in May — PPC Land
Edited by Rodrigo Cornejo. How we select and verify the facts, in who writes.
