Paid Marketing
Paid acquisition, measured like a finance function — not a marketing experiment.
CTR, CPC, CPA, ROAS, and ultimately profit. That's the discipline behind every dollar we spend across search, social, and emerging platforms.
Paid media run in isolation from organic strategy is money spent solving the same problem twice, or worse, sending conflicting signals to the same customer. Because 9Packets runs your SEO/GEO and your paid media from the same team, your paid budget goes toward the gaps your organic strategy hasn't closed yet — not toward re-winning ground you already own.
Our process is built on finance and data-analysis backgrounds, not marketing intuition. That's why we go past surface-level metrics like clicks and impressions straight to what actually matters: cost per qualified lead, cost per acquisition, and return on ad spend, tracked all the way through to revenue.
Results, by category...
The same handful of problems show up again and again once you actually look under the hood — a few patterns from accounts we've worked on, by category:
- Insurance ($10k+/month ad spend): the CPA on the dashboard often isn't the real number. Once quote-to-bound-policy value gets fed back into the account, we've seen lead volume climb over 50% on the same budget, and revenue increase over 140% after shifting the optimization target from CPA to ROAS.
- High-ticket local services (driveways, fencing, land surveying, and similar trades — jobs $5k or more): a large share of "conversions," often over 20%, turn out to be low-intent click-to-calls that never book, quietly inflating the reported CPA. Fixing that, plus cutting broad-match waste, has driven cost-per-qualified-lead down by over 40%.
- Local professional services already running ads that aren't performing: a single working session is usually enough to surface several structural issues — broken conversion tracking, ineligible audience targeting, or an automated bid strategy that's quietly throttled spend to nothing.
- Software and SaaS companies: paid acquisition tied to trial-to-paid conversion and account value, not just form fills, is what separates a channel that scales from one that just burns budget.
The analytical approach...
Every campaign is measured the same way, funnel to funnel: click-through rate and cost-per-click first, then conversions and cost-per-acquisition, then return on ad spend — and ultimately, profit. Vanity metrics don't survive that chain.
- ✓An analytical approach grounded in finance and data-analysis backgrounds, not marketing intuition alone.
- ✓Seven figures in paid media volume managed, with ROI increases of 200%+ typical.
- ✓Google Ads-certified across search, social, shopping, and every major paid channel.
- ✓Proprietary, custom-built optimization software — not off-the-shelf bidding tools.
- ✓Multilingual campaign management, in English and Spanish.
What this includes...
- ✓Search and social paid campaigns built around where organic is strong and where it isn't — no redundant spend.
- ✓Full-funnel measurement from CTR and CPC through CPA and ROAS, tied to the same revenue tracking used across every other pillar — one dashboard, not four.
- ✓Creative and targeting informed by the same customer and keyword research behind your organic strategy, not a separate paid-only process.
- ✓Emerging AI ad platforms — including ChatGPT Ads, where we're already running live campaigns — evaluated honestly. We'll tell you when a new channel is worth testing and when it's still too immature for real budget.
If you're curious about ChatGPT Ads specifically...
OpenAI began showing ads to logged-in ChatGPT Free and Go users on February 9, 2026, then opened a self-serve Ads Manager to U.S. businesses of any size on May 5, 2026 — dropping the original $50,000 minimum spend entirely and bringing CPMs down from roughly $60 to around $25.
That's a meaningfully lower barrier to entry than most new ad platforms launch with, and it puts conversational, context-matched ad placement within reach of businesses that could never have justified the original spend minimums. It's also worth being precise about what it isn't: paid placement inside ChatGPT Ads is a distinct, clearly labeled sponsored slot. It has no bearing on whether ChatGPT cites your business organically when someone asks it a question — that's earned through the SEO/GEO work described elsewhere on this site, not bought. We treat it the same way we treat every new platform: with the same analytical rigor, not because it's shiny.
Running live ChatGPT Ads campaigns for clients since OpenAI opened self-serve advertising to U.S. businesses in May 2026 — one of the earlier agencies operating on the platform, ahead of most of the market still waiting to see how it plays out.
Questions we hear...
What is ChatGPT Ads and how does targeting work?
Sponsored responses shown below ChatGPT's answers to Free and Go tier users, clearly labeled "Sponsored." Rather than keyword bidding, targeting is matched to the conversational context of what someone is actually asking about. Plus, Pro, Team, Business, and Enterprise subscribers never see ads.
Is ChatGPT Ads worth testing yet for my business?
For many businesses, yes — the barrier to entry dropped significantly on May 5, 2026, when OpenAI opened self-serve access and eliminated the original spend minimum. It's still an early platform, so it's worth testing with a defined budget and honest expectations, not betting a core channel on it. We'll tell you plainly when it's ready for real budget and when it isn't.
How much does it cost to advertise on ChatGPT?
Pricing has moved quickly: roughly $60 CPM with a $200,000 minimum at the February 2026 launch, dropping to roughly $25 CPM with no minimum by the May 5, 2026 self-serve launch, plus CPC bidding around a recommended $3–5 starting bid. Worth reconfirming before committing budget, since this platform is still moving fast.
Does paid advertising help my visibility in AI-generated answers (GEO)?
No — they're separate games. There's no paid placement option inside ChatGPT's, Perplexity's, or Google AI's organic generated answers as of 2026; that citation has to be earned through content quality and technical structure. That's exactly why running paid media and SEO/GEO from the same team matters.
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