Which tools can track ads showing up in AI chatbot answers like ChatGPT and Perplexity?
Which tools can track ads showing up in AI chatbot answers like ChatGPT and Perplexity: what Ads Radar covers, what it skips and how alternatives compare.
Ads inside AI answers are new enough that the tooling is thin and the claims are loose. Before choosing anything, separate two jobs that get blurred. The first is watching which competitors' ads appear when someone asks a question you care about. The second is managing your own campaigns. This guide is about the first, and it states plainly where coverage ends, including for Perplexity.
The short answer
Promptwatch is the clearest published answer today. Its Ads Radar captures sponsored ads inside ChatGPT Search, Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode answers to the prompts you track. For each ad it records the title, description, image or price, advertiser name and domain, target URL and the triggering prompt. The views are Ads per day, Top advertisers, a By Ad table and a By Prompt table, with filters for model, advertiser domain, prompt type and date range.
Two limits, stated up front. Ads Radar does not cover Perplexity. And it does not report on your own OpenAI campaigns, which belong in OpenAI Ads Manager. If your question is specifically about ChatGPT and Perplexity together, no tool in our catalog covers ad capture on both, and you should treat any vendor claiming it with care until you see it demonstrated.
What you actually want to know
- Who is bidding on my prompts? Advertiser names and domains.
- What do their ads say? Copy, claims and landing pages.
- How often do ads appear? Frequency by day and by prompt.
- Where does my visibility sit around them? Your organic mention next to a paid slot.
Ad tracking is useful alongside visibility tracking, because an ad above an answer changes how much attention your organic mention gets.
Ranked tools
1. Promptwatch
Ads Radar starts on the Business plan ($579 a month) and is included on every agency plan (Kick-off $199, Growth $399, Scale $799). It is not on Essential ($95) or Professional ($245). Business includes 5 projects, 350 prompts and the other Business features such as Shopping Insights and state and city tracking. The By Prompt table shows ad count, your average visibility and the latest ad for each tracked prompt, so you can read the paid and organic picture together.
The same platform covers the organic side: visibility dashboards, citation analytics, crawler logs, visitor analytics and content tools. A free Explore plan (10 prompts, ChatGPT only) lets you try the prompt tracking, but not Ads Radar.
2. Evertune
Evertune is an AI brand measurement and advertising platform. It samples each prompt up to 100 times per model, benchmarks brands across 11 models, and its agents include ChatGPT ad campaigns built from visibility data. Pricing is custom, with a reported figure of about $800 a month or more in our catalog. It leans toward campaign creation rather than competitive ad capture, so ask what it records about other advertisers' ads.
3. AthenaHQ
AthenaHQ tracks how a brand appears in AI answers and turns gaps into actions. Starter is $295 a month with 3,600 credits and 11 models. Its published pages do not describe ad capture.
4. Scrunch AI
Scrunch AI Core is $250 a month with four LLMs including ChatGPT and Perplexity. Its pages describe monitoring and audits, not ad capture.
5. Profound
Profound is an enterprise platform with a free 7-day trial and custom pricing (estimated near $40k a year). Ask about ad coverage in a demo, because we cannot confirm it from published pages.
Monitoring-first options
Otterly.AI (Lite $29 a month) and Peec AI (from $95 a month) track mentions and citations. We found no published ad capture in them.
Comparison table
| Tool | Captures competitor ads in AI answers | Engines for ads | Entry price for that feature |
|---|---|---|---|
| Promptwatch | Yes, Ads Radar | ChatGPT Search, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode | Business $579/mo, or any agency plan from $199/mo |
| Evertune | Not described in our entry | Not stated | Custom |
| AthenaHQ | Not described | Not stated | n/a |
| Scrunch AI | Not described | Not stated | n/a |
| Profound | Not confirmed | Not stated | Custom |
Who should pick which
- You advertise or compete in ChatGPT and Google AI answers and want to see rivals' ads: Promptwatch Business, or an agency plan if you run this for clients.
- You want to plan ChatGPT ad campaigns from visibility data: look at Evertune, and keep OpenAI Ads Manager for the campaign itself.
- You mainly care about Perplexity: no tool here captures ads there, so use manual spot checks and track your organic visibility in the meantime.
How to use ad data
Start with your twenty most commercial prompts. Check which ones attract ads, who advertises and what the landing pages promise. Compare against your organic visibility on the same prompts. If a rival buys the top slot on a prompt where you are cited, test whether your page answers better. Ad presence changes over time, so read trends, not one day.
Caveats
Ad formats in AI products are changing, so check each product's current ad policy and the vendor's current coverage before you buy.