Search intelligence platform Adthena today circulated its Monthly AI Data Pulse for June 2026, and the headline figure sits inside a single row of a data table: zero. Across 169,560 scrapes of ChatGPT conducted in the United Kingdom throughout June, the company's monitoring recorded no ad placements whatsoever, a 0.00 percent ad frequency rate and zero of the 29,237 total ad items Adthena catalogued that month across all markets. That number sits awkwardly next to a separate finding in the same report: Google's AI Overviews appeared in 23 percent of UK searches during June, three percentage points ahead of the 18 percent frequency Adthena measured in the United States.

The contrast captures where two competing AI advertising channels stand in a single market at the same moment: Google's AI Overviews generating summaries in nearly a quarter of UK searches yet monetizing only a sliver of that volume, and ChatGPT showing confirmed advertiser activity in the UK yet no scraped ad impressions across the full month, according to Adthena's dataset. Reconciling those two facts requires unpacking what the report actually measured, and what it did not.

What the June data shows

Adthena's report, distributed as an eleven-page document and summarized in a LinkedIn post from the company, breaks its findings into several sections: AI Overview frequency and ad penetration, query-length patterns behind AI Overview ads, sector-level ad exposure, ChatGPT ad frequency by country, a UK-specific ChatGPT ads analysis, the highest-frequency ChatGPT ad categories, and PPC market share tables for the sports and outdoors category across three countries.

On the Google side, the US AIO frequency rate stood at 18 percent in June, with an AIO ad penetration rate of just 0.16 percent, meaning only 16 in every 10,000 AI Overviews carried a paid placement. The UK rate came in higher at 23 percent, and Australia higher still at 24 percent. Those frequency figures describe how often an AI-generated summary appears at all; they say nothing about whether that summary carried advertising, which is where the ad penetration figure becomes the more consequential number for anyone managing a paid search budget. A 2026 European Search Award judging panel, cited on Adthena's site, described that gap between frequency and monetization as one of the industry's overlooked measurement problems.

A separate query-length analysis, covering AI Overview ad appearances specifically, recorded 160,010 total US ad appearances in June. Of those, 57.4 percent occurred on three-to-four-word searches, a segment Adthena's report labels the "money zone." Five-to-six-word queries took another 25.6 percent in the US, a long-tail signal that outpaces the equivalent share in Australia (11.5 percent of 21,022 appearances) and Asia (9.6 percent of 2,935 appearances). One-to-two-word searches generated only 13.7 percent of US appearances, 16.3 percent in Australia, and 20.4 percent in Asia, while seven-word-plus queries barely register anywhere: 3.3, 1.0, and 0.9 percent respectively. The pattern is not new: Adthena's 29.1-million-query report published in April already found more than 60 percent of AI Overview ad appearances concentrated on three-to-four-word searches, so June confirms a trend rather than revealing one.

Sector-level data adds another layer. Home and Services led AI Overview ad exposure across every market tracked, reaching 30.6 percent in the report's third regional column and 24.4 percent in Australia. Education held steady across markets, ranging from 8.0 to 13.3 percent. Business and Tech surged in one region to 37 percent, the category's biggest single-month mover, while Finance and Insurance and Travel and Hospitality registered the smallest shares almost everywhere, below 2 percent in most columns, which the report frames as low current volume but high apparent room to grow.

One inconsistency is worth flagging rather than smoothing over. The sector-leaderboard table labels its third column "AU 21,022," identical to the Australia total in the adjoining query-length table. A separate page in the same report lists a distinct Asia total of 2,935 appearances, and the third column's figures for Business and Tech (37.0 percent) and Travel and Hospitality (20.1 percent) do not resemble Australia's figures shown elsewhere, so the labeling in that specific table appears to be an error rather than a genuine second Australia measurement. The intended regional split is reasonably clear from context, but the label itself does not match, and this account notes that discrepancy rather than silently assigning the figures to one region or another.

ChatGPT advertising, country by country

Adthena's country breakdown for ChatGPT ad frequency in June covered five markets. The United States recorded 552,244 total scrapes, of which 24,712 contained ads, for a 4.47 percent frequency and 26,284 total ad items. Canada showed 17,234 scrapes with 788 containing ads, a 4.57 percent frequency. New Zealand's 20,275 scrapes produced 780 ad-carrying results, or 3.85 percent. Australia, with 86,215 scrapes, returned 1,385 ad-carrying scrapes, a lower 1.61 percent frequency despite its larger scrape volume than Canada or New Zealand. The United Kingdom's 169,560 scrapes, the largest single-country total in the table after the United States, returned nothing: zero scrapes with ads, 0.00 percent frequency, zero ad items.

According to Adthena's report, the United States accounts for 89.9 percent of all ChatGPT ad items the company tracked in June, or 26,284 of 29,237 total. That concentration is consistent with the channel's rollout history. OpenAI's advertising pilot launched in the United States in February 2026 with a minimum advertiser commitment that started as high as $250,000 before falling in stages, and the company only opened a self-serve Ads Manager to all US businesses on May 5, 2026, removing the minimum spend threshold entirely and introducing cost-per-click bidding. Every other market in Adthena's table joined later and with a smaller advertiser base to draw from, so a lopsided US share by itself would not be surprising.

What is harder to reconcile is the United Kingdom specifically showing a flat zero for the entire month. ChatGPT ads went live in the UK on June 6, 2026, an event confirmed by Benji Shomair, OpenAI's VP of Monetization, making the UK the first European market to receive the product. That launch fell squarely within Adthena's June measurement window, not before or after it. A separate page of the same report is titled "ChatGPT Ads UK analysis" and states outright that "ads went live 6 June," then documents specific UK ChatGPT advertising activity in detail. That page cannot be squared with the country table's claim of zero scrapes with ads for the same market and month, and the report does not explain the discrepancy. It may reflect two different measurement windows folded into one document, a scraping methodology that missed live placements during part of the month, or a labeling error in one of the two tables. Whatever the cause, a reader relying on the country-level summary table alone would conclude UK ChatGPT advertising did not exist in June, while a reader relying on the UK-specific analysis a few pages later would conclude the opposite. Both cannot be fully accurate as stated.

Inside the UK ChatGPT findings

Setting aside the contradiction with the country table, the UK-specific analysis offers granular detail in its own right. B2B software-as-a-service is described as the dominant vertical, with 21 distinct advertisers and Monday.com clearly ahead of the rest at 74 triggers and 22 ad variants. Travel placed a distant second vertical, with 20 more advertisers spread across other SaaS categories.

Match quality is described as "very broad": one example query about a Nando's breakfast menu triggered ads for Premier Inn, Waitrose, and an unnamed rewards app, which the report frames as an early-stage brand-safety consideration. Without the keyword-level controls advertisers have used for two decades in traditional search, unrelated brands can surface against unrelated conversational context.

Attribution is described as unresolved: more than 15 distinct UTM source variants are in use, and only around 14 percent reference OpenAI directly, pointing to inconsistent tagging among the early advertiser cohort. On competitive density, 63 of roughly 300 sampled prompt themes already had two or more advertisers competing for the same conversational moment, concentrated in AI and machine-learning terminology, enterprise resource planning and project-management terms, and travel comparisons.

Creative format skews short, averaging roughly 4.6 words per headline and 10 words of body copy, which the report describes as ported directly from Google's Responsive Search Ads format rather than built natively for conversation. Two example hooks appear in the report: "Trip to Edinburgh?" and "Can Your Time Clock Verify Location?", both in title case with short, direct calls to action.

The categories spending above average

Separate from the country breakdown, Adthena's report ranks ChatGPT ad categories by frequency across all markets combined. Logistics led at 12.41 percent, drawn from 6,050 total scrapes, 751 ad items, and a maximum of 111 distinct advertisers observed in the category during June. Home and Garden followed at 11.99 percent across 8,021 scrapes and 998 ad items, with up to 107 advertisers. Beauty and Cosmetics came in at 10.03 percent across 9,593 scrapes and 962 ad items, though with a notably smaller advertiser pool at up to 53 companies. Media and Entertainment, the largest category by scrape volume at 21,819, registered an 8.01 percent frequency across 1,748 ad items and up to 177 advertisers. Insurance followed at 7.17 percent across 13,302 scrapes and 954 ad items, with a comparatively small advertiser count of up to 26. Energy and Utilities closed the list at 6.37 percent across 12,493 scrapes, 796 ad items, and up to 71 advertisers.

According to Adthena, all six categories run at three to four times the platform's overall average ad frequency of roughly 3.3 percent. A category like Insurance, combining a 7.17 percent frequency with only 26 maximum advertisers, points to a small pool of active bidders capturing outsized conversational exposure, a different dynamic from Media and Entertainment, where nearly 180 advertisers split a similar overall frequency rate.

Sports and outdoors: three markets, three different stories

Adthena's report also published PPC market share tables specific to Sports and Outdoors advertisers in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, each drawing on standard Google Ads click-share data rather than the ChatGPT or AI Overview figures discussed above.

In the United States, dickssportinggoods.com led with an 18.08 percent click share, followed by walmart.com at 10.90 percent, academy.com at 5.54 percent, temu.com at 3.82 percent, basspro.com at 2.27 percent, and sportsmans.com at 2.05 percent. Walmart posted the largest gain, adding 2.76 percentage points, while sportsmans.com fell 1.12 points. The top five US advertisers together held 49.7 percent of category clicks, drawing from an estimated 2,400 to 3,397 active advertisers, and the sector's AI Overview frequency rate sat at 11 percent.

The United Kingdom was more fragmented. Argos led with 7.37 percent, ahead of decathlon.co.uk at 6.14 percent, amazon.co.uk at 4.74 percent, halfords.com at 4.50 percent, jdsports.co.uk at 3.91 percent, and mountainwarehouse.com at 3.45 percent. Argos posted the month's largest gain, up 2.84 points as its impression share climbed from 4.79 to 10.06 percent, while amazon.co.uk recorded the steepest decline. The top five held just 26.6 percent of clicks among an estimated 1,314 to 1,912 active advertisers, a considerably less consolidated market than the US, though the AI Overview frequency rate matched it at 11 percent.

Australia showed similar concentration to the UK but a different leaderboard. Yeti.com led at 6.21 percent, ahead of temu.com at 5.70 percent, anacondastores.com at 5.59 percent, amazon.com.au at 5.42 percent, bcf.com.au at 4.95 percent, and rebelsport.com.au at 4.79 percent. Rebelsport posted the largest gain at 3.77 points, while BCF fell 1.14 points. The top five held 26.8 percent of clicks among an estimated 962 to 1,212 active advertisers, and the sector's AI Overview frequency rate came in highest of the three markets at 14 percent.

Why the numbers matter for search marketers

The stakes behind these figures are not abstract. Adthena cites its own prior research finding that paid search click-through rates can fall by 8 to 12 percentage points once AI Overviews begin appearing regularly against a query set, measured across 21 million search indexes gathered between April and September 2025. Separate research from Ahrefs, published in February 2026, found AI Overviews correlate with a 58 percent reduction in click-through rates for the top-ranking organic result, nearly double the 34.5 percent figure the same firm measured less than a year earlier. Seer Interactive's analysis of 42 client organizations, covered in November 2025, found organic click-through rates falling 61 percent and paid rates falling 68 percent on queries where AI Overviews appeared, comparing June 2024 through September 2025 data.

Set against that backdrop, a UK AI Overview frequency rate of 23 percent, five points above the US figure Adthena recorded for the same month, describes a market where Google's summaries are displacing a larger share of ordinary organic and paid search real estate than in America, while monetization of those UK summaries through paid placements remains, according to this report, effectively undocumented. Whether that reflects genuinely low ad penetration in UK AI Overviews specifically, or a gap in what Adthena's scraping captured, the report does not say.

The query-length finding carries its own practical weight. Search marketers accustomed to bidding primarily on high-volume, short-tail terms are, according to this data, competing for a shrinking share of where AI Overview ads actually appear. Three-to-four-word queries capturing 57.4 to 71.2 percent of ad appearances across the three markets Adthena measured suggests that mid-length, moderately specific searches, rather than either very short navigational queries or long conversational ones, are where the AI-generated ad auction is concentrated for now. That is a narrower targeting window than either extreme of the query-length spectrum, and it runs counter to an industry assumption, one Adthena's own April report already challenged, that longer conversational queries would dominate as AI search matures.

For ChatGPT specifically, this report describes a channel still overwhelmingly concentrated in a single country several months after OpenAI first opened it to advertisers. The platform's early access carried a six-figure minimum spend that excluded all but the largest brands; the self-serve Ads Manager that removed that barrier only opened to US businesses on May 5, 2026. International markets, including the UK, are still working through an earlier stage of that same access curve, and Adthena's own ChatGPT Ads Intelligence Platform, which monitors more than 300,000 daily prompts, is itself one of the tools attempting to make that early activity legible to advertisers who cannot see competitor data through OpenAI's own reporting interface.

The gap between Google's AI Overview ad penetration figures and Adthena's original detection work is also worth noting for scale. When Adthena first detected ads inside AI Overviews in November 2025, the company found just 13 instances across 25,000 monitored search results pages, a frequency of 0.052 percent. The 0.16 percent ad penetration rate this report attributes to the US in June represents roughly triple that original figure eight months later, a meaningful increase in relative terms even though the absolute number, one paid placement in roughly every 625 AI Overviews, remains small against the 18 percent of searches in which an AI Overview appears at all.

Timeline

  • November 24, 2025: Adthena first detects ads inside Google AI Overviews at a 0.052 percent frequency across 25,000 monitored search results pages
  • February 9, 2026: OpenAI's ChatGPT advertising pilot formally launches in the United States
  • April 2026: Adthena publishes a 29.1-million-query report documenting that over 60 percent of AI Overview ad appearances concentrate on three-to-four-word searches
  • May 5, 2026: OpenAI opens a self-serve Ads Manager to all US businesses, removing the minimum spend requirement and adding cost-per-click bidding
  • June 1 through June 30, 2026: Adthena's monitoring period for the Monthly AI Data Pulse covered in this report
  • June 6, 2026: ChatGPT advertising launches in the United Kingdom, according to OpenAI
  • July 2026: Adthena's June 2026 Monthly AI Data Pulse is circulated, reporting a 0.00 percent ChatGPT ad frequency across 169,560 UK scrapes for the same June period

Summary

Who: Adthena, a London-founded AI search intelligence platform, produced the data. Kite Hill PR, working on Adthena's behalf, brought the findings to PPC Land's attention.

What: Adthena's Monthly AI Data Pulse for June 2026 documents Google AI Overview frequency and ad penetration rates, ChatGPT ad frequency by country, category-level ChatGPT ad spending, and PPC market share for Sports and Outdoors advertisers in three countries. The report shows a 0.00 percent ChatGPT ad frequency across 169,560 UK scrapes for June, alongside a separate page in the same report documenting specific UK ChatGPT ad activity following the channel's June 6 launch there, an inconsistency the report does not resolve.

When: The underlying data covers June 2026. Adthena circulated the findings via LinkedIn in early July, with a further pitch reaching PPC Land on July 8, 2026.

Where: The report covers the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and, for select metrics, broader Asia markets.

Why: The findings matter because they quantify, market by market, how far two competing AI advertising surfaces, Google's AI Overviews and OpenAI's ChatGPT, have progressed toward monetization at a moment when both are reshaping how paid search traffic and revenue flow to advertisers and publishers.