National estate agent - Roar Digital

Our work

ChatGPT ads experiment for national estate agent

11 valuation requests in the first month of ChatGPT Ads, at £41.58 each on a £15-a-day budget.
One of the first estate agencies on the platform, with a single ad headline converting at 13.3%.

Established more than 150 years ago, with 85+ UK branches.

Instant valuation requests start the instruction pipeline, so the test was measured on valuation requests and their cost.

The campaign ran nationally on the UK platform with a minimum budget of £15 a day across the campaign.

A first test of ChatGPT Ads, run as part of our paid media service for the client.

We have worked with the client for five years, and with its parent company, a large property agent. That history meant the test launched with valuation tracking and reporting already in place.

We planned, built and managed the test, reporting monthly to senior leadership and staying in close contact throughout September.

The challenge

The client wanted to test ChatGPT Ads as a new source of instant and expert valuation requests. The test was exploratory, aimed at building first-hand performance data on a channel where property had no track record.

ChatGPT ads went live in the UK on 6 June 2026, and self-serve access followed on 22 June. In July 2026, telecoms and travel brands led UK spend and property was absent from the leading advertiser categories, which left no sector precedent to plan against and made this client one of the first estate agencies on the platform.

OpenAI’s ad policies prohibit ads for individual property sales or rentals, which rules out listing-led creative. The auction was also new, with no account history to draw on.

What we did

We built the test around four decisions.

1. Fund at the platform minimum

An unproven channel needed a capped budget that still produced enough clicks to read. We ran the campaign at £15 a day, the UK minimum, with CPC bidding and a £4.00 maximum bid. Spend stayed predictable, and every pound went on clicks.

2. Count the conversions the client already values

A new channel is only useful if its leads count on the same basis as every other source. We tracked instant and expert valuations, using the same conversion definition as the client’s existing paid media. Every ChatGPT valuation request was recorded exactly as the rest of the account records them.

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impressions

3. Split the campaign by intent

We wanted to know whether specific market questions or broad promotion produced valuation requests more efficiently. Both ad groups used context hints. One targeted conversations about property values, rental yields and the current market, and the other promoted the valuation service broadly. Budgets and bids were matched so the results were directly comparable.

marketing documents with location pin on a blue background

4. Build creative around the valuation service

OpenAI’s policies ban ads for individual listings, so every ad promoted the valuation service. We tested an action-led headline against a question-led one, both unbranded, to find which framing moved users from a conversation to a valuation request.

The results

Business impact (September 2026)

11 valuation requests (instant and expert) from £457.39 of spend
£41.58 cost per valuation request
6.96% of clicks became valuation requests
13.3% conversion rate on the “Home Valuation In 60 Seconds” headline (4 requests from 30 clicks)

Channel performance (September 2026)

30,568 impressions and 158 clicks
0.52% click-through rate, against a 0.74% UK ChatGPT Ads average (30 March to 16 September 2026, Similarweb and Graphite)
£2.89 average CPC, against a £4.00 maximum bid
£14.96 CPM
Ad groups finished closely matched. The property-questions group produced 6 valuation requests at £40.55 each, and the broad valuation group produced 5 at £42.82 each, a difference that is not statistically meaningful at this volume.
The question-led headline, “How much is my property worth?”, drew 56 clicks and 2 valuation requests (3.6%), 9.7 percentage points below the action-led headline.

Strategic position

One of the first estate agencies trying out the new platform
A tested creative direction, with action-led headlines converting more efficiently
Valuation tracking live on ChatGPT Ads, with both ad groups still running beyond September to build data
A setup that works within OpenAI’s ad policies (updated 10 September 2026), with no listing-led creative

First mover advantage

Why it worked

The test was scoped to answer one question at the lowest possible cost: whether ChatGPT users would request a valuation. Running at the platform minimum and counting the same conversions as the rest of the account meant 158 clicks gave a clear answer of 11 valuation requests in 30 days.

Matched ad groups isolated the variable that moved performance. The ad groups finished 0.5 percentage points apart on conversion rate and the two headlines finished 9.7 points apart, which points the next round of optimisation at creative.

Measuring valuation requests from the start kept the click-through rate in context. The 0.52% CTR sat below the 0.74% UK average, and 6.96% of those clicks still became valuation requests.

We have worked with the client for five years, and with its parent company, a large property agent. That relationship gave senior leadership the confidence to put budget into an unproven channel, and it meant tracking, conversion definitions and reporting were ready before the first impression served. Monthly reporting, with close contact throughout September, allowed decisions to be made as the data arrived.