ChatGPT ads: how much do context hints actually matter?

loomprospectingbeast

Almost set up my first ChatGPT ads campaign with the context hints field left blank, since it's marked optional. glad i asked around first, because that field turns out to be the only real targeting lever the platform has right now.

someone who's spent serious budget there shared a few hard rules:

Use commas only to separate one hint from the next, and don't overstuff the field. they spent enough to get a local rep on the phone, and the badly done hints were the first thing flagged.
Keep each hint simple but never recycle the same wording. Mix it up and phrase things the way a ChatGPT user would actually type them.
Their example: hire a painter for a property to increase sale value, painting research on making interiors look more spacious before selling an apartment or house, ceiling and wall painting research.

reworking my hints for targeting exec accounts now. how many hints are you all running before it starts hurting performance?

marketingmule

Context hints really are the only targeting lever right now, so getting them right matters a lot.

Pro tip from experience: separate hints with commas only and don't overload them. Ours were badly formatted early on and it showed clearly in performance.

We eventually hit the spend threshold for a local rep to reach out, and cleaning up the hints was one of the first fixes they recommended. Has anyone else's rep flagged this yet?

isa-ecom

Ran into this exact issue on a client's ChatGPT campaign. context hints are basically the platform's version of "ghetto keywords," same vibe as Search Themes in Google Ads. skip them and you're paying to serve ads to literally everyone, which is just torching budget. it'd be like running search campaigns with zero targeting. keep the phrases short and punchy too, same way you'd write them in Search Ads

loomprospectingbeast

That's actually useful to know. Are there any big no-no's with context hints though? Like stuff that'll get an ad rejected or just quietly tank performance?

pricingstrategist

Genuinely useful context. Curious whether they said anything about input structure - like feeding a single keyword versus pasting in a longer conversational brief?

masoncollab

Yeah, that tracks. With context hints being the only real targeting lever, that's where all the signal lives.

marketingmule

same advice came from our rep, basically. keep things simple but don't hammer the same phrasing over and over. mix it up and write the way a ChatGPT user would actually type it when they're researching.

For example: hire a painter to boost a property's sale value, or painting research on making interiors feel more spacious before selling an apartment or house, or ceiling and wall painting research.

Anyone else getting rep guidance on this yet? Wondering how much the wording really shifts things.