How AFA Stores Found Profitable Growth with Ads in ChatGPT

AFA Stores is an online furniture and home décor retailer offering more than 50,000 products from over 100 brands across furniture, outdoor living, children’s products, and pet gear. With a broad catalog and an established ecommerce business, the retailer continually looks for new ways to connect shoppers with relevant products as discovery habits evolve.

The Challenge

Product discovery is changing. As consumers increasingly use conversational tools to explore ideas, compare options, and make decisions, AFA Stores saw an opportunity to understand how advertising in ChatGPT could complement its established acquisition strategy.

But the retailer did not want to scale a new channel based on potential alone.

AFA Stores approached the ChatGPT Ads pilot with a deliberate test-and-learn mindset. The goal was to start conservatively, understand how shoppers engaged with ads in ChatGPT, measure whether that engagement translated into qualified traffic and profitable outcomes, and use real performance data to determine what role the channel should play alongside its existing marketing efforts.

The challenge was not simply getting into a new channel. It was learning whether that channel could earn a place in the broader media strategy.

Why Quartile

Quartile brought that context from its existing work with AFA Stores across other advertising channels. The team already understood the retailer’s broad catalog, priority categories, and wider performance strategy. That foundation helped Quartile make informed decisions around product selection, campaign structure, measurement, and optimization from the start.

Instead of treating ChatGPT Ads as an isolated experiment, Quartile could evaluate it in the context of AFA Stores’ broader customer acquisition strategy. That gave the retailer a clearer way to test the opportunity, learn from performance, and make decisions based on evidence rather than novelty.

The Solution

Quartile built the test around a simple principle: learn first, then scale what works.

The team managed the end-to-end campaign workflow, from product feed connectivity and campaign setup to conversion tracking and ongoing optimization. Quartile launched a combination of Standard and Product Feed campaigns, creating an initial foundation for AFA Stores to reach people as they explored ideas, evaluated options, and made decisions in ChatGPT.

Quartile also connected AFA Stores’ product feed so relevant product information could support its advertising strategy, while Shopify conversion tracking gave the team visibility into ecommerce outcomes generated by the campaigns.

Rather than pushing aggressively for scale from the outset, Quartile used the initial test period to understand performance. As data accumulated, the team identified where engagement was strongest, refined campaign structure, and used those learnings to determine where additional investment was justified.

That approach turned the pilot from an experiment with a new ad format into a measurable acquisition strategy: establish the infrastructure, observe how shoppers respond, optimize around proven signals, and scale based on results.

Results

Comparing approximately 60 days before and after launch, AFA Stores achieved:

• 4.7x ROAS from ChatGPT Ads campaigns

• 112% increase in orders attributed to direct traffic from ChatGPT

• 11% improvement in conversion rate

Just as important, the results gave AFA Stores a clearer framework for evaluating an emerging advertising channel. Instead of scaling based on assumptions, the retailer could make its next investment decisions using observed customer behavior and measurable performance.

Advertising in ChatGPT remains separate from ChatGPT’s answers. Ads are clearly labeled, and advertising does not influence the responses ChatGPT provides. The increase in direct ChatGPT orders therefore stands as a separate observed result rather than something we should attribute to paid advertising without additional evidence.

The larger lesson was simple: AFA Stores did not need to predict how valuable a new channel could become. It could test the opportunity, measure the outcome, and let performance determine what came next.

Ongoing Value & Future State

With the initial test establishing a performance baseline, AFA Stores and Quartile can continue refining the program based on what the data shows.

The next phase is focused on applying campaign learnings, refining contextual inputs, and evaluating new placements and capabilities as the ChatGPT Ads pilot evolves. The same measured approach will remain in place: test deliberately, optimize around evidence, and expand where performance supports it.

For AFA Stores, that creates something more valuable than simply participating in a new advertising channel. It builds the knowledge and operating framework needed to understand where advertising in ChatGPT belongs within its broader customer acquisition strategy.

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