Mostafa ElBermawy

Founder & CEO of @Goodie_AI / up to @nogoodhq / growth advisor / building the world’s leading platform for brand visibility and AI search optimization

[Goodie AI @Goodie_AI]

Just launched: Social Optimization Suite.

See which content AI models are citing, by platform and model. Then get concrete action items on what to post, which threads to join, and exactly how to engage.

Social is your retrieval infrastructure now. Time to treat it like one.

[Mostafa ElBermawy @mbermawy]

@laplacemonk If the experiment “works”, everyone else will jump in but for now ad remains risky imo

[Mostafa ElBermawy @mbermawy]

ChatGPT Ads, Sam Altman's “last resort,” is here and brands are already lining up for beta.

My take is: this is a cautious experiment, and I doubt most brands will see meaningful value from it in 2026. It’s also one of the hardest ad experiments OpenAI could attempt. (I genuinely feel for that team behind it)

Why this is powerful (at least on paper for now):

OpenAI sits on an extraordinary asset: live, intent-rich conversations powered by a highly capable reasoning engine. If ads could tap into that context responsibly, this might be the strongest intent signal advertising has ever seen.

Why this is incredibly hard:

Running ads on top of an intelligence layer is fundamentally different from running ads on social feeds or search results. 

Some challenges you can't ignore are:

- A gamble with user trust: An assistant that knows a lot about me and then nudges me to buy something that doesn’t clearly align with my interests will feel manipulative—regardless of guardrails.

- A bait for anti-AI media: OpenAI is volunteering to be the punching bag of the AI industry. Edge cases will surface quickly, and headlines will shape perception fast. I can already see the verge and nytimes stories on this.

- Competitive pressure: This is happening while Gemini gains consumer traction and Anthropic wins enterprises. Some Claude voices on X said it won’t run ads. Gemini doesn’t run ads in the consumer experience today. Expect competitors to use this moment to sharpen positioning.

- Limited inventory: Early access appears focused on logged-in U.S. adults with constrained placements, below the answer. That’s likely not massive impression share to support a healthy auction yet.

Ok. What brands should do now?

Let's agree that AI search is now a mainstream channel, with ads being built on top, that should not be ignored. It's the most valuable digital channel when measured by downstream impact (2-8X to the next channel).

A few practical steps:

- Fix your measurement stack. AI ads won’t reflect as much value with last-click attribution. Incrementality matters more than ever.

- AEO becomes essential. Ads don’t influence answers. Visibility and citations do. Invest in AI visibility measurement and actions. Ads sit below the answer; optimization shapes the answer. (@Goodie_AI says hi!)

- Expect more tooling. Ads will bring analytics, reporting, and eventually an “AI ad manager.” or "ChatGPT analytics".

Even if this first iteration underwhelms, AI ads are here to stay. Both Google and OpenAI will pursue this revenue stream despite skepticism.

My guess: this move is as much about proving a durable revenue story as it is about winning the ad market in the near term. The next few months will tell.

[Mostafa ElBermawy @mbermawy]

So what does this all mean:

- Start #AEO with Google’s AI surfaces, AIO + AI Mode + Gemini (together representing 57.5% of user share). That’s where the AI search crown is today so ptimizing there will likely yield more growth.

- Don’t ignore ChatGPT. It’s moved from novelty to essential channel with exceptional conversion quality. At current growth, it could reach 1B users by year-end. While click volume remains low, a ChatGPT sourced lead is 2.1-4.4X higher quality than a Google search lead.

- This isn’t about picking a single winner. It’s about preparing for a world where multiple AI search players matter and where both Google AI and ChatGPT demand attention.

[Mostafa ElBermawy @mbermawy]

ChatGPT isn’t the leading AI search platform. It’s not even #2.

We looked at two metrics: AI search referral share (how much traffic each model sends) as well as active user share by platform.

[Mostafa ElBermawy @mbermawy]

ChatGPT ranks third in users, yet it drives 89.1% of all measurable AI search referral traffic. Google AI (#1) and Meta AI (#2) in terms of users, are not even showing up in measurable AI referral traffic.

Zooming out to all channels: Google Search still accounts for 58% of total traffic share. ChatGPT: 5.8% Copilot: 1.1% Perplexity: 0.88%

The obvious attribution gap: Google AI Overviews and AI Mode aren’t broken out in GA/GSC, so their referrals roll up under “Google organic.".

For some reason Google is keeping the disaggregated data close but with 2B+ users, prime SERP placement, and global rollout, it’s reasonable to assume their impact already rivals, if not surpasses ChatGPT!

[Mostafa ElBermawy @mbermawy]

What AI pulls information from when it comes to consumer finance. Interesting how Reddit and Wikipedia is not leading here.

[Goodie AI @Goodie_AI]

We analyzed 5.7M citations across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini & Perplexity to see who AI trusts most in consumer finance.

Banks are largely absent in top 10. Affiliates + publishers and social dominate the citation graph.

[Mostafa ElBermawy @mbermawy]

Astronomer’s brand sentiment 😬😬

Courtesy of @Goodie_AI

[Mostafa ElBermawy @mbermawy]

Why this matters:

- LLMs are rapidly becoming the new gatekeepers of information on the web, the intermediary between brands and buyers.

- The funnel is collapsing, buyers are discovering products and making decisions directly inside ChatGPT and Perplexity.

- Leads from LLMs trust the answers more and it shows. They convert better at every stage of the funnel.

- If you’re not monitoring how AI search is impacting your brand and funnel, you’re ignoring the most valuable source of leads on the web today.

Full study link is here: https://t.co/IfyQiCDLtH

Curious to hear what patterns you’re seeing in your funnel- drop a comment below!

[Mostafa ElBermawy @mbermawy]

We just ran the largest AEO study for B2B brands.

117,432 leads analyzed. October 2024 to April 2025.

One core question: Can AI search actually drive pipeline, not just clicks and visibility?

Here’s what we found… 🧵

[Mostafa ElBermawy @mbermawy]

- ChatGPT leads convert nearly 2x better than Google or Bing. It only drove 7.8% of leads, but delivered the highest lead-to-close rate across all channels.

- Google still owns the top of the funnel (58% traffic share), but its downstream efficiency is slipping.

- Perplexity performed well on quality, but at a fraction of ChatGPT’s volume. ChatGPT gets 6x more traffic.

- Gemini ranked lowest in traffic and lead contribution among AI search platforms.

[Mostafa ElBermawy @mbermawy]

@alecvxyz Great work on this one @HamzaAlsamraee excited to try it ✨

[Mostafa ElBermawy @mbermawy]

Just got violated by OpenAI’s 4o image generation.

I innocently typed “make a cartoon meme about my biz life based on what you already know” and this is what I got 😩

If this isn’t AGI, I don’t know what is.

[Mostafa ElBermawy @mbermawy]

Partnership is the single most impactful distribution lever that brands often overlook.

ChatGPT just got access to 1.5 billion Apple devices with a single partnership.

Instead of asking Siri, you can now ask ChatGPT.

The partnership between Apple and Google was a key lever for Google’s search dominance in the early days.

It cost them more than $20 billion a year, but it guaranteed dominance over the search market of 1.5 billion Apple devices.

OpenAI followed a similar path with their Apple partnership.

Claude will soon power various Amazon products, taking advantage of their massive distribution network.

Perplexity is partnering with mobile service providers to get access to their wider markets.

Spotify partnered with Hulu to get access to their user base and vice versa.

Many brands sit on massive distribution networks that can be the perfect growth lever for you as long as interests and goals align.

Partnerships can be venture-based like in the case of Anthropic and Amazon, monetary-based like Google and Apple, or bi-directional like Hulu and Spotify.

This is why it matters who you let in your cap table early on. They are your future partners and potentially your biggest distribution lever.

Get out there and make friends.

Build alliances and partnerships, not enemies.

Your competition can be your next partner!

[Mostafa ElBermawy @mbermawy]

Steve Ballmer right now…

[Bloomberg Markets @markets]

Steve Ballmer passed Bill Gates on Monday to become the sixth-richest person in the world https://t.co/i9gPX36Mgp

[Mostafa ElBermawy @mbermawy]

With Claude 3.5 @AnthropicAI is doubling down on intelligence over UX or cross modality use cases.

Claude 3 Opus was already best in class when it comes to creative writing according to @nogoodhq most recent LLM application report.

I think it’s a smart move to focus on being known as the “smarter” model in the game. Claude 3.5 will likely accelerate user acquisition and enterprise deals for Anthropic.

But WHERE IS THE F***IN APP?! It’s past due at this point.

[Mostafa ElBermawy @mbermawy]

In a small survey among our marketing group (clearly biased yet relevant), 82% reported using Google 60% less than before, turning to ChatGPT, Bard, or sometimes TikTok as viable alternatives. I covered the rise of TikTok and social in a prior thread.

[Mostafa ElBermawy @mbermawy]

Ask Google Bard today, "Who's the top growth marketing agency in the US?" and NoGood (my company) will confidently be among the top 2. Our journey to this point is fascinating… 🧵

[Mostafa ElBermawy @mbermawy]

Search platforms have evolved, and user behavior follows. Answer engines are gradually cannibalizing or taking search engines' market share.

Consider this:

🧩 ChatGPT’s user growth and site visits are booming. 100+ Million users and they reached almost 2 billion site visits last month.
🧩 Bing has integrated ChatGPT into its core search experience months ago.
🧩 Google has launched Bard followed by a Gen. AI search experiment that illustrates what the future of google search could look like.
🧩 DeepMind and Google Brain teams are expected to launch their latest Gen AI model, Gemini, and promised it will likely outperform GPT4.