AI App Paid Acquisition Shifts from Installs to Margin-Adjusted Payback

AI apps should scale paid acquisition using margin-adjusted LTV and payback, accounting for inference costs, trial-to-paid conversion, renewals, creative fatigue, cohort lag, and iOS measurement constraints. ChatGPT Ads metrics guidance emphasizes CPA, post-click conversion, incrementality, and verified measurement, but reviewed guidance provides no campaign performance results. A new advertiser benchmark reports paid ChatGPT visits at $0.89 revenue per session and 0.37% conversion versus Google Search at $2.45 and 1.17%; this is channel context, not a direct AI-product acquisition result.