Jotform builds a new discovery and acquisition playbook

Since 2006, Jotform has grown from an online form builder into an AI-powered workflow automation platform used by more than 40 million people. With more than 20,000 ready-to-use templates, Jotform supports a wide range of business needs, from lead capture, registration, and payments to agreements and approvals. That breadth is central to the marketing challenge: Jotform is not simply introducing a single product category. It is helping people understand how its products can fit into the workflows they are already trying to build, automate, and improve.

With ChatGPT Ads, Jotform was excited by the opportunity to show up in a platform where users are already working through day-to-day tasks and workflows. The team’s goals for the channel were twofold: first, to expand brand awareness by introducing Jotform to high-intent audiences at the moment they need to create an online form, capture leads, collect payments, request an e-signature, or automate a workflow; and second, to acquire high quality users by connecting each user’s need with the relevant Jotform product.

Jotform approached ChatGPT Ads as a structured experiment, not an extension of its traditional advertising playbook. Because conversational AI creates a different user experience than traditional online advertising, the team wanted to understand which use cases resonated in the channel and use those learnings to shape its strategy over time.

Jotform organized campaigns into three primary groups: generic campaigns that introduced the broader Jotform value proposition, brand campaigns, and use case campaigns built around specific customer needs, workflows, and business scenarios.

The team also evolved the campaign strategy as the platform matured. Jotform started with reach campaigns to establish an initial baseline, shifted to click campaigns when they became available to drive more traffic to its site, and most recently expanded into conversion campaigns to optimize toward signups.

In parallel, Jotform tested multiple user journeys, including campaigns that directed users to dedicated landing pages and experiences that let users create, edit, and analyze online forms with the Jotform plugin in ChatGPT. From the beginning, the goal was to build a repeatable cycle of testing, measurement, learning, and refinement that could support more informed optimization decisions as the platform evolved.

Since launching its first campaigns in April, Jotform has completed more than 100 optimizations across campaign settings, bidding strategies, ad units, conversion events, messaging, audience delivery, creative, and landing pages.

Some of the most meaningful improvements came from focused experiments including: optimizing landing pages for use case campaigns increased the signup rate by 2.5x; transitioning from reach to click campaigns reduced cost per click by 4-5x without compromising acquisition quality; and expanding and refining ad creative improved the click-through rate by 65%.

That optimization work is now showing up in both conversion signals and cost efficiency. More than 10% of clicks from ChatGPT Ads converted into signups, while the cost per signup is approximately 30% lower than paid search and 60% lower than paid social. The channel is also showing encouraging cost results, with cost per click in line with paid social and more than 40% lower than non-search paid media.

Those gains demonstrate that incremental improvements compound over time. For instance, paid traffic increased by 3.4x without a change in the monthly investment. Overall, the experience has strengthened Jotform’s belief that sustainable growth rarely comes from a single breakthrough, but from making data-informed decisions and continuously improving every part of the acquisition journey.

Beyond the performance metrics, Jotform gained a deeper understanding of how ChatGPT Ads can fit into its broader acquisition strategy. Each stage of the journey helped the team refine not only its campaigns, but also its assumptions about user intent, message relevance, and the role conversational discovery can play alongside more established advertising channels. Jotform sees ChatGPT Ads not as a direct one-to-one replacement for those channels, but as a distinct environment that creates new opportunities to connect users with relevant solutions in moments of active need.

Looking ahead, Jotform plans to keep testing which messages, use cases, and journeys lead to stronger acquisition performance, greater efficiency, and more customer growth. The team sees ChatGPT Ads as an exciting opportunity to help people discover the right Jotform product when they need to create an online form, collect e-signatures, automate approvals, or build multistep workflows.