> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.mentionlab.io/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Sponsored Ads

> Track the paid placements that appear inside AI answers

Some AI answers carry paid placements: a product card with a price, or an image card with a headline
and a link. MentionLab records every one it sees, so you can tell an earned mention apart from a
bought one, and see which advertisers are paying to appear next to your category.

<Info>
  Ad data exists only for responses whose model returned an ad block, so coverage varies a lot by
  model. Use the **AI Models** filter to see which of yours produce it.
</Info>

## Where ads appear

Ads are not a single page. They surface next to the metric they belong with:

| Where                 | What you get                                                                     |
| --------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Overview**          | The **Ads rate** card: the share of responses carrying at least one ad           |
| **Queries → a query** | The **Ad Rate** card, and the ads themselves under each response                 |
| **Competitors**       | Three cards: **Ad Format Mix**, **Ad Share by Advertiser** and **Sponsored Ads** |
| **Filter bar**        | The **Ads** filter, to keep or drop responses that carried ads                   |
| **Export data**       | The **Sponsored Ads** export, one row per placement                              |

***

## The Competitors ads section

At the bottom of **Analysis → Competitors**.

### Ad Format Mix

A single bar splitting every placement in scope by card format, with the count of placements and ad
units beneath it. This card is deliberately never scoped by the format toggle: it is the reference the
other two cards are read against.

### Ad Share by Advertiser

A ranked table of who is advertising:

| Column         | Meaning                                                                   |
| -------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **#**          | Rank by ad share                                                          |
| **Advertiser** | The advertiser named on the card                                          |
| **Ad share**   | This advertiser's portion of all ad cards in scope                        |
| **Ad rate**    | Share of all responses in scope where this advertiser had at least one ad |

### Sponsored Ads

A donut of the same shares, top 10 plus an **Other** slice.

<Note>
  Both cards report **advertisers**, not brands. Brand attribution on ad cards is not reliable enough
  to publish yet, so the brand view is switched off rather than shown half-working.
</Note>

### The format toggle

The table and the donut each carry their own **All formats** / **Product ads** / **Image ads** toggle,
and they move independently. The toggle narrows the placement counts only. **Ad rate** and the
response totals stay format-agnostic, so an advertiser's ad rate does not change when you switch
formats.

<Info>
  Ad formats are defined by the platform and new ones appear without notice. The two known formats get
  friendly names; anything new shows its raw format name rather than being dropped.
</Info>

### Empty states

* **No sponsored ads found** means no ads ran in the scope you selected.
* **Ads detected, none brand-attributed** means ads did run, but no card named a brand MentionLab
  could resolve.

***

## Ads on a single response

Open **Queries**, click a query, and each run in **Response History** lists its ads under
**Sponsored ads (n)**, below the sources. A pink **Ads** dot in the timeline legend marks the runs that
carried one, and each run is labelled **Has ads** or **No ads**.

What a card shows depends on its format:

* **Product ads** name the advertiser, then the product image, title, price, any strikethrough price,
  and the star rating.
* **Image ads** show the creative with the advertiser or brand, an **Ad** pill, a headline and body
  text.

The query's **Ad Rate** card above counts the share of that query's responses that carried at least
one ad.

***

## Filtering by ads

The **Ads** filter in the Filters popover is three-way: **All**, **Ads**, **No ads**.

<Warning>
  Like the Sources and Shopping filters, this one narrows the population of responses, so it changes
  the denominator of every rate on the page. Setting it to **Ads** pins Ads rate at 100% by definition.
</Warning>

Set it to **No ads** to read your organic visibility with paid placements taken out of the picture.

***

## Exporting

**Project settings → Export data → Sponsored Ads** produces one file, `ads.csv`, with a row per ad
placement. A five-card carousel is five rows.

Each row carries when the run started, the query text, the model, country and language, the card
`format`, the `advertiser` and resolved `brand_name`, the creative's title, body, image URL and target
URL, `price` and `price_currency`, any strikethrough price, `star_rating`, the card's `position_rank`
and the `max_position` of its carousel, plus the `ai_response_id` it came from.

<Tip>
  The export respects the filter bar, so filter to one model or one date range before you run it.
</Tip>

***

## Reading the results

* A competitor with a high **ad rate** and a low mention rate is buying its way into answers where it
  does not rank. That is a different problem from a content gap, and a different fix.
* Watch **Ad Format Mix** over time. A shift toward product cards usually means the platform is
  treating your category as transactional, which changes what your content has to do.
* Compare your numbers with **Ads** and with **No ads** selected. The gap tells you how much of the
  answer real estate in your category is now paid.

<Note>
  The **Analytics – Ads** group in the [REST API](/rest-api/getting-started) exposes the same
  advertiser, format and brand breakdowns.
</Note>