Google is now placing ads directly inside its AI-powered search results, as announced at the company’s annual Google Marketing Live event, which took place today from Mountain View, California.
The company says it’s expanding Search and Shopping ads into “AI Overviews” on desktop in the U.S. as of today, with more countries to follow later this year on both desktop and mobile. There’s over 5 trillion searches on Google every year and the company says these AI Overviews “is one of the most successful launches in Search in the past decade.”
AI Overviews, which summarize answers to complex questions using Google’s AI, are seeing strong engagement. Google reports that queries using AI Overviews have led to over a 10% jump in usage in major markets like the U.S. and India. The company says people are not only happier with their results but are also searching more often—especially for commercial topics. Ad revenue from searches is Google’s bread and butter.
Users have already been seeing ads inside AI Overviews on mobile. Google says these ads help people find relevant businesses, products, and services when they’re ready to take action. Now, these ads are being introduced on desktop as well.
In addition, Google is starting to test ads inside “AI Mode” — its deeper, conversational search tool for complex questions. For example, if someone asks how to build a small business website, AI Mode might show them a detailed guide—along with an ad for a website builder.
“The way consumers discover information and make decisions has changed — it’s no longer straightforward. To help marketers predict what is often unpredictable, we introduced AI Max for Search campaigns. Building on that, today we’re launching our biggest update to bidding in over a decade: Smart Bidding Exploration. It pursues less obvious and potentially high-performing searches, giving advertisers the chance to appear in more of the moments where people are researching and discovering information on Search,” said Vidhya Srinivasan, VP/GM of Google Ads & Commerce, to iPhone in Canada.
Google says advertisers already using Google’s Performance Max, Shopping, or broad match Search campaigns are eligible to have their ads appear in these AI-powered experiences now in the U.S. Expect ads to come to Canada soon as well at some point.
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