Last week, Google introduced a radical search shake-up that presents users with AI-generated answers to their queries. Now the company says it will soon start including ads within those AI overviews, as the autoresponders are called.
Google on Tuesday announced plans to test search and shopping ads in AI digests, a move that could extend its dominance in search advertising into a new era. Although Google quickly rolled out AI Overviews to all US English users last week after announcing the feature at its I/O developer conference, it’s unclear how widely or quickly the ads will start appearing.
Screenshots posted by Google show how a user asking how to remove wrinkles from clothes can get an AI-generated summary of tips gleaned from the web, with a carousel of ads beneath sprays that claim to help clean a wardrobe.
Google’s AI overviews are intended to prevent users from opting for alternatives like ChatGPT or the startup Perplexity, which use AI-generated text to answer many questions traditionally asked of Google. How and when Google would integrate ads into AI Overviews has been a major question about the company’s ChatGPT update strategy. Search ads are the company’s largest revenue generator, and even subtle changes to ad placement or design can cause large swings in Google’s revenue.
Courtesy of Google
Google shared some details about its new overview ad format in its announcement on Tuesday. Ads “will have the opportunity to appear within the AI Overview in a section clearly labeled ‘sponsored’ when they are relevant to both the query and the information in the AI Overview,” Vidhya Srinivasan, Vice President and General Manager of Google ads. , wrote in a blog post.
AI Overview will rely on ads from advertisers’ existing campaigns, meaning they can’t opt out of the experiment entirely or have to adapt their ad settings and layouts to appear in the feature. “There is no need for advertisers to do anything,” Srinivasan wrote.
Google said last year, when it began experimenting with AI-generated responses in search, that ads for specific products would be integrated into the feature. In one example at the time, it displayed a sponsored option at the top of an AI-generated list of children’s hiking backpacks. Google says early testing showed that users found ads above and below AI summaries useful. Bing, Google’s much smaller rival, displays product ads on its Bing Copilot search chatbot, but in Monday’s tests, WIRED didn’t trigger any ads on Bing’s competitor, AI Overview.