We’re used to seeing the occasional ad on Google Search, but it’s a new era, and now AI is helping you with your search queries as well. The bad news is that Google is, too, making efforts to embed ads in those AI search results as well. Now, they’re being greatly expanded.

Google has announced expansions to its ad initiative throughout both AI Overviews as well as Google’s new AI-only search mode, AI Mode. AI Overviews already featured some ads, but now, Google announced that Search and Shopping ads within AI Overviews are expanding to desktop platforms in the US, starting today. Previously, these ads were mainly shown on mobile platforms whenever an AI Overview popped up in a search query, as long as the ad in question was relevant to the actual response. Looking ahead, the company plans to further extend ads in AI Overviews in English to select international markets on both mobile and desktop later this year—currently ads are only available in the US, but they might soon become as global as regular ads in regular search results are.

In addition to the AI Overviews expansion, Google is now testing the integration of ads into its AI Mode. As a refresher, while AI Overviews pop up in addition to good old search results, AI Mode gets rid of search results completely to keep a longer AI output, kind of like what you would get from Google’s Gemini chatbot. Within AI Mode, ads may appear below or be integrated into the AI-generated responses where deemed relevant. As an example, Google laid out a scenario where someone might search AI Mode for “how to build a website for a small business with limited resources.” The system would generate a step-by-step guide, and if appropriate, an ad for a website builder could be displayed as a potential next step.

Related

Google’s AI Mode Is Now Rolling Out Widely

Google’s AI Mode will give you more than just links.

Monetizing AI can be tricky, and it’s currently done for the most part with paid memberships for AI chatbots that give you, among other things, improved rate limits and better, more intelligent models. Ads are a way to monetize models without having to put the burden of paying for the service on the user. For AI Overviews, it has worked relatively fine since Search already had ads to some degree, but for AI Mode, some people could find it to be a tad more annoying.

This is currently a test, which means that if you’re in the US, you might start seeing them more frequently. Your mileage may vary if you live in other countries, and you won’t see them within AI Mode at the moment.

Source: Google