Advanced Advertising: Are Google’s AI Overview Ads Enough To Maintain Search Dominance?

Search has found a new buddy in generative AI.

It’s something I’ve noticed in my own online perusals and pursuits. It’s something that’s driven people to break their traditional search engine habits, and it’s even something many say provides better results.

So it was only a matter of time before the advertising money followed.

Google recently announced it would be fully rolling out ads in AI Overviews for U.S. mobile users. “People have been finding the ads within AI Overviews helpful because they can quickly connect with relevant businesses, products and services to take the next step at the exact moment they need them,” writes Shashi Thakur in Google’s press release. 

Thakur shares the hypothetical of Googling “how do I get a grass stain out of jeans?,” which would now provide shopping ads within the AI-generated response of solutions.

Google’s AI Overviews (from The Verge)

Google spokesperson Craig Ewer tells The Verge that products will only appear if a question has a “commercial angle.” According to Adweek, Google’s pitch to agencies has been that “changes in keyword and search term matching allow ads in AI Overviews to be triggered not only by user searches but also by the content generated within the AI Overview itself.” 

With it all, Google adds to what Marketing Brew calls “the company’s most profitable line item:” a Search division that made nearly $50 billion in Q2. And while that can buy enough new jeans to never again worry about grass stains, it may take more to combat what’s happening in the search battlefields.

“For the first time in years,” Marketing Brew says, “Google is facing stiff competition in the search world from AI startups like OpenAI and Perplexity and TikTok, which many zoomers report using instead of a traditional search engine.”