Google only just rolled out AI summaries in search results — and now they’re getting ads. In an update on Tuesday, Google says it will soon start testing search and shopping ads within AI Overviews for users in the US, The Verge reported.
According to The Verge, in the example shared by Google, the search engine’s AI overview lists a response to the question: “How do I get wrinkles out of clothes?” Beneath the AI-generated suggestions, there’s a new “Sponsored” section with a carousel showing wrinkle spray you can buy from places like Walmart and Instacart.
Google says it will display ads in AI Overviews when “they’re relevant to both the query and the information in the AI Overview.” Advertisers that already run certain campaigns through Google will automatically become eligible to appear in AI Overviews “As we move forward, we’ll continue to test and learn from new formats, getting feedback from advertisers and the industry,” Google writes.
Google posted the following on its Ads & Commerce Blog:
An evolution of attention is underway. People have seemingly endless ways to shop, communicate and stay entertained online. For advertising to stand out, it needs to be relevant and helpful — in fact, that’s more important than ever before. Businesses need to be on every surface with creative assets that capture people’s attention.
Until now, this has felt impossible to do at scale — but generative AI is changing that. This technology is helping us better meet advertisers’ needs and unlock new possibilities across the marketing process, from new immersive ads experiences to high-performing creative assets. As we build this next era of marketing together, we’re sharing our latest creative asset generation controls, new ad experiences, visual storytelling features and more at Google Marketing Live (GML).
We’ve been working on making it easier and faster to produce great creative assets for ads across marketing channels. Creative asset variety is crucial to strong ads, and achieving this has gotten easier for more advertisers with generative AI in Performance Max. We found that advertisers who improve their Performance Max Ad Strength to Excellent see 6% more conversions on average.
Event Tickets Center was one of the earliest beta testers for asset generation in Performance Max, which has helped the team accelerate creative production by 5x with less time and effort.
CNBC reported Google announced Tuesday that it will be giving advertisers the ability to create immersive visuals in their promotions using generative artificial intelligence, as the company rolls out more AI tools for brands.
Advertisers can take advantage of what Google is calling a visual brand profile in search “that gives richer results” for queries that include the name of a brand or retailer, the company said Tuesday at its annual Google Marketing Live. Brands can also include product videos and summaries.
Last week, Google announced plans to change its search results page to prioritize a feature called “AI Overview,” which uses AI to summarize information at the top of a search results page. The move could push organic content and ads further down the page, resulting in a potential shake-up for publishers and advertisers.
In my opinion, there are a lot of companies who have jumped on artificial intelligence, and then added something of their own to it. This might be great for the big companies, but I think the general public, overall, is not super interested in AI.