Google said it again, it will soon test ads within its AI Overviews. Philipp Schindler, senior vice president and chief business officer for Google, said this in the earnings call on Tuesday night. He said, “soon we’ll actually start testing search and shopping ads in AI Overviews for users in the U.S.”
He did repeat that this is something Google announced at Google Marketing Live in May, which we covered here. We did see some early ad tests in AI Overviews (SGE) but those vanished.
Philipp Schindler said:
We announced at GML, soon we’ll actually start testing search and shopping ads in AI Overviews for users in the U.S. and they will have the opportunity to actually appear within the AI Overview in a section labeled as sponsored when they’re relevant to both a query and the information in the ai overview and really giving us the ability to innovate here and take this to the next level.
He said this at the 38:46 mark in this call:
I spotted this via Glenn Gabe on X and Gagan Ghotra’s post. Plus Danny Goodwin covered this at Search Engine Land.
Here is a copy of my coverage of what to expect from Ads in AI Overviews from GML a few months ago:
Ads In AI Overviews
As expected, Google showcased ads directly in the AI Overviews. Google said it will “start testing Search and Shopping ads in AI Overviews for users in the U.S.” This will “start with a small experiment in the U.S. and take a responsible approach, applying learnings from user, advertiser, and publisher feedback,” Google added.