Google is putting ads directly inside its AI-generated search answers, marking a major shift from search middleman to content provider. The move could reshape the digital advertising landscape.
Now, when users enter a conversational search, like asking how to fix low water pressure, relevant ads for services like plumbing appear directly alongside the AI-generated answers. The new "AI Mode" expands how these contextualized, personalized ads are delivered within search results.
The tech behind this is AI Max, a one-click tool for search campaigns now available worldwide in beta. It works across Google Ads, Ads Editor, Search Ads 360, and the Ads API. Google says it's responding to the way people actually search. More than 60 percent of shopping searches now use broad, conversational language, a format that plays to the strengths of AI-generated answers over the old lists of links.
Google tightens its grip as publisher and advertiser
What once looked like a threat to Google's core business, the rise of AI-generated answers and the decline of traditional search results, is now turning into an advantage. The company is reinventing itself as an "omni-publisher." Beyond just gatekeeping information, Google now creates, controls, and profits from it, while also operating and selling the infrastructure that powers it all.
This shift gives Google even more power in digital advertising, often at the expense of outside publishers and media companies, who are losing both audience and ad revenue. Even if producing AI answers is more expensive, Google's ad margins could rise if ads embedded in these responses perform better than older formats, while third parties are pushed further out of the market.
And this is just the start. Google could push ad integration even further, for example, by adding paid links directly inside answer texts. Today's rollout looks like an opening move, much like the early days of Google Search ads or YouTube monetization, both of which eventually grew far bigger as investor pressure mounted.
Regulators are taking notice. US authorities are in court, seeking to break up Google's ad tech division. Google's lawyers claim that splitting up its ad business would accelerate the decline of the open web. But as Google moves from gatekeeper to content controller, pushing external platforms out of the ad market, that argument is starting to sound more like a warning than a rebuttal.
