WASHINGTON—As Google races to lead in artificial intelligence, it faces the challenge of making sure the technology doesn’t slow its profit-pumping advertising engine.
The internet giant is dabbling with ads in its new AI Mode for online search, a strategic move to fend off competition from ChatGPT while adapting its advertising business for an AI age.
“There’s no question that AI is becoming more commonplace as a source for answers,” IDC advertising and marketing technology research director Roger Beharry Lall told AFP.
“That will inevitably result in a shift in terms of search and the opportunities to promote a brand.”
The integration of advertising has been a key question accompanying the rise of generative AI chatbots, which have largely avoided interrupting the user experience with marketing messages.
However, advertising remains Google’s financial bedrock, accounting for more than two-thirds of its revenue.
“Google certainly needs to find a way to monetise AI search in the way that it has monetised its past versions of search,” Techsponential analyst Avi Greengart told AFP at the tech giant’s annual developers conference.
A new AI Mode enables conversational interaction with Google during search queries, providing answers in diverse formats, such as video, audio or graphs.
The internet giant said it is testing integrating ads into AI Mode responses, building on insights gained from AI-generated summaries, or “Overviews,” introduced to search results a year ago.
These Overviews display comprehensive AI-generated summaries of results above traditional website links and ads.
“The future of advertising fuelled by AI isn’t coming — it’s already here,” stated Vidhya Srinivasan, Google’s vice president of Ads & Commerce.
“We’re reimagining the future of ads and shopping: Ads that don’t interrupt, but help customers discover a product or service.”
Google is extending ads in AI Overviews to desktop in the US, following successful mobile implementations.
More than 1.5 billion users see AI Overviews monthly, according to the company.
“Google’s doing very good job of adapting,” Beharry Lall said.
“The move right now is to experiment and to gain traction, just as they have.”
